The participants making up The Guerrilla Art Action Group on this recording were Jon Hendricks, Poppy Johnson, Jean Toche. They were joined by Laurin Raiken, a member of the New York Free Theater and Art Workers Coalition.
The recording documents a liven bonne et dûe formee action/interview by the group on January 5, 1970 on the progressive radio station WBAI.
Action-Interview at WBAI Radio Station-N.Y. was first published in 1983 by Edizioni Lotta Poetica and Studio Morra as part of their Radio Taxi series. The gatefold sleeve contains the complete text of the performance. The LP is produced in an edition of 500.
The LP consists of a series of spoken statements describing the problematic relationship between art and business, art and the military, art and class, art and community, and art and race. Some of these statements are directed to an open public, but others are questions addressed to artists, forcing them to question their role in a dehumanizing, repressive, and corrupt system:
“How long will you accept being the repressed lackey of society’s manipulations?”
“Are you guilty of being a repressor?”
“Is it more important to you to sell your painting, or help human beings?”
“What is more important to you? To exhibit in a museum, or to fight for the human rights of the oppressed?”
These questions, like many of the group’s activities, undermine the notion that there is a separation between art and life or that art can enjoy an exemption from the systemic discrimination and corruption that permeates all aspects of American society. The group sought an artist model that could enact political and social change and they encouraged their fellow artists to follow suit by focusing less on aesthetic abstractions and more on direct personal experiences and expression. They believed that artists had become dehumanized through their willingness to operate inside of a racist and sexist cultural system that relied on corporate money while aiding and abetting a military that used art to distract people from wartime atrocities.