The idea was: you, me, a table, a tattoo, and a printed copy of your love story. It took place from 26 to 28 May 2026 at the Bastille Design Center in Paris. Below you’ll find the stories of the participants and the tattoos I made for them.
Pierre Blanquet
Past midnight in November, on the motorway between Caen and Paris.
I can’t see anything in the rear-view mirror. She is sitting far back, as far as possible with the cat in his travel carrier. If I were driving a bus, she would have chosen the last row. Not a word has been exchanged since we left and the car radio stays off.
Two hours earlier, we had a fight which I ended by damaging a kitchen wall in the Airbnb. After that, it was better to remain silent for the rest of the evening. Sat at the end of the table, I stared to calm down at the circular dent in the plasterboard, as though caused by the impact of a pétanque ball. The wall had taken it all. It would have been better for everyone if a taxi had taken her to the station, but the last train had already left Bayeux, so I went to get the car.
As long as we were on the smaller roads, I focused on driving, with a single sentence in my head : Don’t get mad if you miss a turn-off. With the radio silent, that mantra, slow breathing, and the GPS were all I had to hold onto.
Once on the motorway, I relax a little. A first thought comes: What do I write on the insurance paper? “The damage resulted from my head striking the wall following an accidental fall. Please find attached my liability insurance certificate.” No second thought follows.
A few minutes later, the bubbling sound of a filter coffee machine comes to mind. Water rises through the tube, gurgles, escapes as steam. Over it begins a bass line, calm and swaying. It is carried by brushed drums. Then light vibraphone notes answer the splashing of the coffee dripping into the pot. The theme loops, dreamy, stretching across kilometers. We glide through the night on the A13, overtaking nothing but trucks.
“We should stop as soon as possible,” she says softly. I do not ask why. A warm smell of animal food turns my stomach: the cat is vomiting. I reply: “Not on the emergency lane, it’s dangerous.” My thoughts arrange themselves : find wet wipes at the Beuzeville area, 5000 metres to go. If not, paper towels and a bottle of water. Say nothing more than necessary. No point breathing through my mouth.
Earlier, in the kitchen, during the shouting, the cat had come between us. He meowed, looking from her to me and back again, as though begging us to stop. Later, she’ll say he wanted to protect her.
He left his panelka in Moscow four years ago to travel to Paris via Istanbul. Twelve hours in a box without complaint. For months now, he has been eaten away by lymphoma. Kept going by cortisone, the animal has, of course, his difficult moments. One evening in January, I will have to help him climb onto the sofa. He will rest his head on my arm for a few minutes, then he’ll go lie down beneath the desk, facing the wall. This curve is for the cat.
Layered over the first smell, a new stench, harsher still, makes me wince. In silence, the animal is now emptying himself onto the back seat. 2000 metres. But as we approach the rest area, traffic cones force us into the left lane. Warning lights flash, and our fear is confirmed: the services are closed for roadworks, because nighttime is when these things are done.
In the corridor of a single open lane, we pass the station slowly. A sign says the next one is 43km away. We pick up speed again. At 140 km/h, in the smell of vomit and shit, barely relieved by the thin stream of air from a cracked window, we scan the darkness for an exit.
(The instrumental I had in mind was “La Passerelle,” by Tindersticks. It doesn’t open with the sound of coffee brewing but it ends with it.)
Karen Joigny
It strips us bare, leaves us shaken, yet also gives us a surge of life that we draw from the heart of another… It has no rules, only a direction. It is, above all, a choice — something to show, to prove, to live.
I still don’t understand many things about it. How can two people who care for each other end up separating? Why that person, and not someone else? But maybe the more we learn, the less we know.
I think we lose a lot in it. Maybe our innocence, maybe some trust, maybe a piece of our spirit. But even then, we choose to move forward and to believe again one day, because it is the only thing truly worth experiencing fully and without regret.
I am the result of it.
Max Fieschi
Love is an afternoon at Coney Island and a roller coaster.
A wooden ride. Old, worn. The kind everyone’s seen or heard about as a great place to meet up during a vacation.
It’s waiting in line for a ride where you don’t know the outcome, how long it will last, or even who your partner will be, stuck with you in that car.
Because do you really choose who your companion will be on this adventure?
Or do you simply choose to wait in line? To take the first step into the unknown that is this new thrill ride?
And once you’re in the car, what more can you do than go from dangerous, nauseating twists and turns to exhilarating, happy drops with this partner who seems to have no clue. But to feel nonetheless that you’re already in love with this person you’ve just met, someone you know nothing about, but in whom you already love everything.
What else can you do but let yourself be guided and choose to stand together through the tougher times, and vice versa?
In any case, you’ve just boarded a ride that’s bigger than you, one that will hopefully last much longer than a single spin, and will give you a thrill that only this extreme rollercoaster can provide.
