back home
I am back home in Berlin now.
I wanted to show you 2 links about the journey in case you can´t get
enough:
http://blog.bosch-stiftung.de/laptoporchester/
all the best

I am back home in Berlin now.
I wanted to show you 2 links about the journey in case you can´t get
enough:
http://blog.bosch-stiftung.de/laptoporchester/
all the best
posted by Stephane Leonard at
6:29 PM
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The next day was an official off day which some of us (including me)
used to rent a car to get out of Ruse and explore some more of Bulgaria.
We went to a wonderful monastery in the mountains, some ancient ruins
and a great little town called Veliko Tarnovo. We did some really
touristy stuff, had a fantastic lunch on a balcony overlooking the
whole city and walked and walked and walked.
On saturday our taxi from the future took us back to Bucarest from
where we took a plane back to Berlin.
Thanks to everyone who made this journey possible, thanks to the
Laptop Boys and thank you for following this little diary.
talk soon - Stephane
(in the photos: the old house surrounded by trees is not the venue
but the monastery)
posted by Stephane Leonard at
4:37 PM
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I am sorry for the delay but the last few days were pretty busy and I
was too tired to blog.
The concert in Sibiu at the GONG theatre was probably our best so far
- hopefully we haven´t reached our peak on this tour now...
One more concert left and we are all very excited but also tired and
anxious to get back home again.
Sibiu was a beautiful city - unexpectedly pretty. On sunday we
finally had a day off and Olli and me went to an open air museum
about Romanian history and to the zoo next door. It felt good to
break our daily routine of rehearsing, eating and sleeping or sitting
in the bus for hours.
On monday we took the train to Bucarest. Unfortunately we didn´t get
the chance to take a look at the city. The very scenic train ride
took more than 6 hours and when we arrived it was already dark. We
were picked up by two Bulgarians in their future taxi bus. They had a
2000 watt bass system in the back, blue light underneath, a tv,
cameras on the back bumper, navigation system and other fancy things
they liked to show off. It was kind of strange to drive in such a
well equiped car and then take roads that hardly deserve to be called
a road. As soon as you leave the cities the standards change
drastically. The gap between rich and poor seems so much bigger than
I have ever seen before....
2 hours later, after crossing over the mighty Donau river we arrived
in Ruse, Bulgaria.
We checked in at the city art hotel, a quite luxurary hotel in the
middle of the center. Ruse is not that big (160 000 people) but has
everything you need except for food after 12pm.
On tuesday we started rehearsing right away. We still had to do some
work with the Romanian piece and we had to prepare ourselves for the
Bulgarian composition.
We rehearsed at the concert venue - the Canetti house - an old
building that belonged or still belongs to Canettis family. It is
empty and in bad shape now but the Bosch institut is allowed to use
it for cultural events.
Eventhough it is a very warm spring here the building was super cold
so that today we moved to a different rehearsal space.
I am not sure if we can do better than the 150 people in Sibiu but
everyone is trying their best.
- first pic was our hotel in Sibiu - next pics are impressions
posted by Stephane Leonard at
11:27 PM
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The pictures are impressions from the road, the venue in Timisoara
and Timisoara by night - Sibiu follows soon.
posted by Stephane Leonard at
6:08 PM
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After the show we quickly wanted to go back to the hotel because
today we are playing in Sibiu and it is a 6 hour drive there.
But our bus broke down. We hung out at the club for hours. People on
phones, everyone stressed out, we had no idea what to do. Around 1AM
we decided to go eat in a fast food places somewhere in the middle of
the student dorms not too far from the club. We walked through an
adventurous area and it seemed like our nightmares and not our dreams
became true.
Thanks to wonderful hosts and guides we had a great night and even
made it back to the hotel at about 3 in the morning. Thank you very
much you wonderful people who helped with the club and the car and
everything else.
Right now I am sitting in the hotel waiting for our bus to come back
from the repair place our hungarian driver took it to.
It is 9.30AM - I am tired - the tension between the musicians is
getting worse but the sky has a wonderful light blue, the sun warmth
my neck and I am pretty sure that this trip will not end here.
bye
posted by Stephane Leonard at
8:32 AM
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Yesterday was our big night here in Osijek. It took all day to
soundcheck and to get our computers in sync that shortly before the show
we got so tired and our ears were so overloaded that we were scared
to fail.
It would be really awful to mess up one of those concerts - there are
so many people involved (a huge thank you to everyone) in our journey
and everyone works very hard.
For yesterdays show we had an amazing brand new soundsystem and a
super cool projection canvas - the room sounded fantastic and the
visual artists from Pécs we invited to project abstract paintings
onto our venue and the surrounding made this a very special night - a
real multimedia event.
About 60 people came to see us (every seat was taken) and the applaus
was one of the best we got so far - thank you very very much.
The area around the venue was full of these old rooms build into
little hills (old storage garages). Inside they were very disgusting
because the locals go there to have sex and then just throw their
condoms out of the car window but with the light show they looked pretty
mysterious. One of the rooms was cleaned out and turned into a bar.
