Photography / Yann Quenez

Following up where last year’s Fruit Salad left off, here’s a brand new Alex Signor part filmed all throughout the Western part of France, filled with some serious heelflip hucks and two wheeled balancing acts. Accompanied by a little interview, that you’ll find right below the YouTube link…

Hey Alex, let’s start with the basics. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? – My name is Alex Signor and I come from the West of France – a little town called Pont l’Abbé. Gotta put it on the map (laughs). I just turned 28 and I’ve been skating for 14 or 15 years now. 

How’d you get into skating? – I actually started with a little two wheeled board. But at some point, I lent it to a friend of mine and she lost it (laughs). That’s when I bought a regular board. It looked way more fun anyways and I fell in love with it. I got to meet a lot of friends at my local skate park. The community and just everything about it really connected with me and it never stopped. 

Being from the West of France, are you surfing as well? – Well, I used to boogie board. But that was before I got into skating. I mean, I grew up next to the sea and that’s just what you do here when you’re a kid around here. We’ve got twenty or thirty beaches all around Pont l’Abbé and there’s some good surf here. I do know how to stand up on a surf board and I might be able to catch some waves, but I’m just so bad at swimming (laughs). Surfing’s too hostile for me. I like to know where I land when I fall. I don’t wanna be holding my breath and stuff. With surfing, there’s just too much anxiety for me. 

I feel you. How would you describe the skate scene over in the West of France? – We’ve got some stuff going on over here in Brittany. Rennes and Nantes are obviously the main skate cities in the region. Hugo Maillard really inspired me as a kid, to me, he’s just my favorite skater to come out of my region, and even though he doesn’t seem to be skating that much anymore, he’s still unbelievably good. Outside of Rennes and Nantes, you might not find that many skaters, but you can find some, if you know where to look (laughs) and everybody knows each other. Everybody supports each other. Brittany’s skate scene is like a family, I’d say. I love all the homies around here… and especially Max (Hurst)! He really brings everybody together. He’s probably the most invested filmer in Brittany’s skate scene. He’s constantly working on some projects. He’s a skate goon (laughs). And there’s Yann (Quenez), who has been shooting super good pictures of everyone in the region for maybe 20 years now, gotta put some respect on his name too! (laughs)

For your new part as well as for last year’s “Fruit Salad”, you pretty much stuck to spots all around your Brittany, didn’t you? It’s always nice to see spots you’ve never seen before! – Thanks and yeah, that’s what I did. “Fruit Salad” was mainly filmed in Lorient. My girlfriend at the time was living there and through staying with her a lot, I got to meet Max. He’s from a little town close to Lorient. We started filming here and there and at some point, he told me we should start working on a Lorient focused project together – and that’s what we did with “Fruit Salad”. As for this new one, we hit many other towns as well: Rennes, Nantes, Saint-Nazaire, … In-between, I broke up with my girlfriend, which got me into a very dark place. But at the same time, it made me find some extra motivation and gave me even more time to go out filming. You know, when you’re sad, you gotta make sure to change your mind somehow. You gotta do stuff. And in my case, it was skating that got me out of what I was going through.

Is that where the title of the part comes from? “Ni envie de vivre, ni envie de mourir” would translate into something like: “Neither wanna live, nor wanna die”… – Yeah, that’s it. The title’s just “Ni envie de vivre”, though. The second part of the saying’s basically implied in the first one and that’s what I wanted to convey. I was feeling very sad about this breakup. I was pretty much depressed, to be honest. I needed time to rebuild myself and skating helped tremendously. It might look like it’s the end for you, but somehow, it’s not all that bad in the end, it’s just not apparent at first, that’s what the concept of the title is about, really. It’s not a sad video at all, but somehow I wanted to address what I was going through. That’s also why we picked songs, that reflect somehow what I was going through. That’s my way of dealing with things, I guess. Creating something’s the best way, for me, to overcome sadness. The part might look like any other part, but for me, it’s a very intimate project, actually. It comes from something deeper than just skating and I wanted to tell this story, too.

Thanks for doing so and congrats on the part, once again! Have you had any other creative output during this difficult time period that you were just talking about? Or do you have other creative outputs, in general? – There’s so much that I like to do. I just don’t necessarily share it or post about it or whatever. I like to make music from time to time, I always have a disposable camera with me and take photos, I draw a little bit – I actually got to draw some stuff for an upcoming collection of a friend’s clothing brand, named Ruilh – and I just bought a little camcorder. I don’t even plan on using it to film skating. I might just film some other stuff, that real life stuff, you know.

À propos camcorder: What kind of setup has Max used to film this part? It’s got a very nice, nostalgic look to it… – Let me just ask Max very quickly… it’s a HMC41 with a 43mm Opteka fisheye and 3 spacer rings. He recently bought a new setup though, so this part’s probably the last project with the OG Max setup.

Thanks for the details! You mentioned before the interview, that you would be on your lunch break right now. What are you doing for living? – Yeah exactly. I just started working in a bakery, a boulangerie française (laughs). I’ve actually got a master’s degree in translation, though. But the market for translators is in a pretty bad place at the moment with all the artificial intelligence coming in. So when some long term friends of mine opened a little bakery in Pont l’Abbé and started looking for a seller, I jumped in. It’s the best actually, to be working with friends. We’re having fun. I usually work from 9am until 11:30am and then from 3:30pm until 7pm. It sounds pretty shitty, but it really isn’t. These working hours give me quite some time to do stuff in-between. And then, I’ve got my weekends from Saturday 1pm until Tuesday morning. That’s two and a half days, where I can just do my thing. Not a bad deal, really.

Sounds good! Thanks for taking the time to do this interview during you lunch break. Do you have any shoutouts to finish it up? – For sure! Shoutout to Max for working on this part with me. Big shout out to Dam’s – he’s my guardian angel – and everyone over at Side Shore skate shop in Brest. Thanks to Volcom, Stance, Haze Wheels and Film Trucks. And shoutout to Vans! I just started to get hooked up by them, so there’ll be a lot more coming soon. And last but not least, a big shoutout to all my closest friends, within and outside of skating. You guys know who you are! I love you all!