from the Weekend Guardian 21st May 94

PORTRAIT
When the K Foundation nailed u1 million to a board, called it art and
put it up for sale at u500,000, they spectacularly upstaged the Turner
Prize. Then nothing. Their efforts were pointedly ignored by an art
world that is, they say, po-faced, self-regarding and pretentious. 
Alix Sharkey profiles the culture terrorists who carved a subversive 
swathe out of pop as the KLF but are finding art a tougher 
proposition.


Trash, art and Kreation
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

ON A BITTER November night 40 people emerge from a Kensington hotel
wearing heavy boots. Waiting for them are seven white Cadillacs, the
stretched limousine variety, parked end-to-end, chunky doors open, 
engines purring. Inside they find leather seats, fairy lights that 
twinkle in black velvet ceilings, chilled champagne and glasses.
    At an unseen signal the motorcade pulls away from the hotel. 
Heading this strange caravan is an eighth, gold limousine, in which 
sits Mr Ball, silver beard neatly groomed, stocky, polite but firm. Mr 
Ball is the kind of man who brings a certain resonance to words like 
"discreet" and "professional". Mr Ball, wearing black tie, is 
tonight's MC and the only person in the motorcade who knows where we 
are going, geographically speaking. 
    Earlier, an argument occurred in a hotel corridor. "You can't 
expect my drivers to set off without knowing the route," someone had 
shouted. "Look, I can't tell you because I don't know myself!" came 
the exasperated reply. 
    People on street corners, dazzled by headlights, peer in as the
convoy swoops past, through the streets of west London, on to the 
motorway flyover. Lorry drivers doing 70mph crane their necks. Who is 
it? A political delegation en route to Chequers or Windsor? The upper 
echelons of some loony religious cult, bound for a mass conversion 
rite in an aircraft hangar? A porn baron's entourage heading for an 
orgy at some sleazy country mansion? As with any motorcade, it has 
the usual connotations of finality, the end of an era. It is a magical 
mystery tour, playful, perverse, slightly sinister. A trip to the 
country, an evening out on Bill and Jimmy.

"Unwrap pop's layers and what we are left with is the same old meat
and two veg that have kept generations of pop pickers well satisfied.
The emotional appetite that pop satisfies is constant. The hunger is
forever. What does change is the technology - this is always on the
march. At some point in the future, science will satisfy this need in
a more efficient way. For the time being we have our Top Tens and 
Number Ones, and while science marches to the beat that will 
eventually destroy it all, it also comes up with the goods that 
satisfy our other endless appetite, that of apparent change." 
                        From The Manual by The Timelords