The night ended with us dancing like crazy again (not me because I
still have a cold).
posted by Stephane Leonard at
11:42 PM
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I have a real cold now which is why I am updating my blog while the
others are out checking the bar scene around our hotel on a sunday
night.
I hope to be in better shape tomorrow.
posted by Stephane Leonard at
11:01 PM
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posted by Stephane Leonard at
10:47 PM
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1) Pécs city center
2) love logs - we found walls covered with those logs - the logs have
the names of just married couples engraved - a symbol for there
everlasting relationship - my friend Leas and his wife have log like
this somewhere on an canarien island, too
3) our personal camerman doing what he does best : )
4) our manager took us out for dinner to a star restaurant - there
wasn´t much food on the plates and didn´t taste like much - I don´t
know what it is about all those exquisit restaurants and their fancy
cooks...
5) the venue during soundcheck
6) Nic and Olli happy after the show
posted by Stephane Leonard at
11:25 AM
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We have 2 more days in Pécs to rehearse the minimal piece and then we
move on to Croatia.
I will post some pics tomorrow.
Lots of love from wonderful Hungary which has been treating us so
very nice.
posted by Stephane Leonard at
10:01 PM
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In the afternoon we weren´t so sure if people would come to our
concert. The venue: Amarturka is in the industrial area of the town -
it belongs to the local design school but we had no idea how much
advertising was going on and if the people would go out on a monday
night - it turns out they do.
Before the show a lot of preparation had to be done - installing a
huge canvas for video projections, cleaning out the room, set up a
PA, a stage and some stage light.
By the time soundcheck started we were all super nervous.
Marek had to do some more interviews with a TV station from Prague,
Hagen (our film guy) and me argued about the light situation, Oli and
Nic had trouble with their stomachs (too many knydliky for lunch).
Around 8 PM the first act started - Victor - an experimental musician
from Bilbao who we invited spontaneously. Slowly the room started to
fill up and by the time we went on stage over a hundred people had
showed up.
We played for about an hour and then left. We had to ignore the
"encore" screams because we hadn´t prepared more pieces.
After us there was a DJ set + visuals by prof. Neutrino (the musician
we worked with the days before) and after that we had 2 local drum´n
´bass DJ´s + visuals to turn this night into one big party.
We all danced like crazy until the police came and then went home
exhausted and wasted.
We have a few off days now which we have to use for more rehearsals
and recordings.
This blog will take a short break and then continue with part 2 of
our journey around april 15th.
posted by Stephane Leonard at
1:15 PM
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Today is the day of our big concert. I have to leave for the
soundcheck now. Let´s hope some people show up - the city seems
unbelievably empty after the sun goes down...
posted by Stephane Leonard at
11:16 AM
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posted by Stephane Leonard at
1:56 AM
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Our first stop is Ústí nad Labem in the Czech Republic. A wonderful
small town right behind the german border.
We didn´t do a lot today except for checking out the venue - an old
factory on the outskirts, had a typical czech lunch and walked for a
couple of hours to find a nice cafe somewhere along the river Elbe
(Labem), which was impossible... I guess they just don´t like to sit
by the river and have a cool beer (pivo) in the warm spring sun.
Tomorrow we are going to meet our local musician - Prof. Neutrino - a
hip hop producer and then rehearse for 2 days in a row.
The concert will be on monday.
Stay tuned - I will try to keep you posted as often as possible.
posted by Stephane Leonard at
8:47 PM
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Here are some impressions from Leipzig.
The book fair, a museum for printing machines which I love very much
(especially the sounds they make), a couple of nature shots from
south of Leipzig and a small collage by a very good friend of mine.
I will be on tour very soon - so expect more frequent updates to come!
posted by Stephane Leonard at
11:32 AM
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posted by Stephane Leonard at
4:06 PM
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At the moment I am preparing the videos for my little show at the
Weserburg in Bremen.
The opening will be on december 5th - please stop by when you are in
the neighbourhood.
Berlin got cold - luckily my new apartment is warm.
posted by Stephane Leonard at
6:39 PM
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posted by Stephane Leonard at
10:57 AM
1 Comments
In the new book I just started to read the main character Toru Okada
is also dealing with the same questions: Will we ever be able to
completely understand someone else? How far can we go or come to
actually get to know something of importance? ...
It is a book by Haruki Murakami called "Mister Aufziehvogel" (which I
really cannot translate into english) but the original title is
"Nejimaki-dori Kuronikuru" and it was first published in Japan in
1994. I am not exactly a big fan of Mister Murakami but it was the
only book lying around which I haven´t read, yet. It has 765 pages
and I hope it is going to last me a bit longer than the last books.
Murakami´s stories always seem to be a little over ambitious. There
is everything in his books: explicit sex scenes, horror, anxiety, a
bit of philosophy, fantasy, adventure and so on... I do like his kind
of naive writing style and how easy one can float through his stories
but like I said sometimes it is almost too much.
