I contacted you just over a year ago because I wanted to photograph you for Socialite Family! Last winter, I invited you to our pop-up event during Maison&Objet, La Scopa.

Yes, it came about through eating and drinking.

It was all very spontaneous!

I'm an artist. At the moment my practice, consists mainly of writing on paper with a Bic pen. But I've been working with language and text for twenty years. At first, it was mainly work on canvas and in exhibitions. And then, I don't know exactly why, but it coincided with the arrival of social networks in our lives: I switched to a biro. It took on a dimension I wasn't expecting!

It's universal! Everyone knows biros; everyone writes with them. There's something quite gentle about the way they write, and then there's a slightly awkward, imperfect side. Rough edges. Almost a bit messy. At first, I wrote in felt pen. I've been a lot more successful since I switched to ballpoints!

I studied applied art and then went on to study at the Arts Décoratifs de Paris. At first, I thought I would mainly paint. My style was quite realistic, hyper-realistic, even. But at the Arts Décos, I discovered artists who had been through the school in previous generations and who had a more conceptual approach, an approach to art that was further removed from painting in general, with artists like Xavier Veillant, Philippe Parreno, Pierre Bismuth - with whom I later collaborated - and also Claude Closky, who was doing a lot of things with a biro at the time. From painting, I moved on to books, publishing, graphic design and art direction. At the end of my studies, my dissertation was entitled "le manuel de la photo ratée" (the failed photograph manual). It went on to become the book that put me on the map. After that, I published another book, Récréation. At the time, I was part of an artists' collective called Bellevue, and we loved creating work around the absurd, regression and idiocy (laughs). For example, we created a timid action film. We used to fight... without really daring to hit each other. We went air skating. A lot of anti-performance, in short! Récréation was born in this context in 2003, and enjoyed a certain amount of media success. After that, I wrote several novels, including "Je m'appelle Jeanne Mass" in 2005. I wanted to fit as much nonsense as I possibly could into a book. Well, I didn't have the profile of a novelist, so I stopped in the end.