‘You should try lying more’: the nomadic impermanence of sound and text in the work of Bill Drummond

Bill Drummond’s work straddles the worlds of popular music, literature and art. Through his books, music and artistic interventions Drummond has engaged with the (im)permanence of culture while manifesting a network of creative associations that give shape to a nebulous series of artistic efforts in a variety of media. His latest project, The 17 and its associated book of the same name, explores the impermanence of musical expression, a theme manifested by his deletion of the KLF back catalogue in 1992 and his burning of £1 million pounds in 1994. Yet the concentration on impermanence in Drummond’s musical work is balanced by the possible permanence of language, manifest both in his books and leaflets, as well as in his artworks which are highly logocentric, whether they be graffiti or the painted scores for the 17 project. This article explores Drummond’s work through the Deleuzian filter of nomadism to interrogate the tensions between that which is now and that which has the possibility to always be. Drummond stands in many ways as an anti-theorist, engaging with music, literature and art in nomadic ways that are not always intended by him, providing a network of connections that might seek to evade the very conception of the network itself.