STEPHANE LEONARD

Iceland (oct 2011)

Stephane Leonard — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:39:41 +0000

This october I was visiting Iceland again, accompanying the young and super talented band TER HAAR from Berlin.
TER HAAR played a few shows at the Iceland Airwaves music festival, which once again felt like one of the nicest festivals I have ever been to.
We arrived in Reykjavik a few days before the festival started, which gave us some time to travel around, visit glaciers, glacier lakes, hot springs, waterfalls and black beaches. It really almost seems unreal to be able to wander in between such breath taking landscapes…

Some impressions:

naivsuper Book & PogoBooks

Stephane Leonard — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 11:50:56 +0000

Our little art publishing house naivsuper Book and my friend Claudio´s very own PogoBooks have started a series of group shows including lots of the artists that we publish, as well as some of our own works.

Here are a few impressions from the the opening at the Neonchocolate Gallery Berlin in april 2011.

Sprungturm, Cologne

Stephane Leonard — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 12:08:50 +0000

In march 2011 I was part of a group show at the Sprungturm gallery in Cologne, Germany.
The show was a collaboration between PogoBooks and naivsuper Book and it featured all of the books as well as original prints and art pieces.
Sprungturm is run by the great german photographer Boris Becker and his family.

Here are some impressions from the opening.

march 2011

Stephane Leonard — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 15:04:45 +0000

Portugal has become a faded memory by now, but plans to go back as soon as possible are always present.
My friends and me have been working on music videos, book publications and 2 small upcoming exhibitions – hard labour that made the winter pass faster.
I need to move into a bigger studio and find a new apartment but don´t have the time to look for places. If you hear about lofts in Berlin please drop me a line.

Some of the projects I am working on should be finished soon, which means a new adventure is just around the corner and so is spring and being outside and riding the bike will be possible again.

Oporto 2 (dec 2010)

Stephane Leonard — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 18:11:44 +0000

Writing and drawing has become more and more difficult due to my constantly cold hands. Porto is of course not as cold as Berlin but since most places don´t have any heating at all, the outside temperature matches the inside temperature. On top of the cold the rain came back and I am running out of options to go to except for the hostel community living room.
Christmas is just around the corner which means I am going to be back in Berlin soon for family gatherings and to work on a couple of music videos before taking of again.
I did some more port wine tastings learning to tell the difference between a blended and a pure wine. (I prefer the pure ones.) I have also treated myself with some great meals and a night of amateur Fado performances. Fado is a traditional music performed by solo singers (female or male) accompanied by one or more guitars. You can hear it in selected bars but also on big stages sung by national stars. Lately the younger folks are rediscovering this music which is mostly about broken hearts, unfulfilled dreams and everything else one could cry about – pretty much something for every generation. It is music that comes straight from the heart and soul and if you open up to it, you can really get carried away.
Some days ago I was wandering through the center of Porto and found myself in the middle of hundreds of people dressed up as Santa Claus. At first I thought the Portuguese are taking this christmas thing a little too far but later I found out that they were aiming for a world Guinness record for the largest Santa Claus parade, which they won with no less than 14,963 Santas.
Merry Christmas

Oporto 1 (dec 2010)

Stephane Leonard — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 14:18:00 +0000

People in Lisbon have been telling me how different Porto is from Lisbon but I had difficulties imagining what kind of difference they were referring to. Porto is a lot smaller and it is in the north which has a different climate and they use a different kind of stone to build their houses – a much darker one – but in the end it is only a 3 hours train ride…
I arrived in Porto at dawn on friday the 10th. By the time I was ready to leave the hostel it was already dark. I took a stroll around the block and was seriously overwhelmed by the spooky atmosphere coming from those poorly lit, narrow and incredibly steep streets. The dark stone, the 18th century architecture, old hidden churches and cobble stone plastered pavement only added to that feeling.
It sure looks like Portugal but feels completely different. Some nights I felt like being trapped inside either a Jack the Ripper movie or something Hitchcock – every corner you turn something unexpected could happen. The back roads can be so empty and quiet at any time of the day and especially right after sundown when the birds suddenly vanish. Except for some stray cats and dogs you won´t see a living soul in some of those allies.
That night I kept walking, looking for a nice restaurant and some more people but I must have gotten lost in the wrong neighborhood, so I made a few more turns and was back where I started. I chose a different direction and found a nice family run place which offered some really good seafood.
I came to Porto this particular friday because my portuguese friend Diana has invited me to her concert at the Casa da Música – Porto´s most famous music venue designed by the dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. The building looks like a rock or a meteor that fell down from the sky – very impressive from the outside and a very confusing maze on the inside. A friend told me that Koolhaas had a married couple in mind that still lives in the same house but doesn´t communicate anymore when designing the inside.
Diana aka Eosin was part of a big music night with the american band RATATAT and the brazilian Singer Cibelle as headliners but also some more experimental shows in a smaller room – a pretty unique mixture and an interesting night that was.
The next day I discovered Porto´s bridges that are so high up, I had problems looking down. Porto is situated on the river Douro that cuts deep into the landscape meandering between hills and rocks, dividing Porto from it´s neighbor Vila Nova de Gaia (beautiful name by the way). Porto´s center is high up on a hill, the tourist cafés and bars are down by the river and in-between lies Ribeira, an unesco world heritage site. Ribeira has everything from tiny medieval streets, tourist restaurants, bars, cafés, small clubs and crackhead hang outs – scary by night but beautiful during the day.
Vila Nova de Gaia hosts all the famous Port wine cellars which I couldn´t resist to check out since I kind of like Port. The wine tours they offer are super cheap and very informative – I think before I leave I will have to do one or two more.
Every day I either walk through the city or go out to the beach which you can reach by tram or metro. Porto is at least three cities in one – a medieval small town, a bourgeoise financial center and a beach town. If you walk down the incredibly long street Boavista from the center all the way to the beach you can see how the city changes and transforms itself. (it´s almost a three hour walk and not always pretty)