BILL DRUMMOND and Jimmy Cauty were once the KLF, or Kopyright 
Liberation Front. At various times they were also known as The JAMS, 
The Timelords, the Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu, and by individual 
aliases including Kingboy D and Rockman Rock. They now prefer to be 
known as the K Foundation. But it is as the KLF that they will go down 
in pop history, for a variety of reasons, the most important being the 
resolute purity of their self-abnegation, and their visionary 
understanding of pop.
    During the mid-Seventies Drummond, a 6ft 5in bespectacled 
Glaswegian, moved to Liverpool to study at the same art school as his 
hero, John Lennon. He was soon playing guitar for post-punk band Big 
In Japan (along with Holly Johnson, later of Frankie Goes To 
Hollywood), before helping launch the cult label Zoo Records. He then 
managed two commercially successful and influential Liverpool bands, 
Echo And The Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes. 
    "Bill was the catalyst for those bands," says K Foundation 
publicist Mick Houghton, who has worked with him since that period. 
Drummond is a creative strategist with an all-or-nothing approach to 
the industry, says Houghton, who cites the time he re-mortgaged his 
house to pay for a PA system and stage sets for the Bunnymen's UK 
tour. "He risked everything, but that tour made the Bunnymen. And as 
soon as he got the money back, he did it again, to finance a Teardrop 
Explodes album." Drummond also sent the Bunnymen on a tour of bizarre 
and apparently random sites, including the Northern Isles. "It's not 
random," he announced to a bemused journalist. "If you look at a map 
of the world, the whole tour is in the shape of a rabbit's ears."
    Despite or because of this managerial flair, Drummond fell out 
with both acts, eventually landing a job as A&R man at WEA Records. 
Rob Dickens, WEA chairman, says Drummond was "obviously very sharp, 
and he knew the business. But he was too radical to be happy inside a 
corporate structure. He was better off working as an outsider." 
    It was at WEA that Drummond stumbled across a dance-pop act called
Brilliant. The guitarist was Jimmy Cauty, a self-taught illustrator
and art-theorist who, at 17, had enjoyed considerable royalties from
a best-selling Athena poster of The Hobbit. By March 1987 the two had
joined forces to record All You Need Is Love, a jagged slice of agit-
prop about Aids coverage, featuring samples of BBC news broadcasts, 
Sam Fox and the Beatles. It was a club hit (ie everybody danced to it 
though nobody bought it), and after being re-edited to avoid copyright 
restrictions, it reached number three in the Indie chart.
    This was followed by an LP, 1987: What The Fuck's Going On? which
developed the cut-and-paste techniques that had made their debut 
single so shockingly effective. Sampling was still a relatively new 
method of composition then, and the JAMS were fast proving masters of 
the genre. Their promotional tactics were equally anarchic: they 
promoted the record by painting its title on the side of a tower block 
in 2ft-high white letters. Predictably, it was well-received by the 
music press. But it featured one track called The Queen And I which 
sampled heavily from Abba's Dancing Queen. Abba's record company and 
management, presumably outraged by the album title, were incensed and 
refused to cut a deal: they wanted every copy of 1987 recalled and 
destroyed.
    Realising they would lose a legal battle, Cauty and Drummond 
decided on a grand, futile, attention-grabbing gesture, the kind that 
would come to characterise their collaborative career. They loaded a 
New Musical Express journalist and all remaining copies of 1987 into 
Cauty's car, and took a ferry to Stockholm to confront Abba. "We were 
being totally stupid about it" Drummond later admitted. After failing, 
predictably, to get an audience with the Scandinavians, they set fire 
to some records in a field and dumped the rest overboard on the return 
journey. Unrepentant, they sampled Whitney Houston for their next 
single, which was never commercially released, before putting out 
another album, Who Killed The JAMS? 

DESPITE the regular club hits, none of these releases achieved great
sales figures. It was only with Doctorin' The Tardis that the two 
finally started to recognise their obvious hit potential. "We were 
trying to make a hip, really obvious dance record using the Dr Who 
theme," said Drummond. "Jimmy played me some rhythms he'd been working 
on, in the car on the way to the studio. We thought, this is going to 
be massive, let's go for it, and we went the whole hog. The lowest 
common denominator in every respect." They also changed the name of 
the group to The Timelords for this release. Doctorin' The Tardis was 
a piss-take, and consisted of a yob chorus reciting "Dr Who, in the 
Tardis" to the tune of Gary Glitter's hit Rock 'n' Roll, interspersed 
with samples of The Sweet's Blockbuster and the Dr Who Theme over a 
house rhythm that might have been purchased at Woolworths. The cherry 
on top was a sample of Harry Enfield's Loadsamoney character, leering, 
"You wot? You wot? You wot?" It was a triumph for Trash Art and it 
spent exactly one week at the top of the chart. Perfect.
    Not content with ridiculing the British pop industry with a Crap
Number One record they didn't even play on, Drummond and Cauty 
published their formula in a book called The Manual (How To Have A 
Number One The Easy Way). In it, they revealed their "zenarchistic 
methods used in making the unthinkable happen'' and gave detailed and 
entirely practical instructions on how to make a chart-topping single 
first time out. No previous experience necessary. A number one hit, or 
your money back. An Austrian group called Edelweiss bought The Manual 
and followed the instructions. The resulting record, Bring Me 
Edelweiss, sampled heavily from Abba's hit SOS, and topped several 
European charts. In the UK, however, it only reached the top five. 
Rather sportingly, Edelweiss didn't demand their u5.99 back. 

