Guerrilla Art Action Group
Action-interview At Wbai Radio Station-n.y.
This recording documents a live action/interview by The Guerrilla Art Action Group on January 5, 1970 on the progressive radio station WBAI. The album 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. The context of this conversation, along with many of The Guerilla Art Action Group's other actions, was the Vietnam War, the ongoing struggles for civil rights, and artists' radical questioning of the role of cultural institutions. The group engaged in guerrilla performance, creating spectacles that drew attention to the moral failures of cultural institutions and the U.S. government. The participants making up The Guerrilla Art Action Group on this recording were Jon Hendricks, Poppy Johnson and Jean Toche, joined by Laurin Raiken, a member of the New York Free Theater and Art Workers Coalition. The album 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. Limited to 500 copies.