The last super thick book I really enjoyed reading without getting
bored at all was "The Corrections" by Jonathan Franzen. A book sharp
and to the point and really detailed full of little side stories all
connected to one monster story. I can really recommend this to you.
At the moment I am waiting for the movie "Possibiltiy of an Island"
after the book by Michel Houellebecq. He wrote the screenplay and
directed the movie himself. I loved the book and I am always thrilled
by his writing genius and now I am excited to see if he is also a
good director. I saw a few screenshots on the internet a while ago
and it looked a bit like a low budget production but we will see - my
expectations are not too high - I am just curious.
posted by Stephane Leonard at
4:39 PM
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Lately and even before that incident I started thinking more and more
about identification. I mean who or what are we? and what or who
proves or determines these "facts" about our persona? I know this is
deep but basic philosophy and a really crucial question and I am not
going into further detail now but just stop for a second and look
into your passport and at those 2 lines on the back of the ID card -
height and colour of eyes. Do these 2 information along with a
completely unnatural and outdated photograph and maybe an easy to
fake fingerprint say anything about you or even prove who you are?
The colour of my eyes for example changes every season so my passport
sais: brown-green which is of course totally random... just like my
photograph which doesn´t really look like me at all anymore.
Thinking about identification also made me think about prejudices and
how we judge people based on their looks. Automatically I am myself
usually built up a pretty complete picture of a person at first
sight. I do leave room for surprises and I am of course able to
change that picture but deep down inside I know that this first idea
of someone manipulates and controls how we are going to interact with
each other and what kind of relationship develops beween us. I know
it is sad but I can´t help it. I could play dumb and try to look
through people but then it would look like I am not interested which
again could be understood as a judgement. So I am trying to cover up
this picture inside and patiently wait for the person to show me who
she or he is and I try not to judge because who am I to judge anyway?
I like reading people. It is actually fun to come up with theories of
their past and future and then learn during a conversation that you
have been completely wrong or even right in some rare cases. It is
like a hobby of mine and it passes the time when waiting for a train
and more important it doesn´t hurt anyone.
When it comes to me I kind of try to stay under the radar. I mostly
wear no name clothes or at least without visible brand names and I
change my style just like my mood changes. Sometimes my pants are
baggy and my shirts are tight and the next day it is the opposite. I
like to dress up one day and look like a hobo the next one. I have
always changed into some neutral clothes when leaving the painting
studio or put on a suit when moving out of apartments so I won´t look
like the things I am doing. I don´t wear a watch, no rings, no
necklaces and my phone is always in my pocket, mostly on vibration
because nowadays people judge you by your ringtone. I do have a few
tatoos visible sometimes but that was a conscious choice and I could
still cover them up if I really wanted to. A few month ago I grew a
full beard which often seems like a small wall to hide behind because
it covers up a lot of expressions. I am not sure if I am going to
keep it but I kind of like it and the different things it could stand
for which may or may not show my character. For the last few years I
always had a more or less normal haircut because at some point I told
myself that I don´t need a mohawk to be a punk.
I just shaved it all of. It seemed pretencious at some point and I
needed a change. I don´t know what´s next, all I know is that I am
not a big fan of all those signs and materialised traits of
character. These considerations, rules and expectations can be really
tiring when it comes to meeting people.
This past weekend I went to a music festival: Espantapita - a salsa,
reggae, rock, punk, electro mixture kind of thing. I wasn´t
interested in the music really I just wanted to camp on the beach
along and inbetween the spanish hippy punks. I really enjoyed being
there and eventhough I had no dreadlocks, no dog and no torn up
clothes I felt home and relaxed because I guess there is still a part
of me that wants to live their kind of life.
I am not sure if it was a coincidence but a couple of weeks ago I
started reading T.C. Boyle´s most recent book ´Talk Talk´ which I
finished 2 days before all my stuff got stolen. The book is about
identity theft and while I was reading I could feel the fear and rage
of the main characters and now I cannot only feel it - it is there
standing right in front of me laughing me in the face - it is real...
I want to finish with a quote from the book I am reading now: Yann
Martel - Schiffbruch mit Tiger (Shipwrecked with a tiger) - I have to
translate it from german into english, so please excuse all of my
mistakes : )
"... It is not easy to put these things into words. Because real
fear, the one that moves deeply, the kind of fear that we feel when
staring into the eye of death, nests into our memory like a rotten
gangrene: It rottens everything, even the words we are using when
speaking about it. One has to fight for these words. One has to fight
to pull this cancer into the light of words. Because if you don´t do
this, if you leave your fear in the wordless darkness or even manage
to forget about it, you open up for new attacks of the fear because
you never really wrestled / fought that enemy that once overcame
you." (end of Kapitel 56)
posted by Stephane Leonard at
4:48 PM
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posted by Stephane Leonard at
2:03 PM
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posted by Stephane Leonard at
3:00 PM
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