"The first thing you need is the irresistible dance-floor groove. At
the time of writing it is the Summer Of Love 1988 and we would 
seriously advise anybody in search of the groove to spend the night at 
the ubiquitous acid house event, drink very little alcohol, loose your 
mind on the dance-floor and shake your hands in the air till you feel 
lit. Of course drugs are something we cannot be seen to advocate but 
we understand that a certain very expensive narcotic makes this a lot 
clearer. "                         From The Manual by The Timelords

BY EARLY 1992 the KLF was easily the best-selling, probably the most
innovative, and undoubtedly the most exhilarating pop phenomenon in
Britain. In five years it had gone from pressing up 500 copies of its
debut recording to being one of the world's top singles acts. In an
18-month period between August 1990 and March 1992 the KLF had five
consecutive top five hits: What Time is Love, 3am Eternal, Last Train
To Trancentral, Justified And Ancient and America: What Time Is Love
(a remixed and reworked version of the original). Two of these made
it to the second spot, while 3am Eternal gave Drummond and Cauty their
second number one single.
    "I honestly think they were the best pop group in the world during
that five-year period," says Sheryl Garratt, editor of The Face. "And
the music hasn't dated. I still get an adrenaline rush listening to
it." Garratt believes their influence on the British house and rap 
scene cannot be overestimated. "Their attitude was shaped by the rave 
scene, but they also love pop music. So many people who make pop 
actually despise it, and it shows." 

Meanwhile, the KLF had gone underground again, into the nascent acid
house scene, using its sample-a-delic art techniques to make epic 
house tunes. In fact, all its pop hits had previously been released as 
dance anthems, custom-made for Ecstasy-driven rave culture. With acid 
house booming both at home and abroad, the KLF sound was reworked and 
ripped-off around the globe. Their response was to collect all the 
best remixes and cover versions and put them out on another LP. The 
KLF had its cake and ate it: club hits became pop hits, were remixed, 
and became club hits all over again. KLF activities were then based 
around their Camberwell HQ, a huge Victorian terraced house. In the 
basement were the ersatz 'Trancentral Studios', where their finest 
moments were recorded. The upper floors were home to Cauty and wife 
Cressida, herself an artist, and several others. Friends recall the 
good times, at the height of the acid-rave scene, when the KLF would 
throw "really brilliant fuck-off parties", sometimes lasting all 
weekend, with a fairly relaxed attitude to uninvited house guests. And 
the open-house vibe extended beyond socialising, into the duo's 
working methods. 
    "The KLF always worked around the idea that a group could be a 
loose collective. They'd pull in friends and associates, all sorts of 
people - to work on their stuff, or pull off a scam, or help with 
staging something special," says one who collaborated during that 
period. "Look at the videos. They're big productions, but they did it 
all themselves. Cressida did design and choreography, and they all 
pitched in on the costumes. Friends sewed sheets together to make the 
robes, others worked on the sets. It was all done by the KLF and their 
mates. They've always been into much more than just music." Yet this 
DIY ethic never got in the way whenever a big budget was called for. 
Cauty and Drummond simply had better uses for their money than hiring 
the image-tweekers that normally follow pop groups around. Various 
film projects were initiated and abandoned. Another, equally ambitious 
but far more successful project took place on the 1991 summer 
solstice. 