When you think about it, these magical places where you find these roller coasters can be called fairs.
A word that in English, the dominant language in this enchanting place that is Coney Island, would be « fair. »
This word also means « just. » Like perfect equity, implacable justice, and therefore balance. A notion I like.
In French, there’s an adage that says, « Il faut battre le fer quand il est chaud. » (Strike while the iron is hot)
I now prefer to say, « il faut se battre pour fair(e) ce qu’il faut. » (You have to fight to do what needs to be done)
Because that’s all that matters: doing.
Because it’s only by doing that we truly give meaning to this love circus, which I’ve since renamed an « amusement park. »
Vaiora Ekaterina Stroganoff
The chance of meeting THE TRUE LOVE is 2%, which has been semi-scientifically proven. Accordingly, the “almost’-scientists did not take parental, familial, friendly, or professional “loves” into account.
Or did they?
Trying to define love, in a suffocating desire to prescribe it into the ultimate wellbeing, I find myself thinking about our “rest” being assured.
If out of 8 billion people, only 140 million experience true love, what are the other 7,860,000,000 doing? Lying and deceiving themselves?
Love is paradoxical.
It is sincerely and naively deceitful.
We lie and believe for the sake of the truliestly truthful happiness.
Love is contradictory.
In the euphoric haze of love, intoxicated by a boundless sense of freedom, we commit ourselves to cherish both personal and shared boundaries; in carefree untouched childishness, we saddle ourselves with the weight of unbearable omnipresent responsibilities; hand in hand with passion and tenderness we walk beside possessiveness and jealousy. In egoism is unity, in wholeness is loneliness.
Love is paradoxically lonely.
A 98% chance of never truly loving anyone/ anything/ anyhow not even once – is unpleasantly lonely.
Soul to soul, in hopes and limitless illusory promises, spending months, years, decades exhausting each other’s strength and nerves, only to one day become perfect strangers irreversibly, unequivocally – is disgustingly lonely.
To miraculously, magically, impossibly become a part of the chosen two percent, yet still feel out of place in your own kitchen with your own mental cockroaches – cynically ironically lonely.
Love is paradoxically timeless.
Forever and ever, till death tear us apart, eternally — basically till the very precise moment, after some indefinitely stable number of days, months, years, exactly till when we erase previous infinities with a new one-hundred-percent two-percent person.
Fearlessly, headfirst into the abyss, convinced that with at least some and whatever kind of love, we will leap from the cunt/womb to the grave.
Claire Tran
He tells me I’m a good mother. He tells me I’m clever, beautiful and perfect.
One day he lifted my rucksack from behind while we were climbing six flights of stairs, to lighten the load I was carrying. I still cry when I think of it.
He listens to me – really listens. And he believes in me.
It moves me to know that someone can be there for me, even when I’m not there for myself.
Chazz Del-Logen COOKS
it’s summer time in frankfurt germany and im only there for a month performing in a show. when im in new cities i always check out the dating apps (grindr, tinder, hinge) to see the talent around. sexually, i prefer to have one partner multiple times rather than enjoying the company of multiple different men, so the idea of finding a “fuck buddy” for the month grabbed my attention.
it was the evening of june 3rd and i’d swiped enough to the point of boredom. i lost interest in searching for men catalog style. i went to sleep with the slightest feeling of disappointment, thinking to myself, “fuck, it’s going to be a long month.”
as normal, i wake up to my alarm and the first notification i see is from tinder celebrating the fact that manuel and i had matched. i remember opening the app with low expectations, and then all of a sudden, there manu was on my screen. i immediately thought he was too pretty to be a real profile, but he messaged me quickly and i decided to respond.
the conversation flowed so beautifully. he was so incredibly sweet and caring, unlike any conversation i’ve had with someone so quickly without even physically knowing them. we talked deeply about meaningful topics almost immediately. there was no shallowness with him. it was like two beings taking off their masks just to see the other in their truest form.
it’s now june 5th and we are both eager to finally see each other after a day of exchanging messages and cute little photos of our day on instagram. we decide to meet for dinner and drinks later that evening. he has no idea that it’s my birthday the next day.
i come out the metro and see him walking directly towards me. i’m nervous, im shy, im feeling insecure. he looks exactly like his photos. a bit shorter than expected, but i don’t mind. we greet each other with smiles glued to our faces. the evening is beautiful, natural, not forced. we begin talking about astrology when he finds out i’m a gemini and asks when my birthday is. i tell him it’s in a couple of hours and that i don’t tend to celebrate it anyway. he insists on keeping me out for drinks until at least midnight because he wants to be the first one to wish me a happy birthday. it was so sweet. it had been a while since i’ve been treated like this by a guy.
