Keeping Track of Timekeeper
When the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum acquired Sarah Sze’s complex mixed-media sculptural installationTimekeeper (2016), an enormous challenge awaited its team of registrars, conservators, art handlers, and audiovisual technicians. The multidisciplinary nature of installing the work was an excellent fit for my experience as a conservator in training and exposed me to the entire process of mounting a complex installation in a large institution.
Sarah Sze, Timekeeper (2016)
Mixed media, mirrors, wood, stainless steel, archival prints, projectors, lamps, desks, stools, stone
Images (Overall [L] and detail [R]) courtesy Sarah Sze Studio
Background
Timekeeper (2016) by the multidisciplinary artist Sarah Sze is a complex site-specific installation consisting of tables, chairs, ladders, wire cubes, lamps, speakers, arduinos, and 46 projectors playing dozens of video files. The work was acquired by The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2018 and had never been installed or catalogued.
I was invited in the summer of 2022 to assist the Museum’s time-based media, objects, and paper conservators in a “dry run” installation, and again for its final installation in March of 2023.
Click to play a short clip of Timekeeper as installed at Copenhagen Contemporary in 2017.
The Manual
My primary role as the work was installed was the modification of the 500+ page instruction manual provided by the artist’s studio at the time of acquisition. The Museum received the complete inDesign package, meaning as a team we could add or remove information and reformat each page as we saw fit.
The manual was created with efficiency in mind during a deinstallation in 2017. Everyone, including the artist, regarded it as a flexible document from the outset of the project. It was understood that it would need to change and, ideally, improve, as the installation unfolded.
Cover page of 500+ page manual created by Sarah Sze Studio in 2017.
Editing the manual in inDesign
The artist’s studio referred to each component with an alphanumeric label (i.e., J12, B04, etc.). In the 2018 version, these labels had been photographed with the components laid out on white paper. We re-photographed each component and added the label to the page text so that the document is searchable during any future iterations.
Modification: Inventory Pages
v. 2017
v. 2022
The 2017 version of the manual included the essential information about each projector - the projector model, file name, and general location - but was insufficient in practice. For each of the 46 projectors, we expanded what was originally a single line of information into a double-page spread which included a host of other important notes, including mount information, masking details, and distances from focal points.
Modification: Projector Pages
v. 2017
v. 2022
Conserving the Sculpture
One of the beautiful things about Timekeeper is the variety of conservation issues it presents. Apart from the media files and instruction manual, the work’s material components required attention as well.
The sculpture is placed in its exhibition space with the aid of a large 1:1 template which was made by the artist’s studio and acquired with the sculpture. Colored tape outlines are applied along the borders of rectangular cut-outs in a plastic drop cloth, which are then transferred onto the gallery floor to demarcate where furniture elements are positioned.
Digitizing the Template
Part of ensuring the work’s future meant digitizing this template. To get a top-down image for both conservation documentation and use in a CAD drawing, we laid the template on the rotunda floor and photographed it from the top of the ramp.
The resulting file could not only serve as a digital reference for measurements, but could be re-printed or remade using another, sturdier archival material (styrene, for example).
A metronome on a side table, which was programmed to swing back and forth continuously via a small servo motor and arduino, had stopped moving.
First, the artist-created metal plate attached to the servo motor’s arm had loosened, rendering the movement by the arm futile. I ordered watch screws and nuts and made small washers out of clear plastic, tightening the connection in a way which is easily removable by mechanical means.
Making the Metronome Move Again
The other issue was finding out the code used to run arduino which moves the servo motor’s arm. In a heavy-handed attempt to prevent any wires from detaching, the arduino had been attached to its housing using hot-melt glue. Unable to access its port and obtain the code, I worked with my colleagues Elizaveta Yuzhakova and Agathe Jarczyk to re-write the code and place it on a new, backup servo motor for documentation purposes. While the movement has proven impossible to match perfectly, this was a useful and important step in treating this kinetic component.
In the end, we were successful in restoring movement to the metronome in a way which closely matches the artist’s intention, and were able to create a backup version of the program used to facilitate its movement.
Above: a version of the replacement code using the “sweep” arduino sketch.
Right: Elizaveta Yuzhakova working on the code during installation.
Many of the projection surfaces are inket prints, some of which sit atop the projectors themselves. We used thermal imaging to find hot spots where the adhesive needed to keep these pieces in place could safely be applied.
Finding Hot Spots
We were fortunate to have had several on-site conversations with Sarah, beginning with the placement of the overall piece in the gallery. Her input was invaluable and fascinating; interviewing living artists is, to me, one of the great privileges of contemporary art conservation.
Interviewing the Artist
I remain incredibly grateful to The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum for providing me with an internship which was so fulfilling on both a professional and personal level.
I am particularly indebted to the staff at the Museum, including:
Acknowledgements
Agathe Jarczyk
Associate Conservator, Time-based Media
Elizaveta Yuzhakova
Fellow in Time-based Media Conservation
Esther Chao
Conservator, Objects
Jeffrey Warda
Senior Conservator, Paper and Photographs
Lena Stringari
Deputy Director and Andrew W. Mellon Chief Conservator
I am also grateful to my professors and advisors at The Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, including:
Michele Marincola
Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor of Conservation and Chair of the Conservation Center
Christine Frohnert
Research Scholar and Program Coordinator of the Time-based Media Art Conservation Program;
Co-Founder and Conservator, Bek & Frohnert LLC
Dr. Hannelore Roemich
Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Conservation and Chair of the Time-based Media Art Conservation Program (Retired)
Michele Heinrici
Head Registrar
Lisa Blanchard
Registrar
Erick Munari
Senior Art Handler
Lindsay Packer
Art handler, visual artist
Steven Mykietyn
Lead Media Arts Technician