work
I'm not here to make friends
Ion Dam
no matter what your current state is - deal with it
no matter what your current state is - it could be better
it's all about entertainment
yesterday paradise
restored memory
Sound of Disappointment (2011/2012)
In 1994 Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty aka The KLF or The K Foundation burned a million Pound Sterling in an abandoned boathouse on the Isle of Jura (Scotland). 20.000 notes à £50. The whole procedure took less than an hour. They never explained the reason why they did it, but they somehow did it. In fact there is no proof wheter they did it or not. Except a vidoeclip they made the same night as they burned the money showing them, their roadie Gimpo and a freelance journalist in a boathouse throwing money into a fireplace.
In October 2011 I travelled to Jura to find out if the story about the million quid is true or not. Setting fire to a million pounds is in a sense an odd work of art, at least in my opinion. A gesture of negation as a startingpoint for something. But no one in the ›art world‹ paid attention. So the world went on spinning as if nothing had happened. Maybe nothing happened?
Somehow I was hoping the whole story is going to turn out as hoax, but on Jura I found out that it is a true story. At least the people of Jura told me so...To bad. I‘d liked the story at all - no matter if it was a true one or not. I myself wanted to keep more than a suitcase full of ashes after my trip, so I took a brick that I found in the abandoned boathouse and brought it to hamburg; as a kind of silent witness. It‘s never going to tell any stories. An I also brought the »Sound of disappointment«. His sound as sad as his name. This nearly 10 miles long strait seperates the island from the mainland. I walked the coastline for at least two days - I don‘t have to mention that it was raining all the time - to record the »Sound of disappointment«. This was the most beautiful and at the same time the most disappointing moment on my trip to Jura. The sound is pressed onto a 12inch dubplate record. The vinyl is a very soft one so the record-grooves change by every single playing. In that way the »sound of disappointment« changes everytime, like a good story is changing everytime when it is told again. After 40 times playing the sound will disappear. Additionally to the 12inch record I wrote a book about the whole story. This artist-book, dealing with the story about the K Foundation, islands, the money and all the other things concerning the "art world" (Whitereads House, Carl Andres Equivalent VIII, Jonathan Monk, money etc), will be published in an limited edition of 100 books. The book will be released in december 2013/january 2014.