Films

From the very be­gin­ning, the work of Roman Sign­er has been con­cerned with eph­em­er­al events and the re­lease of pro­voked and ex­ist­ing en­er­gies. His ma­ter­i­als are nat­ur­al forces such as water, wind, fire or grav­ity, which he relates to every­day ob­jects such as stools, buck­ets, red kayaks, col­oured bar­rels, re­mote-con­trolled fly­ing ob­jects or um­brel­las and which re­peatedly ap­pear as leit­mot­ifs in the artist’s work. The re­la­tion­ships between the vis­ible ac­tion and the in­vis­ible phys­ic­al pro­cesses lend Sign­er­’s sculp-tures a sen­su­al com­pon­ent.

The ex­hib­i­tion Films centres on Roman Sign­er­’s work with the mov­ing image, with a focus on works cre­ated in and around Ap­pen­zell since the 1970s. This is Roman Sign­er­’s first solo ex­hib­i­tion in his ho­met­own Ap­pen­zell, which spans over three floors of the Kun­sthalle and the former brick­works and presents more than 120 films.

On the oc­ca­sion of the ex­hib­i­tion, a Cata­logue rais­on­né of all the Super 8 films will be pub­lished by Ver­lag Walth­er König, ed­ited by Peter Zi­m­mer­mann, Al­ex­an­dra Sign­er and Stefanie Gschwend, with texts by Roman Sign­er, Stephan Kunz (Di-rect­or of the Bünd­ner Kun­st­mu­seum) and Stefanie Gschwend (Dir­ect­or of the Kun­st­mu­seum / Kun­sthalle Ap­pen­zell).

Roman Sign­er already began doing ex­per­i­ments as a child, without a thought to mak­ing art. Every ma­ter­i­al that fell into his hands was sub­ject to in­vest­ig­a­tion, in­clud­ing every­day ma­ter­i­als or fire and fire­works. Look­ing back with hind­sight, these were already artist­ic ex­er­cises, he says. He de­veloped a fas­cin­a­tion for bod­ies cre­ated from en­ergy found in his im­me­di­ate sur­round­ings: in the Sit­ter, the river that flows through his home town of Ap­pen­zell and right past his door­step, at the Leuen­fall wa­ter­fall in Schwende-Rüte, where the Bernd­libach stream thun­der­ously plunges from a height of 34 metres into the depths, or in Glanden­stein, at the end of the Weiss­bach val­ley, a little off the beaten track, but only a few minutes away from Weiss­bad. At first glance, this lat­ter place is a large mead­ow sur­roun­ded by forest, rocks and the Weiss­bach (Stream). The ex­pres­sion com­monly used in Ap­pen­zell for the place is ‘the end of the world’, which is still some­what true today due to its re­mote­ness. It is the place that marks the be­gin­ning of Roman Sign­er­’s work.

Roman Sign­er con­duc­ted his ex­per­i­ments on his own, re­mote from the art world and ex­hib­i­tion ven­ues. He filmed them in nat­ur­al sur­round­ings that served not merely as a back­drop or stage but formed an es­sen­tial and form­at­ive com­pon­ent of the re­spect­ive work. The room on the ground floor de­picts the land­scape of Ap­pen­zell, where Roman Sign­er began film­ing ac­tions in Super 8 in 1975 and later re­cor­ded videos.

Rau­chring (Smoke Ring, 1983) is an eph­em­er­al trace cre­ated by the re­lease of en­ergy. Against the wintry back­drop of Weiss­bad in Ap­pen­zell, Sign­er stuck an aer­o­sol can in­side a metal pipe in the snow and blew a small hole in the can with a det­on­at­or. The es­cap­ing pro­pel­lant gases ig­nited to form a fire­ball, which rose at light­ning speed in the freez­ing cold air and formed a large, jet-black ring of smoke. The ring swirled up­wards and then dis­ap­peared without a trace.

In Linie (Line, 1986), for ex­ample, Sign­er lays a long trail of gun­powder, po­s­i­tion­ing a stool in the last sec­tion. Wear­ing a fire­proof sil­ver suit, he sits on the stool, hold­ing an open news­pa­per. The gun­powder is ig­nited and shoots in a line to­wards and bey­ond the artist, burn­ing the news­pa­per.

As in a fairy tale, Tisch mit Bal­lonen (Table with Bal­loons, 1982) is car­ried up and away through the air by four bal­loons, but a burn­ing fuse lead­ing to the bal­loons causes them to burst and the table to plunge back down to earth. Fly­ing ob­jects such as bal­loons, heli­copters, rock­ets and other items that Sign­er causes to fly or rise and fall, such as stools, tables and buck­ets, are vital to the artist’s prac­tice. By mak­ing things fly, he cre­ates a tem­por­ary state of the im­possible.