BY NOW, the KLF had a solid reputation for stunts and scams - daubing
bridges and advertising hoardings with weird and witty graffiti to 
promote new releases, hijacking awards ceremonies, creating fake corn 
circles - and generally introducing anarchy and chaos whenever they 
graced an event with their nebulous presence. Nobody knew what to 
expect next. Jonathan King decided to withdraw their invitation to 
perform at a music industry Brits awards ceremony after hearing of 
plans to fill the stage with spear-carrying Zulus and white angels, 
while Drummond and Cauty rode in astride a pair of elephants.
    So it was with some trepidation that a group of 50 journalists,
music-bizzers and friends arrived at Glasgow airport on June 21 1991
and boarded a chartered plane to an unknown destination. They were 
flown to Jura in the Inner Hebrides where, after passing an officious 
"passport controller" (Drummond in uniform, peak cap and dark 
glasses), they were told to don yellow Druidic robes, and chant mooooo 
while walking in ritual procession across this barren isle. On a 
secluded beach they witnessed a pagan ceremony involving the burning 
of a 60ft Wicker Man, stuffed with cash they had handed over earlier. 
The whole event, which ended with a post-ritual rave, as well as 
champagne, food and fireworks, was described to now delighted guests 
as The Rites Of Mu. Both the Land Of Mu and the JAMS moniker are 
plagiarisms from Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus novels, a bizarre 
sci-fi trilogy which weaves fact and fiction into a hazy hallucinatory 
narrative. Full of intriguing and half- credible conspiracy theories, 
the Illuminatus trilogy's mythic status seems to have inspired 
Drummond and Cauty to create a similar mystique around the KLF: in 
the Illuminatus books, the Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu are the Lords 
of Misrule, whose objective is to bring chaos wherever they go.
    Despite the eerie overtones, i-D magazine's Sarah Champion 
described the Jura event as "a delirious fantasy, a dream world that 
existed only for a few hours". The total cost must have been in excess 
of u70,000. A massive publicity stunt? Hardly, since Drummond and 
Cauty refused all interviews, insisting that there was nothing to be 
said: it was all self-explanatory, although a video was made and later 
distributed.
    Undoubtedly, the KLF's smartest move was to maintain The Luxury
Of Anonymity. If fame is a barter system, the first thing the 
celebrity forfeits is privacy, the freedom to walk the streets 
unmolested and unobserved - a luxury we all take for granted. Like 
virginity, you can only lose it once, and no amount of money can buy 
it back, as countless stars have discovered to their regret. Drummond 
and Cauty, though, still go about unrecognised. Their success was all 
the more remarkable for its lack of conspicuous consumption. No 
Hampstead houses, no sports cars, no designer clothes. no model 
girlfriends, no jewellery, no suntans, no being photographed in trendy 
LA restaurants Photographs of Drummond and Cauty together were rarer 
than hens' teeth. Interviews rarer still. They refused to be 
interviewed for this piece, of course. This wariness of the media 
extends even to those friends who did speak. most of whom asked to 
remain anonymous.
    In their ridiculous, over-the top videos. on Top Of The Pops, in
photo sessions, they were almost always disguised, their faces often
buried in flowing robes, a single horn protruding from the cowl. They
deployed various singers and rappers - even a former Deep Purple 
vocalist - to front their records. On one occasional they appeared on 
TOTP as two life-sized ice cream cones. Their guises were variously 
dismissed as silly, pretentious or merely practical (given that 
neither has film-star looks) But their mistrust of conventional fame 
served them well in later efforts to recreate themselves. 
    In January 1992, the KLF was nominated as Best British Group at
the back-slapping Brits awards and invited to perform. Since its 
career had been an on-off guerrilla war against the music business, 
this nomination seemed an obvious attempt to co-opt it. At the 
ceremony Drummond, in kilt and leather coat, walked onstage with a 
machine gun and fired a burst of blanks at a startled audience, before 
the KLF played a thrash-noise version of 3am Eternal. WEA chairman Rob 
Dickens, who was present, says the gesture was "pathetic, silly and 
childish". It got worse. At the post-awards party in a London hotel, 
Drummond and Cauty dumped a dead sheep in the foyer and drove off. 
Tied to it was a note saying, "I died for you." With this typically 
half-cocked and grandiloquent gesture, the KLF announced its 
retirement from the music industry. Since Drummond had "retired" twice 
already, nobody took much notice. Those who did suspected a scam, a 
pay-off, a Greatest Hits package or the like. But in May 1992 the KLF 
deleted its entire back catalogue, thus forfeiting all future 
royalties. A full-page ad in the music press announced there would be 
no more records from the KLF or its aliases. The KLF was dead.

