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>More often than not, it's the one-off act of Burning a Million Quid in 1994. Their ground-breaking music, the books, the anti-establishment statements and art

>More often than not, it's the one-off act of Burning a Million Quid in 1994. Their ground-breaking music, the books, the anti-establishment statements and art ... it's almost an afterthought. The pain of not having enough is a fundamental human experience, and to see someone who had more than most will ever see in their lifetime literally burn it away hurts. I thought it was deeply selfish stunt then, and still do now. They earned that black check on their reputation by their own actions.

chrstphrknwtn 4y ago
> The pain of not having enough is a fundamental human experience I'm not sure that's true. > I thought it was deeply selfish stunt then, and still do now. There are so many more selfish decisions made every single day that have dramatically greater negative impact on people.
techno_tsar 4y ago
Deeply selfish? There are literally millions and millions of extremely wealthy people who would spend that amount doing nothing, buying a yacht, their 20th property, or do actual terrible things. I don’t resent them for burning their money. They could have bought toys, instead they made a statement. We live in a world where many of us (myself included) have to live with the pain of not having enough. I’m reminded of that every day. I wonder why we live in such a world. Do you think it has anything to do with why they burned a million quid?
- flir 4y ago
  > Do you think it has anything to do with why they burned a million quid? Absolutely not. It was all tied up with their distaste for the art industry, not inequality. The burning was the last attempt to create art with the money (after Nailed to the Wall, the failed Money: A Major Body of Cash exhibition, and the K Foundation art award).
  - weego 4y ago
    The true absurdity should have been the message but it got lost in the outcome. From what I remember they tried to sell Nailed to the wall for £300k explicitly stating it was £1 million in legal tender, but the gallery refused to buy it because they couldn't get it insured.
- logifail 4y ago
  > instead they made a statement What does that mean? I mean really mean? Follow-up question: did they achieve anything .. other than (even more) notoriety?
  - Towaway69 4y ago
    They achieved that some 30 years later we are having this discussion about their art. I hope that we all are able to be that creative - that we achieve something that humankind speaks of 30 years later.
    - pavlov 4y ago
      I feel this thread is evidence that the question provoked by the performance is actually quite important, certainly more so than the average “but is this art” meta-debate. Someone in this thread was upset that the artists burned more money than the average person sees in their lifetime. Another commenter questioned why this would be more unfair than all the “regular rich” who we know spend many times that amount of money on a yacht or another property that they don’t need. Why are there two moral categories for wealth? Someone who is understood to not have money by default — like an artist — and then gets a sudden windfall is expected to use it responsibly. But someone who is simply rich has no such obligations and doesn’t answer to society. And yet the former category is a rounding error but the latter control the majority of resources on this planet.
      - Towaway69 4y ago
        Those that have everything change nothing, those that have nothing change everything or at least they try.
      - logifail 4y ago
        > Someone who is understood to not have money by default — like an artist [...] I'm sure we can all think of a few counter-examples to that one! Rihanna: net worth: ~ $1.4 billion Paul McCartney: net worth: ~ $1.2 billion Bono: net worth: ~ $700 million > then gets a sudden windfall is expected to use it responsibly "Expected" - by whom? I may be just a bit jaded, but we should perhaps consider the hypothesis that for very successful artists it's a simple commercial decision to signal you're acting responsibly with your wealth, otherwise your much, much less wealthy customers who are buying your output might start to notice, disapprove, and ultimately stop buying your output. One could call this "fiduciary duty to oneself", really.
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
  If you buy a yacht or a supercar you give the money to a number of people. If you actually burn the money you destroy it and it is lost for everyone. So while people do what they want with their money, actually burning it like is rightly seen as a dick move by most people. It is also illegal in many countries.
  - atchoo 4y ago
    Is it lost for everyone or is it more like a stock buyback? Did everyone's money become 0.000000001% more valuable by taking that chunk out of circulation? Can an economist tell me please?
    - detrites 4y ago
      Not an economist, but in crypto, "coin burns" are a regular occurrence where a percentage of supply is destroyed, typically by sending to a public address for which the corresponding private key is proven unknown. The result is intended to be a rise in price, benefiting all holders. It can be uncertain to assess whether a resultant rise in price is actually due to a coin burn, but given a coins supply is commonly used as a valuer, it's plausible.
