Whether you’re working on your own or with a team, archival projects can be daunting and challenging—where do we start? How do we prioritize? Will it be worth the time and effort?

All projects that we take on begin with an initial appraisal of the work to be performed. We consider your concerns, look at the collection ourselves, ask questions, and clarify what we can do—and its value to you, your practice, your studio, or other entity. If we choose to work together, we can engage in further consulting or project management.

From material degradation to natural disasters to ownership transitions, there are many reasons why archival collections may experience risk. We provide confidential risk assessments, hazard and emergency plans, and handle collection relocation logistics so you don’t have to.

Critical Interval also functions as an incubator for arkospore, proprietary software product designed for cross-referencing and cleaning metadata from both archival and artwork sales/provenance tracking databases.

Our goal is to make relational database and metadata workflows more accessible to archive-keepers, while deploying visualization and AI features that help us to contextualize archival materials in new ways. We are still in prototype development, so be among the first to beta test our software!

As media artists ourselves, we bring deep expertise in digitizing photographic, print, magnetic/analog, and electronic materials. We assess your needs to design a custom digitization studio, build streamlined workflows tailored to your specific projects, and implement efficient, automated systems for file storage and retrieval.

Times are unstable. Square footage is expensive. Archives move. We have facilitated several archive moves, developing specialized systems to manage movers and keep items in order. We have relationships at NYC area storage facilities, and have developed systems for downsizing the footprint of physical collections, designing racking for private storage rooms, and optimizing material packing for concierge storage. Let us remove the confusion from this process!