Leo Fernekes

In one of those old-school apartment complexes near Phra Khanong, I had just finished photographing Eiji Sumi and was packing up my equipment.

“Where’s Leo’s apartment?” I asked him.

Eiji took me to an elevator in another building, pointed me in the right direction and waved goodbye. A few moments later, Leo opened his door and greeted me.

Eiji and Leo are friends, and I had seen Leo around at exhibitions and concerts. He is difficult to miss, partly because of his height, but we had never really spoken. Maybe I was a little shy too. He took me first to his mancave: his workbench. Shelves covered the walls, filled with components, tools, labelled drawers and prototypes.

Describing what Leo does is not easy, and he seems to have the same problem. He has moved between engineering, design, invention and art for much of his life, never quite at home under any one label. “I usually just say that I’m an artist and an engineer.”

Making seems to be the constant. Leo traces some of that back to his father, who could fix and build almost anything. As a boy, he would stay by his side and watch him work. That relationship with objects stayed with him: something you build yourself carries a different attachment from something you simply buy.

I understood that better when Leo took me into one of his storage rooms. Boxes were stacked almost to the ceiling, labelled with parts, materials and remnants of old projects. The accumulation suddenly made sense. Leo admitted that making things also makes them much harder to throw away, but that the attachment comes with a particular kind of pleasure when you use something you created yourself.

Curiosity keeps that cycle going. Some experiments demand an effort completely disproportionate to the reward, simply because an idea has caught his attention. But curiosity isn’t the only thing pushing him. “There’s also quite a bit of ego involved: that thought of, ‘Oh, I could probably do that better,’ which is often silly, but it’s a fun place to start.”

From the storage room, Leo took me somewhere almost opposite. The walls were bare; little occupied the space besides a desk and computer. He shares the room with his partner, and they had agreed to keep it neutral, free from the accumulation elsewhere.

On his screens were circuit boards, engineering drawings and 3D models. He showed me a prototype involving ultrasound. As he has grown older, Leo says necessity and purpose matter less, replaced by a greater focus on process. After a lifetime of making, he seems less concerned with where each thing will lead.

“You focus on enjoying the process and the journey and let go of the idea of outcome.”

His words could just as easily describe this project. “For now, the process is what I enjoy most. God knows what the outcome will be.”