In Bogen (Arc, 1978), Sign­er fo­cuses his cam­era on a steeply rising sec­tion of forest that de­vel­ops from a clear­ing. In this shot of a lush green land­scape, everything seems to stand still. Noth­ing is hap­pen­ing, and yet the ten­sion of what lies ahead is palp­able. Sud­denly, smoke erupts and spreads in the form of a broad, down­ward-sweep­ing arc from the top left to the top right of the pic­ture. Re­cor­ded si­lently and without leav­ing a trace in the land­scape, the geo­met­ric form made by the smoke slowly dis­ap­pears into the trees and the air.

The set­tings are pic­tur­esque and de­lib­er­ately chosen. Roman Sign­er al­ways seeks out the ideal loc­a­tions for his ac­tions, at the same time cap­tur­ing the sur­round­ings on film. The re­spect­ive back­drop serves as a pictori­al space, with ele­ments such as bridges or rivers that mark the land­scape form­ing re­cur­ring mo­tifs in his visu­al lan­guage.

The Nacht­fahrt (Night Ride, 1999 / 2025), which is shown as a pro­jec­tion in a Piaggio, also ends at the ‘End of the World’. In the middle of the night, Roman Sign­er and his wife Aleksandra drove from St. Sal­len to Weiss­bad, the place where the artist has already made many works and ex­per­i­ments. Aleksandra Sign­er filmed the whole jour­ney through the front wind­screen. They first drove on roads and then on a path that ended at the river in the forest. The 40-minute drive makes it ap­par­ent that Sign­er­’s paths al­ways lead back to his ori­gins, des­pite his in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer.

A vin­tage car is parked in front of the Kun­sthalle. Roman Sign­er writes: «This car is rather spe­cial. It is a 1959 Warsz­a­wa. We wanted to drive it from Za­ko­pane (PL) to Nantes (F), but we only man­aged to reach Linz (A), where it was loaded onto a trail­er. We simply real­ised we would not make it in time for the ex­hib­i­tion open­ing, given our speed and the dis­tance re­main­ing. And we had to make it be­cause the plan was to drive the Warsz­a­wa over the um­brel­las in­ser­ted in the floor of the mu­seum. […]» The film of the sculp­ture Re­genschirme (Um­brel­las, 2012), which was first real­ised at the HAB, Hangar à Ba­nanes, Nantes in 2012, can be seen in the foyer of the Kun­sthalle.

Sign­er cap­tures the pre­cisely planned ac­tions, which are com­posed of the situ­ation, the trans­form­a­tion of en­ergy and the trace of the pro­cess on film or later on video. They go far bey­ond a filmic doc­u­ment­a­tion of his ac­tions and be­come an in­de­pend­ent me­di­um in his œuvre.

For the artist, Super 8 was a mode of com­mu­nic­a­tion that was cap­able of con­vey­ing his eph­em­er­al sculp­tures in all their im­me­di­acy. Sign­er­’s films rarely ex­ceed the length of one Super 8 cas­sette: In three minutes, or some­times in just a few seconds, a sculp­tur­al pro­cess is rendered visi-ble. This format, often fea­tur­ing a flick­er­ing aes­thet­ic and lim­ited tech-nical pos­sib­il­it­ies, is par­tic­u­larly suita-ble for cap­tur­ing fleet­ing mo­ments or ac­tion se­quences due to the dy­nam­ic char­ac­ter of the cam­era work.

“I had my first ex­hib­i­tion abroad in 1975. It was in Düs­sel­dorf with Hart­mut Kam­in­ski. He ran a gal­lery on Ka­roliner­strasse. He was also a film­maker and had the idea of mak­ing a small 16 mm film about one of my sculp­tures (Gross­er Trop­fen [Big Drop], 1975). [...] I bought a Super 8 cam­era and a pro­ject­or and star­ted mak­ing my own films. I must say, for­tu­nately I star­ted. It would have been good if I had star­ted earli­er. Be­cause work­ing with the films gave me a new per­spect­ive on my work. [...] In 1975, I mostly made trips alone by bi­cycle, train and post bus in the area around St.Gal­len and made re­cord­ings of my work. I also had to take the ne­ces­sary ma­ter­i­al with me. Some­times, heav­ily packed, even on foot, I must have presen­ted a strange ap­pear­ance. I got to know Peter Liechti in 1983. [...] Emil Gruben­mann and Stefan Rohner also helped me. In my na­iv­ety, I thought I would be able to make Super 8 films all my life. I was ‘over­runʼ by video tech­no­logy.” (Roman Sign­er)

