Peter Liechti - Signers Koffer: Unterwegs mit Roman Signer (1995)

Peter Liechti prati švicarskog konceptualnog umjetnika i trickstera Romana Signera na njegovu putovanju Europom, a taj ga zaista od svega radi instalaciju, iliti "vremenske skulpture".


 



SIGNERS KOFFER is a kind of road movie across Europa. From the Swiss Alps to eastern Poland, from Stromboli to Iceland. Always following the scenery’s magically charged contours. Immersing yourself, letting yourself be infected, then travelling on. Roman Signer determines the route that we are moving on and the film improvises along the way. Being on the road also means tracking down the right places. Signer brings them alive using his own personel instruments, brilliantly simple operations full of subtle humour. «Simple» poems being transmitted into space with INSTRUMENTS as gunpowder, fuse, rubber boots, balloons, stool, small table … and a three wheelded Plaggio. SIGNERS KOFFER is also a journey through the state of mind. A tightrope walk between fun and melancholy. Danger also mental mental danger becomes the stimulus of the senses. Sudden crashes, abrupt chagnes of mood determine the rythm and atmosphere of this cinematic journey.

Swiss artist


Roman Signer might at first be thought of as 'artist as trickster.' For years he has probed simple phenomena, properties of the physical world, and the artist's relationship to often surreal realities of corporeal existence. 

"Signer adds a further dimension to the concept of sculpture as we know it, a medium which, in the course of the ongoing subversion of traditional boundaries launched upon in the 1960s, had already been expanded to include unconventional materials and actions. Put simply, he examines the basic elements of fire, water and air in terms of their sculptural qualities, albeit not in the manner of Land Art, which tends to effect an overt rearrangement of natural materials within or upon the landscape." The work, Old Shatterhand, like many of his videos, films, performances, and photographs, is downright slapstick in its simplicity, complex in its implications and ultimately indicative of the problems that we all face as we move through the world. No matter how hard we try, we can't shoot the can...