The Golden Tower Project
by Susan Robb

Susan Robb, The Golden Tower, installation of urine, glass jars, acrylic, electroluminescent wire, metal posts, wood, 8 x 4 ft, 2000.
(© Susan Robb. Photo: LadyBee.)


It’s 10 A.M. on Monday morning. The smell of hot sugar is hugging me. I am walking past the Hostess factory in Seattle. I notice the sun shining into a small Hostess-factory window. Something is causing the sun to splash golden waves onto an inside wall. I approach the window and see, stacked on a desk, a little pyramid of filled specimen jars. I am touched by the fact that this liquid was once inside people who are now injecting cream filling into Twinkies and squirting chocolatey topping over naked Ding-Dongs. The careless way that the jars were left in the window for the whole world to see, taken from personal/private to inspected-for-social-offense, makes me blush (just a little). Still, I am thrilled by the sun’s accidental transformation of social/scientific scrutiny of the body into art. I want to see more. I want a whole tower of pee.

Two months later, when I learn that the theme of Burning Man 2000 is "the body," I’m instantly interested. I have been cooking up an idea that started at the Hostess factory months earlier: The Golden Tower Project, an 8-ft-tall, 4-ft-diameter tower of urine collected from artists all over the world. Metal post hold up 16 columns of jars which are supported by half plastic tubes. Lines of electroluminescent wire run down the back of each column, allowing the piece to be enjoyed at night.

By mid-summer I start collecting artists’ urine. I figure artists, like the hostess workers, are the ones who put the "cream filling" into life. Dragging naked existence through the yummy syrup. I e-mail art-making friends all over the world and very slowly the pee starts trickling in. With the help of Seattle artist Jeff Miller, I design and build the tower structure. Unfortunately, time runs out. With only 1/4 of the pee we need, my posse and I head to Nevada.

Once in the desert, once the tower structure is set up, the playa works its magic. People heed their inner urge to participate. They get a jar, go behind a car (or not), and hand it back for labeling. The pee flows in. We have too much and have to turn away full bladders. Without the interactive element the Golden Tower Project doesn’t exist. The fact that I’m asking for a donation of something very personal, a part of the body, the ignored distillation of what keeps us alive, seems to make people want to donate all the more. The tower becomes part of a performance art piece where the donors are the artists performing for each other.

As more and more jars are added people come to see "famous" pee by playa "celebrities" like Dr. Megavolt. They get their picture taken next to his jar, like one would next to Old Faithful or the Eiffel Tower. Like a war memorial people scan the tower for specimens from donors they know. Like an x-ray held up to the light, there is much speculation as to the well-being individual donors, what the wide variety of color means, and who is "pissing clear."

The sun, moving and illuminating the tower from all sides, transforms the jars into sparkling amber jewels. These subtle color variations turn the Golden Tower Project into a minimalist monument surrounded an equally beautiful, sparse desert. Even the night becomes a participant in hue. As it grows dark the EL wire turns on. Now the tower takes on a fluorescent glow and speaks eerily of "science." The edges of the jars and the lines of electroluminescent (EL) wire create an illusion of graph-like bands of light superimposed inside each jar, making them perfect for scrutiny. However, unlike the Hostess workers whose eliminations are taken and dissected by an authority for unauthorized activities, and unlike society who claims what is waste and what has value, the participants of Burning Man, the desert, and the sun and moon reclaim the refuse and make it art. Biking by one night on my way to Spacelounge, I watch a group of people form a ring around the tower, hold hands, skip in a circle, and sing "we love pee."


Susan Robb
982 20th Avenue
Seattle, WA 98122
206.325.9204
goatmax1@hotmail.com
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       | Burning Man |
				       
				   | gallery entrance |

		            | past exhibitions |

				            | Leonardo On-Line |