This is a sound piece in progress. Currently working on a longer version to develop the piece's themes and depth.
From the statement for We Had No Idea The Microphone Was on, where a live version on the sound piece was performed (leftist memes be like):

Goodbye Blue Sky is a sound piece about drone warfare as a materialization of the more uncanny and disturbing traits of the internet : unaccountable violence, distortion of reality and centralization of power that all lead to repression and surveillance.
Of course, we now live in a world where the internet and all things digital are a prevailing reality. We’re past good or bad, it just is. This technology, with all its riches, thrills and threats, has been effectively normalized. However, the normalization of drones, a military weapon with debatable ethics, in everyday life should worry us all. They harvest the worst sides of the internet world – from the technology that makes them function and the auguries of a general warped sense of time, space and morality, to the abuses of governments and monopoly-companies, into an eerie object that we are becoming accustomed to. The COVID-19 pandemic saw police use drones to enforce curfews and Amazon keeps expanding its delivery drone arsenal. Household drones are evermore common as their prices diminish. We’re getting used to seeing drones ; which means we’re getting used to being watched, and to the threat of violence.
But even before we see the soulless birds, we hear them – this constant buzzing in our ears is the soundtrack of the coming phase of digitally mediated violence, which was first tried out by the US in never ending wars in the Middle-East. Now the drones have come home to roost. And soon, we won’t even hear them anymore : they are made to be ever more silent. The creep of militarization into popular culture will fade into the background.
War and digital technology have always been intimately linked. The internet and drones alike are deeply rooted in the military-industrial complex. Drones act the way people act online, impulsively, and from a safe virtual distance. While both artifacts can be funny, clumsy, fascinating and sometimes uncannily human, we must remember who they serve and what ideology they carry. A technology is written by us from the ground up, then rewrites us from above. The message that drones carry and infuse us with is one of oppression.
Made from sounds bits found and collected, then rearranged into a whole, this piece includes political speeches, interviews, news broadcasts, video game sounds, memes, amateur youtube videos, deepfakes, pop songs, and the particular humming of drones, in an effort to make apparent the nature and origin of this technology, how it permeates different levels of popular culture, and hijack its emotional power in the process.

A web remake of Adrian Piper’s 1986 work My Calling (Card).
It’s a passive aggressive message, easily copy-and-pastable, that might come in handy to black people online – spread it !
Intended as a readily spreadable, copy-and-pastable, and potentially modifiable piece of text, the work functions with some of the same mechanisms of internet memes, especially text memes such as copypastas. A political statement, short poem and tool for living, the work doubles in meaning once it’s executed by a user and addressed to others : the power resides in bringing it alive.


Try it here

An ongoing series of javascript poems, rendered on physical surfaces (wall, street, windowpanes...). They all use the syntax of the javascript function that, executed by a computer, will display text.

A poem that exists both online and as printed version. I made 75 for a first batch in 2019, but anyone could make their own by simply printing out the web page that host the text. I continue to update and modify the text from to time.

You know the feeling : you’re online, right, and for no particular reason, you start to feel weird. Like something glorious is about to happen. And then, just like that, it fades, the glory has passed; now you feel sad. Did you miss it?
Oh, what a time to be alive. I love this life. I sometimes wonder whether it loves me back, but I try and convince myself that such things don’t matter. Nothing does, and that’s the best part.
Well, anyway, this is an exploration of some of the feelings that could crush us in the digital 21st century.

Read it here
Buy it here

↑ installation view XPO-BE-1, curated by BIB AGCI ILA, Brussels, 2019. ↑

On a computer in an office are presented a selection of Hillary Clinton’s emails, that were released to the public following a highly mediatized and unfortunately decisive FBI investigation during the 2016 US election.
Every mention of the demand “pls print” made by Secretary Clinton is collected and the visitors can print as many as they want, that they can then keep in screenprinted folder. In doing so, they are composing poems of sorts, made from recycled textual matter, filled with what could classically define poetry : composition, rhythm, repetition, layout, and not to mention the political importance of these poetic documents and a certain beauty of the mundane and the everyday.


