To understand Pre-Enactments you perhaps need to understand the concept of Sources.

Like the headwater of a river or stream they can have many tributaries.

But I may be getting ahead of myself here.

The Re-enactment Society defines Enactments as belonging to one of five categories. Or at least sometimes it does.

These five categories (sometimes spelt Kategories) are as follows :

Re-Enactments

Pre-Enactments

Enactments

Un-Enactments

Synchro-Enactments

The five are further divided into two types - Sources and Tributaries.

Sources are the domain of The JAMs.

There are Two : Enactments and Un-Enactments.

Enactments are all actions that have been made by current incumbents of the mantle, The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu.

Un-Enactments are the actions which have been intended to be undertaken by The Justified ancients of Mu Mu but, for whatever reason, have been abandoned or un-embarked upon.

e.g. The abandoned film The White Room is an Un-Enactment. This holds true even though at one stage in time it was an Enactment in progress.

e.g. The covering of the entire LP Deep Purple by Deep Purple is an Un-Enactment. It is claimed by some to be a "pure" Un-Enactment on the grounds of having never made it beyond the idea stage.

Whether some Enactments should have been Un-Enactments and vice versa is much debated by Re-Enactors up and down the land. What is agreed upon is that that Enactments and Un-Enactments are the things which Re-Enactments Re-Enact. Without them there is no such thing as a Re-Enactment Society.    

Why am I telling you this now? Isn't this chapter about Pre-Enactment?

Well yes, but Pre-Enactment is a tricky concept. You will need to get your feet wet before you are ready to swim against the tide to arrive at it.

I mean, just wait til we get to Synchro-Enactments, but again I may be getting ahead of myself.

At this stage you should have a firm grasp on the basic idea of the Re-enactment.

To recap: Re-Enactments are all manner of consciously constructed events made to resonate with known Enactments and/or Un-Enactments by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, The Timelords, The KLF, The K Foundation, The One World Orchestra, 2K but not K2 Plant Hire Ltd.

e.g. The Ice Kream Van and The Scare Krows finally arriving in The Justified Lego Land of Mu is a rock solid standard Re-Enactment [LINK TO PAGE ON KLFRS.COM?].

Pre-enactments are a type of Re-Enactment event that have taken place at a time prefiguring known or unknown enactments and/or un-enactments.

e.g. Gustav Metzger's Art Strike prefiguring The K Foundation's call to Abandon All Art

The un-awareness of the the Pre-Enactor of the Source event existing in their future is central to this concept.

Got it?

Now you are ready for the Synchro-Enactment.

Synchro-Enactment events occur at any time in history that unknowingly resonate with known or unknown enactments and/or un-enactments of The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, The Timelords, The KLF, The K Foundation, The One World Orchestra, 2K but not K2 Plant Hire Ltd.

e.g. You will need to find your own examples for this one.

The Synchro-Enactment is another level of Re-Enactment beyond even the Pre-Enactment. Similar to Pre-Enacments, they are not really Enacted consciously at all. At least not by Re-Enactors. The Re-Enactors task is to spot them.

Pre-Enactements are really a subset of Synchro-Enactment which happen prior to Enactments and Un-Enactments in time.

If you think all this seems a bit far fetched, you may be right. However, look around. You'll see two or three Syncro-Enactments soon. Make sure you report them.    

Like Pre-Enactors, you don't need to know any of this to be a Re-Enactor. Sometimes it may be considerably more beneficial not to consciously consider any of this. Do not worry if categories begin to bleed into one another. Contradictions need to be accepted.

Those that are prepared to think along these lines may begin to realise that former members of the Original Enactors / Un-enactors can even be observed to perpetrate Pre- Re- and Synchro - enactments themselves. These have been said to occur even within the Time / Space Frame that defines Enactment / Un-Enactment.

e.g. The cutting up of Richard Long's The Smell of Sulphur in the Wind, is deemed by some Re-Enactors to be a Synchro-enactment of the Un-enactment of the slicing of Ford Timelord for the Un-Enacted Cork Street Gallery Show by Lord Rock and Timeboy in their tails.

Just as the cutting up of the Watch The K Foundation Burn A Million Quid 16mm film into single second strips to sell could be categorised this way too.  

The idea of the cutting up of the 16mm film has been said to be a (partial) Un-enactment as this was uncompleted in terms of initial proposed Enactment.

It has been argued that this mirrors the Enactment/Unenactment of The K Foundation's Burning of A Million Quid when seen in the light of a task not fully realised. Not in terms of questioning of the validity of the banknotes, but rather in considering how a small sum of those notes blew unburnt up the chimney that night robbing the source idea of its total.  

And on and on the Sources will refract through time.

In summary, like many things, Pre-Enactments have always been there. Your task should you choose/decide to accept it, is to find them.

Nota Bene

Un-Enactments are sometimes said to be seen in a light which casts them as an entirely different phenomena. This is when the idea of Un-Enactment is used to identify Enactments that the Re-Enactor feels should never have been Enacted in the source place. We shall cover these in the next chapter.