    - mytailorisrich 4y ago
      That's not even a nitpick. Your own comment provides your answer: it does not change the value of money in any way and does not benefit anyone.
    - otherme123 4y ago
      It does exactly that. But if you go deeper in the meaning of money, it's even better: when you receive money, what you actually receive is an IOU for a good or a service. E.g. when you receive $40 for fixing a computer, it means the society owes you $40 that you can claim at any time. Burning the $40 means that you fixed the computer for free, and that you don't want anything in return, and at the same time nobody can claim the $40 in your name (i.e. you didn't give the money away). The "you should buy anything to move the economy" is a well known economic fallacy.
- davidy123 4y ago
  Buying a 20th property &c is a statement that you don't have anything better to do with your money. It's kind of the same thing. I'm not 100% comfortable with it, but MrBeast is probably the Musk of this potential. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ2ifmkGGus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ2ifmkGGus
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  When you spend money, you enrich others and drive the economy. There is no way their "statement" could be more valuable than that.
incompatible 4y ago
The true economic loss is whatever it cost the Bank of England to print another million pounds.
sp332 4y ago
I see where you're coming from, but isn't the point just the opposite? People aren't starving because of lack of money, they're starving because richer people decided that another million is worth letting people starve for. If the people who already have millions decided, like the KLF, that another million isn't worth that much, maybe they would not let it dictate how they treat other people.
wpietri 4y ago
> I thought it was deeply selfish stunt then, and still do now. Not sure if this helps you, but the money supply changes all the time. The government creates and destroys money as needed and nobody ever says boo. What these folks did made all the other money in circulation worth slightly more, so nothing was actually lost in the way that would have been had they, say, bought houses and burned them down.
- Baeocystin 4y ago
  I appreciate the kind words. My anger at their actions comes from how coddled from reality they had to be to make such a choice. The levers of monetary supply and demand, of course, 'make' and 'destroy' much larger sums on a daily basis. But those aren't liquid values under control of a single person, either. Money that is, is much more salient, and more valuable. And they just pissed it away.
  - leoedin 4y ago
    Did they piss it away though? That single statement was so powerful it's still causing emotional arguments about it 20 years later. Can you say that about other things people spent £1m on in 1994?
    - msla 4y ago
      > That single statement was so powerful it's still causing emotional arguments about it 20 years later. I hate this argument, because it's worse than vacuous: It makes out that art is about as meaningful as a gunshot in a crowded room. Is that art? It'll damn well get a reaction, especially from the person who was just shot. Shouldn't we demand more from art? Like actual meaning and maybe, just maybe, a positive impact on the world? Or should the next art piece be a car bomb in front of the Louvre? Yes, burning a million pounds is comparable to a gunshot because a million pounds could save a life, so destroying a million pounds might well have ended one, in terms of opportunity cost. And no, you don't get to handwave that away by pointing to other people doing things, any more than a serial killer gets to exculpate themself by pointing to tobacconists. People do things with consequences, and then have to live with those consequences, and the members of the KLF are getting off easy.
Jare 4y ago
It is fine for art to be selfish and to be painful. Their act was one of the things that helped me understand that art is more than just being pretty and hard to craft. I think their bad reputation and fade into obscurity is a consequence of being so dismissive and even offensive to anyone (especially media, of course) who wanted to make celebrity shows of them. It's great for them to perform their art, and it's great (or at least natural) for media to decide they don't bring value to them.
tweetle_beetle 4y ago
The context of this is a biography though. The genre is supposed to do a better job of taking the long view, rather than short term sensationalism of the news cycle.
MrVandemar 4y ago