"Money is a very strange concept. Nobody wins the pools. There is no
such thing as a fast buck. Nobody gets rich quick. El Dorado will 
never be found. Wealth is a slow build an attitude to life. That said. 
you must be willing to risk everything - that's everything you haven't 
got as well as you haven't - or nothing will happen.
                        From The Manual by The Timelords

IT IS November 23 1993, 30 years and a day since JFK's fatal motorcade
rolled through Dallas, and the night of the Turner Prize, awarded 
annually by London's Tate Gallery and Channel 4 to the British artist 
producing the "best" body of work. Public involvement is limited to 
the nominating entries, but the winner is chosen by the powerful 
Turner Committee, a group of influential curators, critics and gallery 
owners. Many think their choice is inherently political, too - that 
the art establishment uses the Turner award to fulfil a cultural 
agenda whose prime objective is the preservation of said art 
establishment. It is, they say, just the Art Barons handing out gongs 
to prove their own importance, and justify their continued patrimony.
    Drummond and Cauty are now the K Foundation, a body dedicated to
the "advancement of kreation". For months, a series of full-page 
advertisements has appeared in the quality press, with two-inch white 
type on black background. The first commands us to "Abandon All Art 
Now", and "Await Further Instructions". The next says: "It has been 
brought to our attention that you did not Abandon All Art. Serious 
Direct Action is therefore necessary. The K Foundation will award 
u40,000 to the artist who has produced the worst body of work in the 
last 12 months." Then come two more, the first posing 10 questions 
like: "Why is it worth struggling to promote public discussion of 
contemporary British Art?" The second invites the public to nominate 
the worst artist of the four on the Turner Prize shortlist. The winner 
of this public ballot will receive the K Foundation's prize of u40,000 
- double that of the Turner award.

