BURN YOUR MONEY
Keenen J. Thompson, 2026
https://burnyour.money
Press: https://burnyour.money/press


Burn Your Money is a participatory web artwork by Keenen J. Thompson: a cash machine that pays out into a fire.


THE WORK

A drawn cash machine stands behind a bonfire. A visitor chooses a sum on its screen, from $1 to $10,000, signs the ledger with a name or stays Anonymous, and pays for real. The machine counts the sum out in notes and lets them fall into the fire, where they char and fall away as ash.

It pays out one burn at a time, and everyone on the site watches the same one as it happens. What stays is a line in a public ledger: an amount, and a name. Watching is free.

An ATM usually gives you something to take away. This one asks what makes it worth paying to watch something disappear.


FACTS

Title       Burn Your Money
Artist      Keenen J. Thompson
Year        2026
Medium      Participatory web artwork: live payments, a real-time drawn scene, a public ledger
Where       https://burnyour.money, online and ongoing
Carbon      A tenth of every burn pays for permanent carbon removal, through Stripe Climate
Made with   JavaScript, canvas and WebGL in the browser; Cloudflare Workers and Durable Objects; Stripe


IMAGES

01  $10,000 going into the fire, lights off: twelve notes, then a hundred in a cascade.
02  A $100 note in the fire, lights on.
03  $1,000 leaving the slot, lights off.
04  The machine, waiting. Lights on.
05  The machine, waiting. Lights off.
06  The screen: How much to burn?
07  The screen: Confirm. $1,000, ten notes.
08  $1,000, lights off. Portrait.
09  Detail: a $100 note in the fire.
10  Detail: the $10,000 cascade.
11  The site on a desktop.
12  The site on a phone.
13  On a phone: choosing a sum.

All images are captures of the work running in a browser.


FILM (silent, H.264)

Film, 16:9, 1920 x 1080, 40 s: $100 with the lights on, then $10,000 with the lights off.
https://burnyour.money/media/press/video/burn-your-money-film-16x9.mp4

Vertical, 9:16, 1080 x 1920, 19 s: $1,000 with the lights off.
https://burnyour.money/media/press/video/burn-your-money-vertical-9x16.mp4

Loop, 16:9, 1920 x 1080, 16 s: $10,000 with the lights off, without titles.
https://burnyour.money/media/press/video/burn-your-money-loop-16x9.mp4


CREDITS

Images and film may be used to cover the work, credited "Keenen J. Thompson, Burn Your Money, 2026", and without altering the notes' prop overprints.

Fire footage by Sayakulov (Pixabay). Stone, bark and ground textures from Poly Haven (CC0). Note artwork from US notes via Wikimedia Commons (public domain), overprinted as props. Set in Bodoni Moda, Inter, IBM Plex Mono and VT323.


CONTACT

For interviews and enquiries: https://keenen.me
