K Foundation Burn a Million Quid was a work of performance art executed and filmed on 23 August 1994 in which the K Foundation, an art duo consisting of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, burned £1 million (equivalent to £ million in ) in the back of a disused boathouse on the Ardfin Estate on the Scottish island of Jura. The money represented the bulk of the K Foundation's funds that had been previously earned by Drummond and Cauty as the KLF.
The event was recorded on a Hi-8 video camera by K Foundation collaborator Gimpo. On the one year anniversary of the burning, 23 August 1995, the film was released as Watch the K Foundation Burn a Million Quid and was toured around the UK, with Drummond and Cauty engaging audiences in debates about the burning and its meaning. In November 1995, the duo pledged to dissolve the K Foundation and to refrain from public discussion of the burning for a period of 23 years; Drummond subsequently made the decision to discreetly speak about the burning in 2000 and 2004. Initially, he was unrepentant, but in 2004 he admitted that he regretted burning the money. The self-imposed moratorium officially ended on 23 August 2017, 23 years after the burning, when Cauty and Drummond hosted a debate asking "Why Did the K Foundation Burn a Million Quid?" during their "Welcome to the Dark Ages" event.
Collaborator Chris Brook edited and compiled a book, K Foundation Burn A Million Quid, which was published by Ellipsis Books in 1997. It compiles stills from the film, accounts of events and viewer reactions, and an image of the brick that was manufactured from the fire's ashes. A film consisting of a static three-minute shot of the brick, "This Brick", was shown at London's Barbican Centre prior to Drummond and Cauty's performance as 2K in the same year.
Background
As The KLF, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty were the biggest-selling singles act in the world for 1991. They had also enjoyed considerable success with their album The White Room and a number one hit single – "Doctorin' the Tardis" – as The Timelords. In February 1992, The KLF staged an incendiary performance at the BRIT Awards, and retired from the music industry shortly thereafter in typically enigmatic fashion.
By their own account, neither Drummond nor Cauty kept any of the money they made as The KLF; it was all ploughed back into their extravagant productions. Cauty told an Australian Big Issue writer in 2003 that all the money they made as The KLF was spent, and that the royalties they accrued post-retirement amounted to approximately one million pounds:
Initially The KLF's earnings were to be distributed by way of a fund for struggling artists managed by the K Foundation, Drummond and Cauty's new post-KLF art project, but, said Drummond, "We realised that struggling artists are meant to struggle, that's the whole point." Instead the duo decided to create art with the money. Nailed to the Wall was the first piece of art produced by the Foundation, and the major piece in their planned art exhibition, Money: A Major Body of Cash. Consisting of one million pounds in cash nailed to a pine frame, the piece was presented to the press on 23 November 1993 during the buildup to the Foundation's announcement of the "winner" of their "worst artist of the year award", the K Foundation art award.