Read the essay I wrote for the exhibition catalog (in French)

↑ installaton view at the In/Between Places show, Brussels, 2020. ↑

A first version of the installation allows visitors to print their own emails, to answer Secretary Clinton’s demand and become the algorithm that prints. For my part, I printed all of the over a thousand mentions of pls print and collected them into a book, in a binder handmade by my friend Marie Gauducheau. These emails are a possible version of a multifaceted poem – another version, extracted from the huge quantity of public emails, Kenneth Goldsmith’s catalog for his Venice show HILLARY (on which I worked alongside him).


Read the introductory essay for the book of poetry (in French)

In 2015, I assembled a computer keyboard and a Philips UV lamp in an installation, that was then documented and shared on my teacher's Flickr account.
In 2016, German artist Aram Bartholl made a similar installation.
In 2019, an anonymous artist named John Doe made yet another similar installation.
I then decided to present my first UV Lamp-computer with the 3 cartels, in a single installation.

What's more interesting, the map or the territory? How do our tools shape our perception ? How can we navigate the world wide web when we don't even understand it? Why am I sad all the time? Who cares?
Actually, it's a story-by-the-sea.

Watch it here
Read the interview I had with Maxime Gourdon for the Territoire Étendus catalog (in French)

This one is about cool smells. It was written for someone.
It was published, in english and in french, in #11 of the wonderful poetry journal rectangle quelconque.
Buy it here, or in select libraries in France and Belgium.

Days are days in prose.
Written for and read at Et Caetera at le Pantin, Bruxelles, April 2022.
Read it here.

This one is just about a breakup and being grateful and how one summer is every summer.
Written for and performed at Loveways - À tes souhaits, a private Valentine's Day event hosted by my dear friends Chloé Delchini, Justine Gensse & Louise Radi <3
The poster was designed by Chloé Delchini & Mona Hackel.

A fall trilogy, made up of : "une (1) saison", "la mauvaise saison", and "trouble affectif saisonnier".

Written for and read at Et Caetera in September and October 2021, at le Pantin in Brussels.
Read it here

This one features graffiti, the corpse of Europe, and in it the bus is always late.
Written for SLNT RVLT, a book about Brussel's sticker subculture made during the COVID-19 pandemic by COAST Agency.
Read it here.

This is one about insistant images and all the news and stuff.
Written for the very first revue exo, "Si j'aurai su". Exo is a periodical by the students of La Cambre's contemporary writing masters. For this first edition, designed and conceived by Sam Bouffandeau, Perrine Estienne, Chloé Delchini & Justine Gensse, Camille de Toledo suggested we write about the virtuality of life in the french mode of the conditionnel.
Read it here.

This one is about love songs.
Written for and performed at espace vers, the first event organized by acqua salata.
Poster design by Louis Garrido.
Watch me read it here.

Written for the XPO-BE-1 exhibition catalog, by BIB-AGECI-ILA and included as an insert the (B) installation binder.
Read it here.

A conversation with Raphaël Meau on my poem Everytime I am away from the internet, I wonder if I am loved
Read it here.

An interview of Laurie Giraud, Martin Campillo and I with the online magazine Switch On Paper about the show (RIGHT IN) THE FEELS.
Read it here.

