('The Defender of Time') is a large mechanical work of art in the form of a clock created by the French artist .
Description
is a clock made of
automata
An automaton (; : automata or automatons) is a relatively self-operating machine, or control mechanism designed to automatically follow a sequence of operations, or respond to predetermined instructions. Some automata, such as bellstrikers i ...
. Close to the dial, a man perched on a rock with a sword and shield fights against a bird, a dragon, and a crab which respectively represent air, earth, and water. As originally designed, every hour from 9 am to 10 pm, he fights one of the three animals chosen randomly by a program. At noon, 6 pm, and 10pm, all three animals attack at the same time.
The time is announced by three strokes. While the man fights, he is accompanied by sounds of breaking waves, rumbling earth or the sound of wind, depending on the animal chosen.
is 4 meters high and weighs about 1 ton. The characters, animals and the clock face are hammered brass and gold leaf. The rock on which they sit is composed of oxidized brass. In its original configuration, a master electronic quartz circuit board controlled the random attacks chance, and used six cam timers and five tape recorders.
Location
''Le Défenseur du temps'' is located at 8 rue
Bernard de Clairvaux, in the in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
's
3rd arrondissement. The area around the clock owes its name to this work.
History
was commissioned in 1975 by
COGEDIM. The scales of the dragon were made by Louis Desouches, and the construction of the steel structure was by Alain Moirod.
The clock was partially installed in September 1979. It was formally dedicated on 8 October 1979 by the Mayor of Paris,
Jacques Chirac
Jacques René Chirac (, ; ; 29 November 193226 September 2019) was a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He was previously Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and 1986 to 1988, as well as Mayor of Pari ...
.
The clock underwent restoration in 1995. The master clock's quartz crystal was replaced by a radio clock, and the tape recorders were replaced by a
compact disc
The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. It employs the Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA) standard and was capable of hol ...
player. Without funding for maintenance, the clock was stopped in July 1, 2003.
Under the direction of artist
Cyprien Gaillard, the clock was taken down in February 2022 and renovated by the company Prêtre et Fils. In September 2022, it was installed at the ''
Fondation Lafayette Anticipations'' as a part of Gaillard's two-site exhibition Humpty/Dumpty. Since the end of the exhibition in January 2023, ''Le Défenseur du Temps'' has returned to its original location and its initial settings as imagined by Jacques Monestier. It was reinstalled and restarted on February 6, 2023.
External links
Conception et réalisation du "Défenseur du Temps"
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Defenseur
Buildings and structures in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris
Tourist attractions in Paris
Clocks in France