we ended up staying out past 12 at this cocktail bar with leather seats and dim lights. we sat tucked away in the corner smoking cigarettes and talking about life, aspirations, and ideas of love. he lived just around the corner and asked if i wanted to join him at his place; neither of us was ready to leave each other’s company. we explored each other physically without any penetration. it was a lovely time, and afterwards we laid in silence in the dark, cuddling like two perfectly cut puzzle pieces. the silence wasn’t awkward, it was comfort. he begged me to stay the night and i could tell he was upset when i decided to go home. but in my head, staying the night felt too close to something that could develop into real feelings. i was trying to be realistic, i was in frankfurt for one month, just looking for a fuck buddy. he knew that before we even met.
it took a week for us to see each other again, filled with consistent texting and video calls. i could feel him wanting to develop something deeper, and i was still trying not to take it there.
but after our second meeting, we spent nearly every single night and morning together. he would drive me to and from work on the back of his motorcycle, showing me his city from a different perspective. it was cute. it became clear to me that i was fucked. the emotions were present and real.
by the end of june, my time in frankfurt was nearing to an end and we had “the talk.” “what are we doing?”, “are we going to try to make this work?”, “is this realistic?”. we were two guys who had fallen in love so quickly with no plans and no desire to let this connection go. i told him that it had been about 4 years since i was last in a relationship, and that i might need him to tell me how he needs to be loved, because it had been so long since i had last loved someone in this way. we spent the next 5 months showing up for each other and loving each other extremely.
those 6 months were so beautiful. we supported each other, traveling any time one of us had a couple days off. we even worked together on a project, and for a moment i thought i had found a life partner. there were no real conflicts. he was open-minded to all of my ideas and vice-versa. i’ve always had this dream of being in a throuple, and he was even open to that if the opportunity ever presented itself. we explored museums, showed each other our favorite cafes and bars, and discovered new favorite restaurants together. getting to experience the day-to-day routine when you’re with the person you love is such a feeling, even something as simple as a grocery shop becomes exciting and playful.
he took me to meet his mom and to his godchild’s first day of kindergarten. it was beautiful to see someone experiencing real life with family, especially since i’m living in paris while my whole family is back in the u.s. we experienced concerts and festivals. we would prepare our favorite meals for each other, and he would take his favorite dishes and make them vegan for me. there was so much beauty packed into those 6 months, looking back i can’t even believe it was real.
somehow, the distance started to get the best of me.
although we had more than 400km between us, i found myself creating even more distance. i could feel myself pulling back. i can pinpoint the exact moment it shifted when we were working together. the switch just flipped. i had no control over it, and once it happened, i think we both knew it was the beginning of the end. on top of that, i was traveling on tour and we knew it would be difficult to make and find the time to see each other physically.
the feeling grew until i had no choice but to speak to him. we had always been completely honest, and i respected him too much to stop now. i wished we could have done it face to face, but facetime was our only option because he was traveling too. the moment the call began, i think we both knew how it was about to unfold. i was the one to say to express it first that the relationship wouldn’t work for me anymore. i told him how i thought that maybe my first real relationship in years shouldn’t be long distance. i wasn’t sure if i knew how to handle a normal relationship, let alone one with 400 kilometers between us. it was getting too hard not having those everyday moments together.
he agreed with what i was saying and feeling. the conversation was somehow lovely. we both cried a bit, but in the end, we said goodbye with smiles on our faces. i immediately thought to myself: “if this guy can handle a conversation like this so well, what am i doing letting him go?”
in the end, the distance won. we started dating at a time when we both had free time, and then life happened. we got busy. a promise we made early on was that we wouldn’t sacrifice a work opportunity just to see each other unless it was an emergency. i genuinely think that if he lived in paris, or if i lived in frankfurt, there a possibility that we would still be together now.
Anys Reimann
„My parents met here in Paris, briefly, deeply in love; I was born, but their love didn’t last.
My mother and my stepfather were always on the verge of moving here, as Paris was convenient for work and we stayed here for longer periods every year; as a child, I played a lot in the city’s parks and learnt French through play.
As an adult, my job also meant I had to return to this place every year….
My beloved partner of 23 years now and I are eight years apart in age; when I first saw him, he was 18, and I felt as if I were under a glass bell jar, yet at the same time filled with a thousand butterflies … and I would shake my head inwardly on each of the rare occasions I saw him again in the years that followed… “What on earth is wrong with you?? What on earth was I thinking?!“ … yet that strangely deep feeling I had for him never left me.
To cut a long story short: what I didn’t know for almost 10 years was that he felt exactly the same way, and neither of us knew about the other’s feelings.
At first, I too didn’t want to believe in this love, given the age difference and negative experiences of love – how absurd, when you consider just this incredibly strong bond of attraction from the very beginning – but he eventually won me over… and as luck would have it, work and love took us back to Paris for years.
Our youngest son will soon be celebrating his 21st birthday with his brother and us here in Paris, because we are both ‘made in Paris’, and so the circle of love is complete„