> The pain of not having enough is a fundamental human experience, and to see someone who had more than most will ever see in their lifetime literally burn it away hurts. I thought it was deeply selfish stunt then, and still do now. If they had spent it on a yacht would that be better? It represents an exchange of money for an object, and I suspect you don't regularly get hurt by the fact that people buy largely pointless status symbols. But in some ways it amounts to the same thing. (Actually I'd argue that the resources and fossil-fuels involved in manufacturing a largely pointless object such as a yacht is less than the burning of the money. And yet, which hurts more?) I heard a story that a young Tony Blair and some of his friends burned a 50 pound note in front of a destitute homeless person. Are the KLF worse for burning their larger sum of money as an act of rebellion against a corrupt self-serving industry? Or is it Tony Blair who is worse for sadistically showing a little hope to a desperate person and then snatching it away?
- thackerhacker 4y ago
  The story in the press about this insinuates David Cameron might have done this as it is apparently a Bullingdon Club (which Boris Johnson was also a member of) “thing”. It would be quite surprising for someone who went into Labour politics to do this: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bullingdon-club-initiation-ceremony-claim-1725912.amp https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bullingdon-club-initia...
- ehnto 4y ago
  I am not exactly pro-frivilous-yacht, but money going into the boatbuilding will have an impact on the local community at least.
jimjimjim 4y ago
meh, it pales in comparison to everyday acts of some extremely rich people
bratwurst3000 4y ago
See it this way. Other organization are also spending money on „statements“. They are only calling it ads. For example greenpeace is spending more money on statements on ads then those two burned away.
gorgoiler 4y ago
The problem with this logic is who gave them their money, and why are those people not scorned as well? For me, the answer is that, ultimately, everyone is responsible for the plight of anyone else. Society, run by The State — an entity whose powers including being able to raise revenue, make decisions, and then spend it to fix things. Demand more from the state (and every citizen who can vote — Society and State go hand in hand) if you haven’t given up hope that we can do better. Another alternative is we end up with Chan/Zuckerberg deciding who gets a hospital and who does not, Mackenzie Scott deciding which cities get schools and which do not, and Bill and Melinda Gates deciding which countries get more nurses and which do not.
- phonescreen_man 4y ago
  Another alternative is we end up with Chan/Zuckerberg deciding who gets a hospital and who does not, Mackenzie Scott deciding which cities get schools and which do not, and Bill and Melinda Gates deciding which countries get more nurses and which do not. The real world is close to this. The bill gates foundation trying to patent seeds, controlling food supplies. The billionaire lobby groups controlling puppet politicians. So it’s not an alternative from my understanding. It is the current state of affairs.
coldtea 4y ago
>The pain of not having enough is a fundamental human experience, and to see someone who had more than most will ever see in their lifetime literally burn it away hurts. Still, nobody bats an eye when some other celebrity or CEO or socialite throws away 1 million just for a single wedding or even a birthday party, or 10 million to have a large swimming pool. Which happens like every single day. $1m is probably what some Wall Street guys spend on coke for their guests per year those days. At least these guys earned it through their artwork, and never stole it from anybody, or created huge machines of surveillance and brain-washing like Facebook, or by treating people like disposable shit - like tech bros in companies like Uber. I'd rather have a role model burning money than cherishing it.
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  Rich people don't "throw away" money, they spend it. The money is circulating and enriching others for services rendered. In fact, the more money they "throw away" the better. The rational thing to do as a capitalist is to capture as much of that money as possible. What they don't do is set it on fire, thereby depriving others of it permanently.
  - ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
    Isn't burning money just the opposite of Quantitative Easing and thus it slightly increases the value of existing money? If burning money is "depriving others of it permanently", then when banks issue currency (e.g. quantitative easing), they are supplying money to others permanently. Logically, it would seem that if you are against the destruction of currency, then you should be a proponent of banks creating as much currency as possible. Obviously it's not that simple and currency is not the same as 'value', so it's overly simplistic to think purely in terms of creation/destruction.
    - matheusmoreira 4y ago
      Nope. The whole point of money is to buy things. Banks create new money backed by debt which is what creates real value. The new money is destroyed when people work and pay off the debt. This "act" has created nothing of the sort. You could argue that they theoretically increased the value of everyone else's money but the actual amount is so infinitesimal it would just add insult to injury. The vast majority of the money in existence is just numbers in bank databases, actual cash is a small fraction and burning an even smaller fraction of that does absolutely nothing beneficial to anyone.

