PIERRE BASTIEN


Your favourite virtue ::
altruism

Your favourite qualities in a man ::
generosity, simplicity, good temper.

Your favourite qualities in a woman ::
generosity, simplicity, good temper.

Your favourite occupation ::
playing music or thinking about it or constructing a device with a musical purpose.

Your idea of happiness ::
when everybody around is happy.

Your idea of misery ::
when a close friend or relative is in trouble.

If not yourself, who would you be ::
an animal or a human who likes making music: a blackbird for instance, or a cricket.

Where would you like to live ::
in any harbour, on any of the Atlantic shores.

Your favourite colour and flower ::
all colours, any flower as long as it grows freely outside.

Your favourite prose authors ::
Raymond Roussel, Mohammed Mrabet, Jack Kerouac, Raymond Queneau, Henri Michaux, François Caradec, Bruce Chatwin, Jean Rolin, Amos Tutuola, Hugues Panassié, Valerie Wilmer, Alan Lomax, Pierre Mac-Orlan, Pierre Bettencourt, Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie, Jorge Luis Borges, George Orwell, Mircea Eliade.

Your favourite poets ::
André Martel, Raymond Roussel, Kurt Schwitters, Raymond Queneau, Henri Michaux, Luis d'Antin van Rooten, Boby Lapointe, Charles Cros, Alfred Jarry, Jean-Pierre Brisset, Luc Etienne.

Your favourite heroes in fiction ::
Bex, the inventor of the thermodynamic orchestra in Impressions d'Afrique ; Phileas Fogg ; le duc d'Auge.

Your favourite heroines in fiction ::
Faustine, who plays music with her hair in the "aqua-micans", in Locus Solus ; Félicité, the clairvoyant and her tarot cards playing "The Blue-Bells of Scotland", also in Locus Solus.

Your favourite painters and composers ::
Alexander Calder, Aloïse, Simon Rodia, le Facteur Cheval, Gaston Chaissac, Pierre Bettencourt, Teo Jansen, Ben Vautier, Fischli & Weiss, Pierrick Sorin (if the word "painter" from 1890 means what we call "artist" nowadays), and Tibor Szemzö, Haco, Aphex Twin, Colleen, Squarepusher, Pascal Comelade, Don Aspiazu, Sun Ra, Thelonious Monk, Jelly Roll Morton, Erik Satie and the unknown or forgotten composers who contributed to the many musical traditions all over the world.

Your favourite heroes in real life ::
George Orwell, François Villon, Louis Armstrong, Ernest Hemingway.

Your favourite heroines in real life ::
Alexandra David-Neel, Louise Michel, Bessie Smith, George Sand.

What character(s) in history do you most dislike ::
dictators.

Your favourite food and drink ::
sea-food and red wine.

Your favourite names ::
my children's names.

Your pet peeve (something that easily annoys you)::
plants or animals (with the exception of spiders) inside the house.

The change you most anticipate ::
the end of all religions.

A gift of nature which I would like to have ::
knowing how to catch the funny side of things.

How I would like to die ::
alone (I mean without witnesses) and preferably neither drowned nor by suffocation.

What is your present state of mind ::
right after the previous question, slightly pessimistic.

Of what fault are you most tolerant ::
ignorance.

Your favourite motto ::
ni dieu ni maître.

6 février 2008

"Pierre Bastien is a French musician. He currently lives in Rotterdam. He has built several automatic orchestras. He always performs his concerts along with the last version of his many contraptions. The previous versions have a second life -though not virtual- as sound sculptures and installations."

website :: Pierre Bastien