Money Burning, Art and Magic

written for "Cash is King 2 - Money Talks"

This piece was first published as a chapter in Cash is King 2 which accompanied the Saatchi Gallery exhibition of the same name. The images are of Money Art which I curated from friends and colleagues in CoB. The book was compiled by Bob Osborne and Carrie Reichardt and is available to purchase direct from Bob here.

I don’t know why I first burned money back on the 23rd October 2007.

I’d thought about it for some years before but it’s a mystery what finally led me to transgress. I was poorer than ever, back then. Really struggling to keep a roof over our heads and put food on the table. I needed that £10. I needed the £20 I burned the following year, too. Of the £440 I’ve burned so far, there hasn’t been a single note I’ve not wanted. Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty said of the million they burned on Jura on 23rd of August 1994; ‘It’s not that we didn’t want the money, we just wanted to burn it more.’

Michelle Watson, One, 2019. Money Collage on Board.

Bill and Jimmy have never really figured out why they did it, though. ‘We just wanted to burn it more’ is not really a reason. Under the logic of Capital - under the current ‘system of systems, the vast and immense, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars’ (as Ned Beattie from the 1976 film Network calls it) - there can be no reason. Burning money, or destroying or defacing currency is simply unconscionable. I’ve been told over the years that what I’m doing is stupid, quixotic, worrying (deliberate destruction of property is symptomatic according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), funny, wrong, selfish, privileged and pointless. Some (mainly men of my own age) like to ‘enlighten me’ with a lesson in monetary theory to explain how banks ‘create currency’ and what it ‘actually is’ that I’m burning. I tell them I’ve heard their stories before. They say ‘money is just a tool, just a concept, just data, just bits of paper’. I tell them money is never just anything.

In 1928, the great German philosopher, cultural critic and essayist Walter Benjamin wrote; ‘beyond doubt; a secret connection exists between money and time’. Later in the same essay he remarks that, in its banknotes, capitalism displays itself ‘in solemn earnest’. Tellingly, the economic jargon for banknotes is ‘base money’. The symbols of power inscribed into our currencies point to the base emotions, the primal psychological drives, the inner life of Capital, itself. To burn money, or to cut up or deface banknotes, is to play with both the product, and founding principle, of finance. It’s messing with the system of systems.

When I gave a talk just before a public mass money burn in 2016 an audience member repeatedly shouted out ‘Treason!’. He seemed concerned that the burning of an image of the Queen was a serious offence. It is perfectly legal to burn Bank of England notes - it’s defacing them that is illegal. The shouts though, more than overreaction or misunderstanding, are better seen as an indication of the immense power and weight of the imagery, words and ideas (re)pressed into paper money.

Emma Watson, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Acrylic Paint on a Series C Bank of England £1 note.