chrstphrknwtn 4y ago

> The pain of not having enough is a fundamental human experience I'm not sure that's true. > I thought it was deeply selfish stunt then, and still do now. There are so many more selfish decisions made every single day that have dramatically greater negative impact on people.

techno_tsar 4y ago

Deeply selfish? There are literally millions and millions of extremely wealthy people who would spend that amount doing nothing, buying a yacht, their 20th property, or do actual terrible things. I don’t resent them for burning their money. They could have bought toys, instead they made a statement. We live in a world where many of us (myself included) have to live with the pain of not having enough. I’m reminded of that every day. I wonder why we live in such a world. Do you think it has anything to do with why they burned a million quid?

flir 4y ago
> Do you think it has anything to do with why they burned a million quid? Absolutely not. It was all tied up with their distaste for the art industry, not inequality. The burning was the last attempt to create art with the money (after Nailed to the Wall, the failed Money: A Major Body of Cash exhibition, and the K Foundation art award).
- weego 4y ago
  The true absurdity should have been the message but it got lost in the outcome. From what I remember they tried to sell Nailed to the wall for £300k explicitly stating it was £1 million in legal tender, but the gallery refused to buy it because they couldn't get it insured.
logifail 4y ago
> instead they made a statement What does that mean? I mean really mean? Follow-up question: did they achieve anything .. other than (even more) notoriety?
- Towaway69 4y ago
  They achieved that some 30 years later we are having this discussion about their art. I hope that we all are able to be that creative - that we achieve something that humankind speaks of 30 years later.
  - pavlov 4y ago
    I feel this thread is evidence that the question provoked by the performance is actually quite important, certainly more so than the average “but is this art” meta-debate. Someone in this thread was upset that the artists burned more money than the average person sees in their lifetime. Another commenter questioned why this would be more unfair than all the “regular rich” who we know spend many times that amount of money on a yacht or another property that they don’t need. Why are there two moral categories for wealth? Someone who is understood to not have money by default — like an artist — and then gets a sudden windfall is expected to use it responsibly. But someone who is simply rich has no such obligations and doesn’t answer to society. And yet the former category is a rounding error but the latter control the majority of resources on this planet.
    - Towaway69 4y ago
      Those that have everything change nothing, those that have nothing change everything or at least they try.
    - logifail 4y ago
      > Someone who is understood to not have money by default — like an artist [...] I'm sure we can all think of a few counter-examples to that one! Rihanna: net worth: ~ $1.4 billion Paul McCartney: net worth: ~ $1.2 billion Bono: net worth: ~ $700 million > then gets a sudden windfall is expected to use it responsibly "Expected" - by whom? I may be just a bit jaded, but we should perhaps consider the hypothesis that for very successful artists it's a simple commercial decision to signal you're acting responsibly with your wealth, otherwise your much, much less wealthy customers who are buying your output might start to notice, disapprove, and ultimately stop buying your output. One could call this "fiduciary duty to oneself", really.
mytailorisrich 4y ago
If you buy a yacht or a supercar you give the money to a number of people. If you actually burn the money you destroy it and it is lost for everyone. So while people do what they want with their money, actually burning it like is rightly seen as a dick move by most people. It is also illegal in many countries.
- atchoo 4y ago
  Is it lost for everyone or is it more like a stock buyback? Did everyone's money become 0.000000001% more valuable by taking that chunk out of circulation? Can an economist tell me please?
  - detrites 4y ago
    Not an economist, but in crypto, "coin burns" are a regular occurrence where a percentage of supply is destroyed, typically by sending to a public address for which the corresponding private key is proven unknown. The result is intended to be a rise in price, benefiting all holders. It can be uncertain to assess whether a resultant rise in price is actually due to a coin burn, but given a coins supply is commonly used as a valuer, it's plausible.
  - mytailorisrich 4y ago
    That's not even a nitpick. Your own comment provides your answer: it does not change the value of money in any way and does not benefit anyone.
  - otherme123 4y ago
    It does exactly that. But if you go deeper in the meaning of money, it's even better: when you receive money, what you actually receive is an IOU for a good or a service. E.g. when you receive $40 for fixing a computer, it means the society owes you $40 that you can claim at any time. Burning the $40 means that you fixed the computer for free, and that you don't want anything in return, and at the same time nobody can claim the $40 in your name (i.e. you didn't give the money away). The "you should buy anything to move the economy" is a well known economic fallacy.
davidy123 4y ago
Buying a 20th property &c is a statement that you don't have anything better to do with your money. It's kind of the same thing. I'm not 100% comfortable with it, but MrBeast is probably the Musk of this potential. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ2ifmkGGus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ2ifmkGGus
matheusmoreira 4y ago
When you spend money, you enrich others and drive the economy. There is no way their "statement" could be more valuable than that.