THE MOTORCADE stops at Heston motorway services. All 25 journalists
present receive a white envelope. "They've given you how much?" asks
one driver. There is u1,650 in unused u50 notes in each envelope, and
a page of instructions: You will be at the site of the Amending Of Art
History for approximately 15 minutes. Enclosed is part of the 1994 K
Foundation award. Every witness has u1,600 in cash. Collectively you
all have u40,000 cash." Another page reads: "There is an extra u50 
note in your wad. This is for you to have verified for its non-
counterfeit status and spend on whatever you want." The Turner Prize, 
sponsored by Channel 4, is worth u20,000. The K Foundation has spent 
u20,000 on advertising time during Channel 4's coverage of the Turner 
awards ceremony, to notify viewers that "the motorcade to the Amending 
Of Art History is on its way". In effect, the K Foundation is paying 
for both awards. The motorcade sets off again, speeding into the 
countryside. Signs for a nearby airfield elicit nervous jokes about 
being parachuted on to the Tate with the prize money. The cars stop. 
Everybody gets out and stands in a field, the ground solid with frost. 
They are dazzled by the halogen floodlights in each corner.
    Two orange Saracen armoured cars circle the perimeter, blaring out
Abba's hit song Money Money Money and K Cera Cera (War Is Over If You
Want It), an unreleased recording by the K Foundation. Using a 
megaphone, Mr Ball urges everyone towards a desk. Everyone has to hand 
over a u10 note, which is torn in two. Half of the tenner is then 
returned, with a "catalogue" explaining the work on display. For 
there, standing on an easel in the middle of this frozen Surrey field, 
is u1 million in bundles of crisp fifties, nailed to a wooden pallet, 
and flanked by two hefty bouncers in black suits and dicky bows. One 
million pounds. In cash. This is the first in a series of K Foundation 
art installations involving vast sums of cash. All are for sale, but 
only by postal bids. The reserve price of the works has been set at 
half the face value of the cash involved. Nailed To The Wall - face 
value a cool million - is up for sale at u500,000. The catalogue 
states: "Over the years the face value will be eroded by inflation, 
while the artistic value will rise and rise. The precise point at 
which the artistic value will overtake the face value is unknown. 
Deconstruct the work now and you double your money. Hang it on a wall 
and watch the face value erode, the market value fluctuate, and the 
artistic value soar. The choice is yours. The point is simple: art as 
a speculative currency, and vice-versa. To put it more bluntly: Art 
equals Money, and Money equals Art. 
    Mr Ball barks out orders. Everyone must take their u1,600 and nail
it to another pallet, to be delivered - as an art-work - to the K 
Foundation's prize-winner, Rachael Whiteread. (At this point Channel 
4's live coverage had not yet announced Whiteread as winner of the 
Turner award.) There is a scrum as people nail the money down. Some 
are too dignified and ask others to bash their cash for them. But as 
they wander back to the cars Mr Ball calls out: four people have with-
held their money. Will they please nail it down. Nobody comes forward. 
The award is u6,400 light. In fact, a few hundred more has been 
skimmed off various piles, leaving a shortfall of over u8,000. 
Amazingly, nobody is searched, even though Drummond and Cauty have 
videotaped the whole event from the Saracens. Thirtysomething grand, 
nailed to a board with a gilt frame, is loaded into Mr Ball's gold 
Cadillac, and the motorcade speeds to the Tate, arriving as the art 
glitterati descend from the banquet. They are confronted by the boozy 
entourage, many still wearing the fluorescent orange vests and hard 
hats provided by the K Foundation. The prize is unloaded and chained 
to the Tate's railings. Whiteread, having agreed initially to accept 
the prize should she win, has since dismissed this "absurd joke and 
publicity stunt" and said she will not accept the prize. The K 
Foundation has informed her that should she refuse it, the money will 
be burned. She will not come out. People are shouting, especially the 
drunken journalists. Mr Ball says the cash will burn in five minutes, 
and a man called Gimpo, wearing a balaclava, stands by, matches and 
petrol at the ready. Eventually, a tear-stained Whiteread emerges to 
accept her award, and says she is "honoured". Mr Ball promises the 
shortfall will be made up in the morning. Whiteread disappears. A 
cheer greets the announcement that she will give half the money to 
poor artists, the rest to the charity Shelter. No fire. No cultural 
war. No bloodshed. The event fizzles out, people wander off into 
freezing darkness. The motorcade departs. Through the tinted windows 
of a Jeep parked across the road, Drummond and Cauty watch the 
Amending Of Art History dissolve into nothingness. The bill for their 
big Night Out is nearly a quarter of a million pounds. They are 
laughing. 

"Cynicism can debunk fraudulent mysteries that prevent us from sharing
what is possible and what is ours. But at all times it must be 
balanced with a belief and faith in the intrinsic goodness of our 
fellow man. You are not going to be able to cheat your way to the top. 
It is only by nurturing the goodness that everybody wants to express 
are the doors going to be held open for you. "
                        From The Manual by The Timelords