2022 - Avant la lettre ; KL8

2022 - corps douze ; La Cambre Graduation show ; Bruxelles

2021 - We Had No Idea The Microphone Was on ; livestreamed with Q-02 & La Cambre

2020 - (RIGHT IN) THE FEELS ; la galerie de l'erg ; Bruxelles

2020 - In/Between Places ; la galerie de l'erg ; Bruxelles

2020 - NON-A présente : algomancia ; la galerie de l'erg ; Bruxelles

2019 - C'est beau, c'est loin ; Ex-Aldi Auderghem ; Bruxelles

2019 - XPO-BE-1 ; BIB AGECI ILA ; Bruxelles

2018 - Physical Poetics #1 ; Brussels

2018 - Backslash Festival ; Zurich

2018 - Festivaleke ; Charleroi

2018 - Territoires Étendus ; PUTSCH Galerie ; Bruxelles

2018 - Erg book fair ; PUTSCH Galerie ; Bruxelles

2018 - Sorcellerie Computationelle ; Bruxelles

2017 : The Internet Yami-Ichi ; Imal ; Bruxelles

2020 : (RIGHT IN) THE FEELS ; la galerie de l'erg ; Bruxelles (organisor and co-curator)

2020 : NON-A présente : algomancia ; la galerie de l'erg ; Bruxelles (co-curator)

2020 : HILLARY : THe Hillary Clinton Emails ; Kenneth Goldsmith ; Teatro Despar Italia, Venise (assistant curator & editorial researcher)

2022 : corps douze ; La Cambre Graduation show ; Bruxelles

2022 : Et caetera à La Bellone ; Bruxelles

2022 : Et caetera #7 ; Le Pantin, Bruxelles

2021 : Et caetera #2 ; Le Pantin, Bruxelles

2021 : Et caetera #1 ; Le Pantin, Bruxelles

2021 : Sabir La Nuit (in rosa, rosa, rosae, curated by SB34 ; Maison Pelgrims, Bruxelles

2021 : Aqua Salata - espace vers ; Bruxelles

2020 : (RIGHT IN) THE FEELS ; la galerie de l'erg ; Bruxelles

acqua salata

BB

Bureau des Ogres

Bye Bye Binary

Cinéma Jolia

d-e-a-l

Et Caetera

Ergote Radio

Gilbard

gloss group

La Perruque

Power Metal Protection

Purple Pax

M1CROCH1PS

ɴon-ᴀ

Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence

Revue exo

(RIGHT IN) THE FEELS

rile*

ronces collective

Santé Loisirs

La Satellite

Spéculor

Super Surfaces Studio

Teaching To Transgress

Hello :-)
I'm a artist, writer, translator, sometimes curator and editor - I like to say I'm a cultural worker. I'm a graduate of both erg (école de recherche graphique) and La Cambre, in Brussels. I work around the nature of emotion in overlapping natural and digital networks, embracing connectivity as critical research practice.
I live and work between Berlin and Brussels, Belgium.

Connectivity and interdisciplinarity are important to me and my work, and I consider them to be ends in themselves. I aim to connect fields, rework and navigate matter, forms and contents, to leave projects open to modification and updates, etc. This, to me, seems the most appropriate process to manage artistic emotions and ideas today.
Openness is therefore just as important, it is necessary for a radical connectivity - both conceptually (as in this website, for instance, where the code that built it is made visible and displayed in a captcha font); and as praxis – which is why I often work with existing content, reworking it, and would be amused and curious to see my own work reappropriated.

I also work as a translator from French to English and vice-versa. Hit me up at gabriel.franjou@free.fr if you wanna work on something together. I'm especially into poetry, experimental, or art writing.
I have collaborated regularly with author Théo Casciani and poet Elke de Rijcke, translating their work from french to english.

I was born in Nantes, France, and moved to Brussels in 2014 to study at the école de recherche graphique. I gratuated in 2019, and got a second master's degree in Creative Writing from ENSAV La Cambre, also in Brussels, in 2022.

The font for the title is PicNic by Marielle Nils, a gender-inclusive font.
The font for the visible code is ZXX Xed by Sang Mun, captcha fonts.
Thanks to my friend Martin Campillo for hosting my website on his server.

Here are a few other links for where to find me on the internet :

Are.na

Instagram (work/life)

Instagram (memes)

Tumblr

Soundcloud