Artist Sophie Calle: “In My Youth, Losing One Year Didn’t Exist.”

Why It Matters

Calle’s contrast between past freedom and today’s fragmented activism highlights how social media and heightened complexity are reshaping civic engagement, urging leaders to rethink support structures for modern activists.

Key Takeaways

• Youth felt timeless; losing a year seemed impossible then
• Seven years of hitchhiking taught independence without parental financial support
• Early activism was collective, focused on clear issues like abortion
• Modern social media complicates activism and amplifies societal paralysis
• Luck and protective upbringing limit her ability to advise younger generations

Summary

Sophie Calle reflects on a generation that perceived time as limitless, recalling how, in her youth, the notion of "losing a year" was unheard of. She recounts spending seven years hitchhiking across Mexico and other countries without money, relying on parental allowances and a fierce independence that shaped her worldview.

Calle contrasts that freedom with today’s hyper‑connected reality, noting that social media and heightened political complexity have turned activism into a bewildering, often paralyzing endeavor. She describes early activism as a collective fight over clear issues such as abortion, whereas now movements are fragmented and the stakes feel overwhelming, exemplified by her reaction to the Trump era.

Memorable lines include, "In my youth, losing one year didn’t exist," and "I slept on beaches, in train stations for a year," underscoring the stark difference between past spontaneity and present anxiety. Her narrative also highlights the protective role of her parents, who, despite divorce, funded her autonomy.

The interview underscores a generational shift: younger activists lack the structural safety nets and clear‑cut battles that once empowered movements, suggesting that contemporary cultural and economic pressures may require new forms of solidarity and support to rekindle effective civic engagement.

Original Description

French artist Sophie Calle reflects on youth, freedom and the shifting conditions that shape a life in art. Speaking with characteristic candor, Calle considers whether it is even possible to offer guidance across generations when the world has changed so dramatically. “When I look at the situation now, I'm just like totally disarmed, paralyzed, knocked out,” she says.

“How can I give advice when I have the age I have and life is just another life?” she asks early in the interview. “I don't know the life now. I have no children. I don't teach. We have not been on the same earth. Time changed so much.” For Calle, the idea of offering a roadmap to younger people feels misplaced. The circumstances that allowed her to live as she did—traveling freely, improvising her path—belong to another era.

She recalls a formative period of independence that began early. As a teenager, she left her mother’s home and supported herself with the financial allowance her divorced parents agreed to give her directly. That arrangement made it possible for her to live on her own while still finishing school. “They gave me that freedom,” she says. “It was not advice. They accepted my freedom.”

In her twenties, Calle spent years travelling with almost no money, hitchhiking across continents and living wherever she could find shelter. The experience, she suggests, would be difficult to replicate today. “I lived for seven years with no money,” she says. “I hitchhiked one year in Mexico. I slept on beaches and in train stations. I had no money.” Looking back, she notes that the risks seemed different then: “In my youth, losing one year didn’t exist.”

The artist also reflects on the broader social climate that shaped her early adulthood. Political engagement, she says, once felt more immediate and collective. “I was a political activist because it was in the air,” she recalls. “We were together, we were fighting together.” Today, she describes feeling overwhelmed by the complexity of global events and uncertain about how to act. “You don’t even know what you could do,” she says. “Nobody knows what to do.”

Despite her hesitations about giving advice, Calle acknowledges the good fortune that has marked her life. “I was lucky I was born in a country that was not in war,” she says. “I found what I want to do. I had luck.”

Sophie Calle (born 1953 in Paris, France) is a trailblazing French artist and writer known for conceptually driven works that blend autobiography with photography and text. With her ingenious mix of fact and fiction, seriousness and playfulness, cool distance and unabashed intimacy, Sophie Calle stands as one of the most interesting and influential voices of contemporary art. For five decades, Sophie Calle has been a leading figure in the visual arts with her original work that tackles the big questions of existence and human emotions in general – love, loss, guilt, fear, embarrassment, etc. – in a rigorous, conceptual mode of expression. Sophie Calle’s works have been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale, where she represented France in 2007, and at major institutions such as Centre Pompidou in Paris, Tate Modern in London and The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark. And her work is held in some

Sophie Calle was interviewed by Christian Lund in her home in Paris in January 2026.

Camera: Rasmus Quistgaard

Edit: Nanna Dahm

Produced by: Christian Lund

Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2026.

Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond.

Subscribe to our channel for more videos on art: https://www.youtube.com/thelouisianachannel

FOLLOW US HERE:

Website: http://channel.louisiana.dk

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/louisianachannel

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LouisianaChannel