incompatible 4y ago

The true economic loss is whatever it cost the Bank of England to print another million pounds.

sp332 4y ago

I see where you're coming from, but isn't the point just the opposite? People aren't starving because of lack of money, they're starving because richer people decided that another million is worth letting people starve for. If the people who already have millions decided, like the KLF, that another million isn't worth that much, maybe they would not let it dictate how they treat other people.

wpietri 4y ago

> I thought it was deeply selfish stunt then, and still do now. Not sure if this helps you, but the money supply changes all the time. The government creates and destroys money as needed and nobody ever says boo. What these folks did made all the other money in circulation worth slightly more, so nothing was actually lost in the way that would have been had they, say, bought houses and burned them down.

Baeocystin 4y ago
I appreciate the kind words. My anger at their actions comes from how coddled from reality they had to be to make such a choice. The levers of monetary supply and demand, of course, 'make' and 'destroy' much larger sums on a daily basis. But those aren't liquid values under control of a single person, either. Money that is, is much more salient, and more valuable. And they just pissed it away.
- leoedin 4y ago
  Did they piss it away though? That single statement was so powerful it's still causing emotional arguments about it 20 years later. Can you say that about other things people spent £1m on in 1994?
  - msla 4y ago
    > That single statement was so powerful it's still causing emotional arguments about it 20 years later. I hate this argument, because it's worse than vacuous: It makes out that art is about as meaningful as a gunshot in a crowded room. Is that art? It'll damn well get a reaction, especially from the person who was just shot. Shouldn't we demand more from art? Like actual meaning and maybe, just maybe, a positive impact on the world? Or should the next art piece be a car bomb in front of the Louvre? Yes, burning a million pounds is comparable to a gunshot because a million pounds could save a life, so destroying a million pounds might well have ended one, in terms of opportunity cost. And no, you don't get to handwave that away by pointing to other people doing things, any more than a serial killer gets to exculpate themself by pointing to tobacconists. People do things with consequences, and then have to live with those consequences, and the members of the KLF are getting off easy.

Jare 4y ago

It is fine for art to be selfish and to be painful. Their act was one of the things that helped me understand that art is more than just being pretty and hard to craft. I think their bad reputation and fade into obscurity is a consequence of being so dismissive and even offensive to anyone (especially media, of course) who wanted to make celebrity shows of them. It's great for them to perform their art, and it's great (or at least natural) for media to decide they don't bring value to them.

tweetle_beetle 4y ago

The context of this is a biography though. The genre is supposed to do a better job of taking the long view, rather than short term sensationalism of the news cycle.

