Host Taps Public Opinion on KPFK : Radio: Jacki Apple’s call-in series, ‘Redefining Democracy in America,’ is designed for people who ‘yell at their TV sets.’

The idea for a radio program that would draw together snippets from a wide range of ordinary citizens’ political opinions about the condition of democracy in the United States came to performance artist Jacki Apple “because I yell at my television” when she watches many news-related programs.

“You see commentators just skimming over important issues,” said Apple, who has hosted KPFK-FM’s Tuesday night “Soundings” show for 10 years. “I’ll bet there are a lot of people yelling at their TVs.”

A mainstay of Los Angeles’ performance art scene ever since she moved here from New York City in 1981, Apple is a thin, articulate woman with bleached-blond hair who casually mentions that “Mercury in retrograde” has lately made it hard for her to reach radio co-workers by telephone. She lives in a sparsely furnished Culver City apartment with two orange cats, Red Ryder and Hot Sox.

Approximately 20 hours of live call-in time for “Redefining Democracy in America, Part IV: The Voices of America 1992” have been scheduled on KPFK (90.7) starting Tuesday. Callers will be encouraged to address issues of free speech, media and the future of democracy.

Each caller can talk for up to three minutes. All of the material will be taped; then, this summer, Apple will arrange a fraction of it into three 26-minute programs that will be broadcast before the presidential election. She hopes to produce more programs based on the material later.

Apple wants callers to think about four general questions before picking up the phone: “What is your vision for the future of the country? Can we dream a new American dream, and what is yours? If you were running for President of the United States, what would you say to the American people? What should we aspire to, and how can we get there?”

Apple said she knows of at least one high school teacher who’s making participation in the program a class project.

“I’m asking people to think about a vision of the future, for their children, and I hope the children call in and speak” too, she said.

Apple and other participating KPFK program hosts hope to “find out if people really want to participate in democracy,” she said, to see “if it’s possible to get people back into the process, or if people are too stressed out, numbed out to engage themselves.”

“Obviously I don’t think we’re going to change the world with 20 hours of air time. This is an old-fashioned soapbox; it’s a soapbox of the air.”

Once she hits the editing room, “in no way will the material be edited to emphasize one perspective, either mine or the station’s,” Apple said. “It won’t be grouped based on a single ideological viewpoint, but by subject matter.”

The project is the fourth--or second, depending on how you count--segment in Apple’s ongoing audio work, “Redefining Democracy in America.” Parts I, II and III were presented together in February, 1991, in a darkened room at Highways, have aired on “Soundings” and have also been broadcast elsewhere in the country. For the earlier segments, Apple brought together four performance artists--Linda Albertano, Keith Antar Mason, Akilah Nayo Oliver and herself--to create powerful pieces about societal tensions between blacks and whites.

Apple is also already laying plans for Part V, a collaboration between her and Mason that will focus on “alienation and imagination.” Part IV is being funded through a $4,000 grant from New American Radio; Apple and Mason received a $7,500 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for Part V.

In addition to creating radio programs and her own performance pieces, Apple teaches art history and media and culture classes at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. She is also a writer who formerly worked with L.A. Weekly and is still a contributing editor for High Performance Magazine.

Through the different segments of “Redefining Democracy in America,” Apple hopes to explore “the soul of society, the soul of America,” she says. “I think my job as an artist is to awaken people’s imaginations.”