Many artists have also destroyed or altered pianos including John Cage, Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik[5] and Raphael Montañez Ortiz.

Hansen studied with composer John Cage at the now famous 1958 Composition Class at the New School for Social Research in New York City along with fellow students, Dick Higgins, George Brecht, and Allan Kaprow amongst others.

[6] Hansen was perhaps best known for his performance pieces, his participation in Happenings, and for his collages in which he often used cigarette butts and candy bar wrappers as the raw materials, among them numerous variations of a sculpture referring to the Venus of Willendorf.

[8] In 1966 he attended the Destruction in Art Symposium in London organized by Gustav Metzger,[9] where he met and befriended many of the Viennese Action Artists.

Inspired among others by the Final Academy of Genesis P-Orridge it became a meeting point for local and international performers of the time-based arts.