MrVandemar 4y ago

> The pain of not having enough is a fundamental human experience, and to see someone who had more than most will ever see in their lifetime literally burn it away hurts. I thought it was deeply selfish stunt then, and still do now. If they had spent it on a yacht would that be better? It represents an exchange of money for an object, and I suspect you don't regularly get hurt by the fact that people buy largely pointless status symbols. But in some ways it amounts to the same thing. (Actually I'd argue that the resources and fossil-fuels involved in manufacturing a largely pointless object such as a yacht is less than the burning of the money. And yet, which hurts more?) I heard a story that a young Tony Blair and some of his friends burned a 50 pound note in front of a destitute homeless person. Are the KLF worse for burning their larger sum of money as an act of rebellion against a corrupt self-serving industry? Or is it Tony Blair who is worse for sadistically showing a little hope to a desperate person and then snatching it away?

thackerhacker 4y ago
The story in the press about this insinuates David Cameron might have done this as it is apparently a Bullingdon Club (which Boris Johnson was also a member of) “thing”. It would be quite surprising for someone who went into Labour politics to do this: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bullingdon-club-initiation-ceremony-claim-1725912.amp https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bullingdon-club-initia...
ehnto 4y ago
I am not exactly pro-frivilous-yacht, but money going into the boatbuilding will have an impact on the local community at least.

jimjimjim 4y ago

meh, it pales in comparison to everyday acts of some extremely rich people

bratwurst3000 4y ago

See it this way. Other organization are also spending money on „statements“. They are only calling it ads. For example greenpeace is spending more money on statements on ads then those two burned away.

gorgoiler 4y ago

The problem with this logic is who gave them their money, and why are those people not scorned as well? For me, the answer is that, ultimately, everyone is responsible for the plight of anyone else. Society, run by The State — an entity whose powers including being able to raise revenue, make decisions, and then spend it to fix things. Demand more from the state (and every citizen who can vote — Society and State go hand in hand) if you haven’t given up hope that we can do better. Another alternative is we end up with Chan/Zuckerberg deciding who gets a hospital and who does not, Mackenzie Scott deciding which cities get schools and which do not, and Bill and Melinda Gates deciding which countries get more nurses and which do not.

phonescreen_man 4y ago
Another alternative is we end up with Chan/Zuckerberg deciding who gets a hospital and who does not, Mackenzie Scott deciding which cities get schools and which do not, and Bill and Melinda Gates deciding which countries get more nurses and which do not. The real world is close to this. The bill gates foundation trying to patent seeds, controlling food supplies. The billionaire lobby groups controlling puppet politicians. So it’s not an alternative from my understanding. It is the current state of affairs.

coldtea 4y ago

>The pain of not having enough is a fundamental human experience, and to see someone who had more than most will ever see in their lifetime literally burn it away hurts. Still, nobody bats an eye when some other celebrity or CEO or socialite throws away 1 million just for a single wedding or even a birthday party, or 10 million to have a large swimming pool. Which happens like every single day. $1m is probably what some Wall Street guys spend on coke for their guests per year those days. At least these guys earned it through their artwork, and never stole it from anybody, or created huge machines of surveillance and brain-washing like Facebook, or by treating people like disposable shit - like tech bros in companies like Uber. I'd rather have a role model burning money than cherishing it.

matheusmoreira 4y ago
Rich people don't "throw away" money, they spend it. The money is circulating and enriching others for services rendered. In fact, the more money they "throw away" the better. The rational thing to do as a capitalist is to capture as much of that money as possible. What they don't do is set it on fire, thereby depriving others of it permanently.
- ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
  Isn't burning money just the opposite of Quantitative Easing and thus it slightly increases the value of existing money? If burning money is "depriving others of it permanently", then when banks issue currency (e.g. quantitative easing), they are supplying money to others permanently. Logically, it would seem that if you are against the destruction of currency, then you should be a proponent of banks creating as much currency as possible. Obviously it's not that simple and currency is not the same as 'value', so it's overly simplistic to think purely in terms of creation/destruction.
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    Nope. The whole point of money is to buy things. Banks create new money backed by debt which is what creates real value. The new money is destroyed when people work and pay off the debt. This "act" has created nothing of the sort. You could argue that they theoretically increased the value of everyone else's money but the actual amount is so infinitesimal it would just add insult to injury. The vast majority of the money in existence is just numbers in bank databases, actual cash is a small fraction and burning an even smaller fraction of that does absolutely nothing beneficial to anyone.