WHAT DID all that money buy the K Foundation? Despite extensive 
coverage of the event, there was precious little critical analysis. 
Not even the quality press deemed this astonishing series of events 
worthy of more than a dismissive "so-what?" Does that not amount to 
dereliction of duty? After all, whatever you think about the K 
Foundation, or pop music, or would-be art megastars, these people have 
just squandered u250,000 on making a point about the nature of art. 
Yet no one thought it worthy of serious debate. Maybe the majority of 
art critics realised the dangers implicit in even beginning to 
confront their extraordinary gesture on its own terms? That by 
acknowledging it, they would undermine their own cultural authority? 
After all, if you accept that the K Foundation did manage to expose 
the utter hypocrisy and cant surrounding the Turner, where does that 
leave the various critics who have taken it seriously, year after 
year? Is it any wonder they shrugged it off as a half-baked 
situationist prank by a pair of bored ex-pop stars? The Late Show for
example, ignored the K Foundation award completely and screened a 
debate on the validity of House. Rachel Whiteread's plastercast 
artwork, built on East End waste ground: in effect, conforming to the 
cultural agenda determined by the Tate, Channel 4 and the art 
establishment.
    "The big critics just ignored it in the hope that it would go 
away," says Mick Houghton. "When it became a news story they were let 
off the hook. They could leave it to the news boys, who don't have to 
analyse it. It was all over in a day. There was no attempt to grasp 
the point.
    Carl Freedman, art critic for Freeze magazine, says. "Questions
about the nature and value of art. who controls it and defines it, 
have been asked continuously since Duchamp." While conceding that the 
event was "funny and slightly subversive", Freedman feels the K 
Foundation's point - that ultimately art and money are completely 
interchangeable - is an old one. Interestingly, Freedman has readily 
admitted in Freeze to pocketing his u1,650, claiming that "you can't 
have controlled anarchy". He denies that his opinion of the event is 
compromised and invalidated because he took the money, thus 
interfering with the "art". 
    Face journalist Cliff Jones, the second person to nail his wad to
the board. found the event ''profoundly exhilarating'' and believes
that the K Foundation did manage to shock the art world out of its 
sluggish complacency. "They invaded it, and introduced a real sinister 
element, subversion of the darkest kind." Modern Review art critic 
John O'Reilly, the 12th person to nail his cash to the board, 
believes, "The whole point of the K Foundation is its anonymity. 
There's no origin, just a Circulation of data and concepts. There is 
no master plan, no grand narrative." O'Reilly enjoyed the "sense of 
waste and sacrifice involved", and thinks that valid questions went 
unanswered. "Art moves across media, and art critics often fail to see 
this. Perhaps art Critics are still too gallery-bound." Whiteread's 
agent Karston Schubert says, "The whole affair was a non-event. They 
achieved nothing and they were left looking like real prats."
    Would they have burned the cash? "Without a shadow of a doubt. I'm
certain of it. I looked into Gimpo's eyes and he was wired," says 
Cliff Jones.
    "Absolutely definitely.' says Carl Freedman. "I wish they had. It
would have been brilliant. it would have been much better. It would
have been just totally outrageous. People would have been falling out
of their-chairs, saying. "I can't believe they just burned u40,000"

    Perhaps it would have been more effective if they had. Certainly
it would have made little difference to Drummond and Cauty. For. as
Sarah Champion noted after the Jura extravaganza: "Being 'in the 
money' doesn't mean they'll ever be rich. They'll always be skint, but 
their pranks will get more extravagant. If they earned ul0 million, 
they'd blow it all by buying Jura or a fleet of K Foundation airships 
or a Van Gogh to be ceremonially burned."
    Bill Drummond is working with Zodiac Mindwarp on an illustrated
book about dreams. Jimmy Cauty and his wife Cressida are playing with
their twins Harold and Daisy. There are no immediate plans for more
serious Direct Action, although a proposed exhibition at the Tate in
Liverpool was recently scraped. Await Further Announcements. The KLF
is dead. Long live the K Foundation.


Pictures:   Large Drummond and Cauty. - DYNAMIC DUO: Bill Drummond 
(left) and Jimmy Cauty have been launching art attacks on the pop 
world since 1987. Once known as the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, then 
as the KLF they first topped the charts as the Timelords with 
Doctorin' The Tardis, featuring samples from the Doctor Who theme
            The Anderton 'Shag Shag Shag' billboard; the robed Rites 
of Mu procession; Nailed to the Wall 1 million pounds in a picture 
frame. - DIRECT ACTION: Early excursions into the world of scam 
featured time-honoured defacing billboard posters (top). Stunts then 
became progressively more outrageous and included a pagan ritual, with 
costumes on the Isle of Jura (centre). Finally, on the night the that 
the 1993 Turner Prize was announced on live TV, the K Foundation 
transported a motorcade of journalists to a field, gave them u1650 
each and invited them to nail it to a pallet (above). It was then 
taken to London where it was given to Turner prize winner Rachel 
Whiteread