A Storm is Blowing / Timekeeper

Timekeeper research residency & public programme

From January to October 2013, I was Timekeeper in residence at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology at University College London, supported by the Arts & Humanities Research Council. The Petrie Museum is housed inside a former horse hospital off Gower Street. This small but extraordinary space holds a highly significant collection of ancient artefacts.

My project for the Petrie Museum explored how time is modelled, mapped, measured and lived. As Timekeeper in residence I devised a programme of collective research by programming and and hosting a series of multi-disciplinary public discussions, events, interviews and workshops with specialists from archaeology, ancient history, archaeology, architecture, science, philosophy and psychology. The Timekeeper project created a model of engagement that has since been adopted widely across UCL culture.

A Storm Is Blowing exhibition

In response to this collaborative research, I presented the exhibition A Storm Is Blowing over Summer 2013, pictured above and below.

A Storm is Blowing was a form of a 3D diagram placed within the Petrie Museum that explored 35 historical pictures and models of time. Some of the artefacts included were already on display in the museum, some part of the Timekeeper’s personal collection, and some made especially. They included an ancient Egyptian game of life in the form of a coiled snake, the future figured as a many-horned goat, a five-metre chart of history as a stream, the ancient Stoic circle of life, and the Facebook timeline placed alongside its 18th-century forebears. The objects were captioned with the Timekeeper’s notes, and connected by red cords that drew non-linear routes between forms and ideas.

Further explanation and rumination was offered to visitors by A Report on Progress, a take-away booklet shown in excerpt below. This provisional Report combined text and drawings by me in my persona as the museum’s Timekeeper in residence.

Gaggle: The Eye of Ra

For the final event in the Timekeeper residency programme, Gaggle led us in a glorious Midsummer rite, The Eye of Ra, pictured below.

I invited Gaggle to devise a performance inspired by the Midsummer rituals that ancient Egyptians would make to appease Sekhmet, the lion-headed daughter of the Sun god Ra (or Re). Sekhmet is also known as the Eye of Ra. She was tasked with protecting her father from demons during his nightly passage through the chambers of the underworld. That’s why you need to appease the Eye of Ra, in our interpretation: she has the power to give time its right shape.

Credits: The Timekeeper’s special display cases were designed and built by Lars Wagner (photos by Sue Barr); A Report on Progress written and drawn by Cathy Haynes and designed by Fraser Muggeridge studio.

I’m very grateful to the late Helen Pike, the splendid person who produced this project and without whom it would not have happened.