Ostensibly, like Monty Cantsin, Karen Eliot and Luther Blissett, Michael K. is a pseudonym that anyone is welcome to use for an artistic endeavour. The use of the 'multiple name'(collective pseudonym) is a situationist inspired antic which has also been practised by the Mail Art community and Neoist conceptual artist and author Stewart Home. Monty Cantsin is a multiple identity that anyone can adopt, but has close ties to Neoism. ... Karen Eliot is a multiple identity, a nom de plume that anyone is welcome to use for activist and artistic endeavour. ... Luther Blissett is a multiple identity, a nom de plume that anyone is welcome to use for activist and artistic endeavour. ... The Situationist International (SI), an international political and artistic movement, originated in the Italian village of Cosio dArroscia on 28 July 1957 with the fusion of several extremely small artistic tendencies: the Lettrist International, the International movement for an imaginist Bauhaus, and the London Psychogeographical Association. ... Mail art is art which uses the postal system as a medium. ... Street action at the 6th Neoist Apartment Festival in Montreal, 1983 Neoism refers both to a specific subcultural network of artistic performance and media experimentalists and more generally to a practical underground philosophy. ... Stewart Home (born 1962) - Otherwise known as Lachlan Kuhn - is a British fiction writer, subcultural pamphleteer, underground art historian, and activist. ...

However, the 'Michael K' identity is enigmatic even in the context of 'multiple name' projects and appears to depart from the aspect, shared by the other projects, of collective anonymity, by having an original figure who is identifiable as 'Michael K' and the initiator of the project. This Michael K has had publicity connections with The KLF, first appearing within their mythos in connection with The White Room movie. K is associated with X$X, a concept whose possible categorisation seems to shift periodically across musical, literary, artistic and philosophical terrains. KLFs Pyramid Blaster The KLF (Kopyright Liberation Front), more recently known as the K Foundation and 2K, also known as The Timelords, furthermore known as The JAMs, was one of the seminal bands around the time of the Acid House movement in Britain in the late 1980s and early... The White Room is the name of a 1991 worldwide No. ...

A particular characteristic of 'The Michael K Project' seems to be an anti-commodification stance which has entailed the promotion of many potential products (books and records) which are never presented for sale. Throughout the nineties, this led to a general regard for X$X and Michael K as being a hoax. However, more recently, it has emerged that books and records have been 'released' in ways which circumvent the usual processes for making such things available.

In particular, K and his cohorts are known for 'placing' their products in particular shops in particular cities. Copies of the project's 'anti-novels' such as 'SMASH', OEDIPUSSY', 'K MAIL', 'DIRTY' have emerged in this way since the late nineties from placements in shops in Prague, Amsterdam, Paris and London while records attributed to X$X have been distributed to specifically targeted shops, publications and radio stations since the early nineties.

A 'Michael K' currently writes for the Morning Star newspaper in the UK

External links

• Margin Released
• X$X