The KLF

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
Justified-Ancients-Of-Mu-Mu.png
All bound for a Mu Mu land?

Haven't seen too much written about them around here, but it feels like they'd be up dissensus' Straße. Hopefully a two pronged thread where we can share KLF related shit and ask questions like 'is there space for 'culture jamming' in 2020?', 'How do you subvert a timespace where everything seems so slick, so force fielded?' & 'Does anyone even care anymore?'
 

luka

Well-known member
i really enjoyed the book John Higgs wrote about them. it was one of those books that make you feel like youre on drugs.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
"Drummond and Cauty's inability to justify or explain their actions is one of the most intriguing aspects of what happened on Jura. It echoes the fates of the founders of Dadaism, the small group of artists and radicals who opened the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in the midst of the First World War. The Cabaret only lasted for six months, and no recordings were made of what happened there, yet those present spent the rest of their lives trying to come to terms with what they had done. They never really did. As the writer Greil Marcus points out, "This is the best evidence -- the only real evidence -- that something actually happened in Zurich in the spring of 1916."
 

catalog

Well-known member
I started reading the Drummond book that tea mentioned somewhere, the one where he goes to africa. Was pretty good but I only read a couple chapters.

My friend is a scouser and went to their festival thing they put on recently. He said he had a good time but it was basically embarrassingly bad.
 

luka

Well-known member
its more about 'reality hacking' and 'art sabotage' and 'poetic terrorism' and whatever rather than the music isnt it. how to play the media. how to play the music industry. how to make your dreams come true. how to make things happen.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
also playing the British Grammy's or whatever with Extreme Noise Terror was pretty cool

firing machine gun blanks over people's heads probably wouldn't go over so well nowadays but, different time
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty

The project formed by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty in 1987, which has lain dormant in a self-imposed moratorium of 23 years, returned at 00.23am on the morning of Wednesday 23 August. As Drummond and Cauty drove into a backstreet of Liverpool in an ice-cream van to begin three days of events, their first new work – a trilogy of dystopian fiction, an “end of days story”, called 2023: A Trilogy – simultaneously dropped online.

Yet this is not a book for those looking for straightforward answers, and is as obtuse as the KLF themselves, who have published it under their other moniker, the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu. It is a multi-layered, self-referential meta tale, starting with two undertakers, Cauty and Drummond, who discover a life-changing book called 2023: A Trilogy on a hotel bookshelf. It was written by “George Orwell”, the pseudonym for one Roberta Antonia Wilson, 33 years ago. “What you are about to read is what they read – well almost,” reads the preface, adding that it has been translated from Ukrainian.

It is a tale which switches between the diary of the author, Roberta, in April 1984, and her fictional novel set in 2023, in the tax haven of Fernando Po, which is the last nation state on earth (on a small island off the coast of Africa). “It was once part of Equatorial Guinea, before Equatorial Guinea did their lucrative deal with Wikitube,” notes the book.

It is littered with bastardised references to 2017 culture in a nod to the grim future that could befall us all – the Big Five who rule the world are GoogleByte, Wikitube, Amazaba, FaceLife and AppleTree. Winnie, the main protagonist, has had an affair with Julian Assange in her younger years, and now uses an iPhone23; Michelle Obama has been the first female president of the US in 2020 but now models for Damien Hirst; Putin was crowned (ceremonial) czar of Russia; Simon Cowell was murdered by a former contestant live on China’s Got Talent in 2017. An alternative history for the Beatles and their role in world peace is also offered. Yet for all the technological progress, today’s social flaws, particularly the degradation of women, remain unchanged in 2023
 

luka

Well-known member
everything is culture jamming nowadays. done at state level. done by private contractors. secret socities. internet message boards. private inidivduals.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
as far as culture jamming goes i would say its been one of the big themes of the last few years.
that is absolutely true

tho certainly not the kind of Situationist-derived culture jamming Adbusters etc envisioned, which seems incredibly passe, v late 90s/early 00s
 

luka

Well-known member
it is the fountainhead. the source. its the online equivelent of America. its where the best and brightest go to ply their trade.
 
Top