M HKA Ensembles

Objet, 340 cm, Ø 80 cm.

Collection: Viehof Collection, formerly Speck Collection, Cologne.

"I won a grant to go to Berlin, the DAAD grant, and my project was to try to build a golden tower. Actually a very tall one, I wanted it to be as high as cloud height in Berlin. And it was to be built at the kkkdfkdk. And as the years have gone by various things have happened with this project. And now at documenta in the main hall, I have one step of the tower constructed and it’s three meters by eighty centimetres or so and it is covered by gold. And now in title I have imaginatively accomplished the idea again in another way, by calling it the world’s tallest golden tower with changing tops. And by changing tops my primary intention in Berlin had been for a person to be there. And another time it could be another shape or halve sphere or a sphere or some other pure shape or sound. And so now I leave it to the imagination to imagine what the changing tops are."

Source: James Lee Byars interviewed by Paul De Vree at Documenta 7 at The Golden Tower.