(those first two pictures were taken from the tower of a church – the highest point in the city, I think)

this is what I am talking about (dec 2010)

Stephane Leonard — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 13:51:49 +0000

Ericeira | Sintra (dec 2010)

Stephane Leonard — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 16:55:17 +0000

When we went to Ericeira last week we found a great hostel right by the beach with windows facing the sea. From the bed in my room I could see the waves crawling out of the darkest nights and onto the smooth sand. The sounds were muffled through the solid windows – a quiet but constant drone full of tiny variations in volume – more like a pulse.
Blue in portuguese means Azul which kind of sounds like the german word Azur. Azur is the same as Himmelblau (sky-blue) – a brighter and more luminous blue, which is exactly how the Atlantic Ocean as well as the color used in most portuguese tiles look like on a sunny day. The facades of most houses here are covered in beautiful tiles with either wonderful patterns or a whole picture spread over many many of them. Those pictures usually tell a story about conquerers, explorers or religion related topics and I could spend hours looking at them.

We went for a fantastic fish meal on tuesday night after spending the whole day in Sintra, in a magic garden created by an ambitious well-off man around the 1900s. Sintra is a small town in between Ericeira and Lisboa with a handful of castle-like buildings, gardens and a unique micro climate making it more green and more rainy than everything around. We didn´t get to see all the castles but managed to pay a visit to Sintra´s very own museum of modern art.
On wednesday morning the family left again to go back home to Spain and once again I was on my own exploring my beloved Portugal.
I stayed a few more days in that hostel sitting on the balcony drawing, reading and watching the sea, amazed by the countless variations of crashing waves, before going up to Porto on friday.

Lisboa 9 (dec 2010)

Stephane Leonard — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 22:31:51 +0000

Last week I took a boat across the river Tejo again. This time to a small city called Barreiro and again it was only a 15 minute boat ride and the Lisboa skyline was visible at all times but once landed on the other side a different world was waiting for me. So quiet and empty and kind of run down, not dirty, just old. I must admit that I have a soft spot for those forgotten places – those worker towns only made for living, suburbs nesting in the shadow of their beautiful neighbor. No tourist would go there on purpose, since there is nothing to see and nothing really to do, except for three funny little houses that must have been windmills a long time ago. I stayed on that little beach with the windmills and watched a man feeding pigeons and some other men collecting something in the flat water for hours before taking the boat back to Lisboa accompanied by an almost religious sunset.

On friday I went to a great show by Radian – one of my favorite bands. A short impression can be watched here: www.vimeo.com/stephaneleonard.
And on saturday I got a visit from two member of my family and so I promoted myself from tourist to tour guide showing them the most beautiful spots in Lisboa. It was interesting to realize how quickly this place has transformed into some sort of home after only a few weeks. Now streets, places, houses, bars and cafés play parts in stories I can tell about the city.
It got a lot warmer, too but along with these mild temperatures came the rain and we got soaked several times while wandering up and down the 7 hills of Lisbon. On sunday it was so stormy that we decided to take the train out to Cascais – a small tourist town at the Atlantic coast perfect to experience natures forces. We stood by the sea and watched huge waves crashing and we leaned into the wind and of course got soaking wet again.
Unfortunately it continued to rain which made walking through the city a lot less fun and so on monday evening we went up to Ericeira for some good fish and wine and even more wind and waves.

Lisboa 8 (nov 2010)

Stephane Leonard — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 17:36:04 +0000

Today I went to a place called the LX Factory. I have first read about it in the Jungle World newspaper special on alternative culture in Lisbon. It was said to be the only place in town where a squatted old factory got successfully turned into a flourishing business place for the young and creative mixed with galleries and art studios – very much like the ´Alte Spinnerei´ in Leipzig.
The factory is situated right underneath the gigantic Ponte 25 de Abril – more or less a copy of the Golden Gate bridge but still a very impressive sculpture and some people might know how fascinated I am with bridges, so visiting the factory was also a visit to the bridge.
Unfortunately the LX Factory doesn´t host any alternative culture anymore. In fact it seemed more like Berlin´s Kastanienallee cramped into an ensemble of old buildings. There were just as many expensive restaurants or lounges as stores for design stuff, interior decoration, furniture and casting agencies – basically a nightmare for alternative culture. I went to the Cantina (one of the restaurants) which looked pretty nice, I mean the way they integrated it into one of the old buildings. The fish stew I had was very delicious but what was kind of disturbing was that everyone around me was wearing a suit. So I guess the LX Factory is the hot spot for all those “young” new society businesses and except for the Ler Devager book store, the fish stew and the bridge really not worth a visit. I am not exactly sure if the book store is any good because I was so overwhelmed by the way it was set up in this old printing studio that I didn´t really get to browse through their offerings. (www.lerdevagar.com)

I took a long detour back to the city center and as usual passed by many of those tiny little appliance shops. It seems like these gigantic appliance stores we have in Berlin (Baumärkte) have not hit the center of Lisbon, yet, which is why all the things you need are spread out over countless small shops, which i like very much and it also reminds a bit of Bangkok where whole streets are dedicated to just one specific trade.

Something you will also notice when visiting Lisbon in the fall are all those mobile chestnut roasters on almost every corner in the center. Apparently the chestnuts are very healthy but I haven´t tried, yet. I very much enjoy watching the smoke go high up into the sky like transparent pillars when there is no wind. And when there is a little wind one of those tiny roasters can obscure a whole street or square. The smoke doesn´t smell but the visual impact is huge – reminded by a bit of Cyprien Gaillard´s video works.