A poem by Dickens began: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times [...]."

I only have one collection, which includes hundreds of traces of what people still write by hand without being forced to do so, and which they leave lying around. By 'writing by hand' I mean writing that requires you to hold a tool with several fingers close together. So it could be "Never give up" engraved with a spanner under the molasse arches of Saint-François, "kiss kiss kiss" written with an acrylic marker in a tunnel of a station, or "rappeler Jacqueline" written with a Bic pen on old paper left in a shopping trolley. For example, "We are all reptilians" written in aerosol does not meet the criteria of a tool clutched by several fingers, nor does "momonique lapopo", painted with a roller on the foundations of a bridge on the A1 motorway.

What interests me first of all, at the dawn of a world where we write by tapping on a screen, are the last gestures that hold a writing utensil tightly in our fingers. After that, it's not a question of knowing whether the messages left are intelligent or not, but of feeling a genuine curiosity by looking for a kind of hidden poetry in them.

One day as I was making an inventory of the data on these lost post-it notes, felt-tip tags on dark paths or amorous boldness on cable cars, I realised that the three words that kept coming back were Fuck, Love and Mozzarella. In short, the key themes of hate, love and food.

Looking into this further, and in all seriousness, I experimented with scripts other than handwriting.

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