Fakewhale in conversation with Franc Archive
Coming from a background in street art and now working across digital installations and performative interventions, Franc builds an unexpected bridge between urban space and the virtual realm, between direct action in public space and algorithmic intervention online. With Breaking the News, his most recent project, the artist both imitates and subverts the visual codes of mainstream media, transforming them into a satirical and critical tool. At FakeWhale, we were struck by his ability to expose the mechanisms of contemporary communication, revealing how information, spectacle, and censorship intertwine within the economy of attention.
Fakewhale: Your practice began with public interventions in urban space and has gradually shifted into the digital sphere. How do you see continuity between these contexts, and how has the street informed your digital work?
Franc: In Breaking the News I realized I was applying tactics and the same tone of voice that I first used in the urban environment. A common technique in street art is wearing a yellow vest to blend into spaces, appearing as if you are part of the system, installing work unnoticed, and creating surprise when people encounter something that wasn’t supposed to be there. Online, the “yellow vest” became the template of mainstream press headlines, graphics, and composition, allowing me to slip past moderation and place work where it doesn’t belong.
I also keep my real identity hidden and use only my tag name, as I did in urban space. Another connection is documentation: we record interventions and place this footage into the same news templates as manipulated article images. Both live in the archive and the installation, so the line between fiction and fact blurs. Audiences begin to question whether what they see really happened, which ties directly back to the principles of urban intervention.
Replicating press aesthetics creates instant familiarity. When viewers see those headline hierarchies and graphic cues, their first instinct is to treat the content as legitimate news. . Only later do they notice the manipulation. That tension between recognition and doubt is central to the work. It shows how easily authority can be staged.
The scaffolding and ladders emphasize that this reality is built. News doesn’t simply appear it’s framed and supported. By mounting screens on construction materials, the installation feels like a site under renovation. It makes clear that the stories shaping public opinion are never neutral; they are assembled, propped up, and constantly rebuilt.
The constant scrolling of manipulated headlines floods viewers with fragmented truths. How do you want audiences to navigate this experience?
I don’t expect one fixed reaction. What matters is mirroring the spectacle, whether people feel skeptical, complicit, or simply saturated. I related strongly to Melis Dumlu reflection Manufacturing Reality, where she linked my work to Debord’s theory of the spectacle: media not only reports but becomes the lens through which we see reality. I hadn’t framed it that way myself, but her insight resonated and captured something essential about the project.
Yes. The form of the project came directly from working with the algorithm. At first I made static images, but they barely reached anyone. To get what in graffiti we call the “high spot” ,maximum visibility, I shifted to short reels. Usually the first frame was the article image, or one inspired by it, and then a morph-cut transition revealed my intervention. That glitch-like shift became a kind of digital destruction, and the algorithm favoured it.
But it’s not only about form, it’s also about which stories appear. The news I work with is largely what my personal algorithm feeds me. In that sense, the archive becomes a portrait of my own feed: the stories I stop on, the ones I spend time with, the topics that resurface again and again. It even reveals geography. Although I’m based in the Netherlands, my algorithm constantly pushes Cypriot news, so much of the archive ends up reworking those stories.
The action gives the project its name. Every manipulated item is already “broken,” since its narrative has been altered from the mainstream outlet. The morph-cut transitions are like glitches, a form of digital destruction, and smashing the screen becomes the physical counterpart.
At the same time, I don’t want to define the act too closely. Breaking my own news can be seen as destruction, escape, or something else entirely. I leave space for the audience to interpret it in their own way.
Sometimes you activate the work through live performance, editing and manipulating news in real time. What does this add that the installation alone cannot?
In performance, I create dozens of news items live, while hundreds from the archive run behind me. The author suddenly becomes visible, sitting in front of the audience, while at the same time exposing the “face” of the outlets, showing how their images can be dismantled and rebuilt in real time.
I cover my face with a pixelated scarf and share my screen as I edit. That anonymity recalls both street tactics and online culture. The performance also exposes the hybrid method I use: a mixture of AI tools and traditional editing. By making the process visible, the work reveals how propaganda today can be assembled quickly and anonymously.
Your archive addresses overload, fake news, and AI. Do you see the work as critique, resistance, or more as a mirror of the system we inhabit?
Mostly as a mirror. Breaking the News amplifies what already surrounds us: repetition, scrolling, endless updates. Exaggerating these traits it makes the mechanics visible.
At the same time, there is a critique inside the mirror. Once people see how fragile and constructed it all is, they can’t unsee it. I wouldn’t call it resistance, because the project still functions within the same platforms it critiques. But it does create awareness and usually provokes reflection on how deeply our realities are scaffolded by these systems.
8Looking ahead, how do you imagine the future evolution of Breaking the News and the broader archive?
I want to scale it up. The archive expands every month, and I’m still testing different constructions. One direction is to explore large-scale architectural spaces filled with screens on scaffolding. Another is to bring the work back into the street, experimenting with spray-painting news directly onto walls.
I’m also drawn to intervening in public screens, advertising signs, electronic billboards, places where people don’t expect to encounter this kind of imagery. The aim is to let the archive move across contexts: overwhelming inside immersive installations, while also confronting people directly in urban space.
fakewhale
Founded in 2021, Fakewhale advocates the digital art market's evolution. Viewing NFT technology as a container for art, and leveraging the expansive scope of digital culture, Fakewhale strives to shape a new ecosystem in which art and technology become the starting point, rather than the final destination.
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