Inside the Tower

On June 26th, USA Board member Steve Oliver hosted his fellow board members and staff to a special performance by USA Oliver Fellow Terry Allen, his wife Jo Harvey Allen, and four extraordinary Texas musicians. The performance was spectacular enough, but the setting was just as memorable, as it took place in the Tower designed by USA Gund Fellow Ann Hamilton at the Oliver Ranch in Geyserville, California. The Tower is 80 feet high and has two interior staircases in a double helix form, so that one is for the performers, and the other is for the audience. The inaugural performance was by USA Prudential Fellow Meredith Monk in May of 2007. USA’s Program Director Amada Cruz interviewed Oliver about the Tower in July 2011.

Amada Cruz: Why did the tower take so long to build?

Steve Oliver: The Tower took so long to build because of two issues. First, Ann Hamilton took 14 years to decide what she wanted to build. We talked constantly through that period about different ideas, but as the ideas began to come together late in that 14-year period, original design concepts were discarded primarily for structural reasons. Secondly, it took three-and-a-half years to physically build on the site because something that tall, narrow, and heavy is an engineering feat to reinforce in case of earthquakes. That’s the single biggest problem. In California, when you build something to withstand the largest magnitude earthquake imaginable, it takes a lot of complicated details to build. I’ve often said that the Tower you see goes as far in the ground as it goes up in the air. All that’s necessary to avoid the structural complications in earthquake stress.

AC: You’ve had quite a few USA Fellows performing in the Tower, including Meredith Monk, Joe Goode and, most recently, Terry Allen. How do you select performers?

SO: We try and select the most creative performers, whether it’s in music, dance, poetry, etc., to perform in the Tower. Often our search for the most creative elements of American society mirror the great work you and the panels do selecting the United States Artists Fellows. It’s not coincidental, and we certainly don’t copy your efforts, but it is not unusual that both of our searches end up with the best that America has to offer. Currently, Ann Hamilton and I do all the curatorial selections for all Tower performances.

AC: What are some of the challenges to performing in the Tower?

SO: Obviously, the biggest challenge for performers in that space is the verticality and adjusting acoustics. We hired the best acoustic engineers in the U.S. to help in the Tower design, but quickly as the design settled in Ann Hamilton’s mind, they realized they had never seen or worked in anything like it. And finally after much discussion, they resigned their commission and said we were going to have to take our chances with whatever happens. By miracle, luck or otherwise, the Tower acoustics are quite amazing. Very little has to be done in order to adjust, on the performers’ part. The performance you saw recently by Terry and Jo Harvey Allen was the first time we’ve actually used amplified voices in the Tower. Prior to that, all the performances have been acoustic.

AC: How have the performances changed the way that you think of the Tower?

SO: The performances have only changed the way I think of the Tower in a positive way. What it has allowed the ranch to do over the last two or three years, as we went through all the paper-shuffling required in the creation of a foundation and a gift of the ranch, is to keep creative efforts and energy at the ranch on a regular basis by having multiple Tower performances during the course of the year. We have not built a new work in the last two years because we’ve been focused on external issues involving the ranch. We’re trying to bring that focus back now so that we can begin to build and commission something new. The performances in the Tower have filled an enormous void of having these creative people in our lives on a regular basis.