Ak­tion mit einer Zünd­schnur (Ac­tion with a Fuse, 1989) marks Roman Sign­er­’s de­par­ture from Ap­pen­zell. Sym­bol­ising the shift of the focal point of his life and work, Sign­er for the sculp­ture laid a fuse over a peri­od of 35 days from Ap­pen­zell to St.Gal­len, cov­er­ing a dis­tance of 20.6 kilo­metres along the rail­road tracks. The sec­tions of the fuse were con­nec­ted with the help of coup­lings and fur­nished with gun­powder. At each of the 260 coup­lings, the fire triggered a small ex­plo­sion along the fuse, the ex­plo­sions com­ing to­geth­er to mark an arc of move­ment between the start and fin­ish points. It con­sists of a series of short, two- to three-second se­quences in which the ex­plo­sions are strung to­geth­er like flashes of light. The mov­ing im­ages flick­er up briefly as the ex­plo­sions dis­ap­pear into the black night, just as quickly as they ap­peared. Dur­ing the day, the land­scape sec­tions where the ig­ni­tions took place can be seen in a brief flash be­fore the next se­quence be­gins.

This room fo­cuses on works cre­ated out­side Ap­pen­zell. In ad­di­tion to films and videos, doc­u­ment­a­tions of ac­tions staged in front of an audi­ence are shown, rep­res­ent­ing im­port­ant mo­ments in Roman Sign­er­’s ca­reer. Roman Sign­er began work­ing with video tech­no­logy in the early 1990s. Aleksandra Sign­er, Roman Sign­er­’s wife and artist­ic com­pan­ion, has been re­spons­ible for the cam­era and edit­ing. Tomek Ro­gowiec, Sign­er­’s as­sist­ant, cre­ates the con­stel­la­tions that are some­times used for the re­cord­ings. Works such as Schwar­zes Tuch (Black Cloth, 1994), 56 kleine He­likop­ter (56 Small Heli­copters, 2008) and Heufieber (Hay fever, 2006) were cre­ated as videos, but con­vey the same spir­it of the Super 8 films.

The use of film and video tech­no­logy changed the way events were seen that Sign­er once car­ried out in se­clu­sion. His pro­cess-ori­ented work­ing meth­od, the basic laws of phys­ics, and the eph­em­er­al as com­pon­ents of his visu­al lan­guage were now cap­tured and re­cor­ded on film, ex­pand­ing the concept of sculp­ture from some­thing stat­ic to some­thing mov­ing. At the same time, the use of Super 8 film and video goes bey­ond mere doc­u­men-ta­tion, be­cause the tech­no­logy it­self be­comes an artist­ic ma­ter­i­al and thus an in­teg­ral part of the per­cep­tion of the work. The sculp­ture is shaped con­cep­tu­ally by press­ing the shut­ter re­lease. Sign­er cre­ates not only through his artist­ic hand but through his pre­cise plan, the ma­ter­i­al he uses, the ele­ments, the en­ergy, the laws of nature and fi­nally the cam­era.

In Bal­lon unter Eis (Bal­loon under Ice, 1988), the artist uses a hose to in­flate a large bal­loon un­der­neath the ice cov­er­ing a frozen lake until the ice cracks and rises up and fi­nally a large ice floe breaks away. The bal­loon pops up out of the water through this open­ing. The ex­pect­a­tion that the re­leased en­ergy will be trans­formed in a dif­fer­ent man­ner is present. Al­though the event is pre­dict­able, the res­ult is sur­pris­ing. The ele­ment of ran­dom­ness in the de­struc­tion of the ice and the col­our of the bal­loon, which ap­pears ab­stract and dif­fuse under the ice and then sud­denly breaks into the pic­ture in bright red, re­solve the ex­pect­a­tions of the work and its ex­per­i­ment­al char­ac­ter in a po­et­ic visu­al ex­per­i­ence.

For his Ak­tion vor der Or­an­ger­ie (Ac­tion in front of the Or­an­ger­ie, 1987) at doc­u­menta 8 in Kas­sel, which was doc­u­mented by Peter Liechti, Sign­er ar­ranged 350 stacks of paper, each con­tain­ing 1,000 sheets, in a row. These 350,000 sheets of paper were cata­pul­ted into the air sim­ul­tan­eously by ex­plos­ive charges to form for a brief mo­ment a flut­ter­ing wall of paper 15 metres high and 300 metres long. The tech­nic­al real­isa­tion of the event with the help of a de­moli­tion ex­pert and its sheer scale mark a de­par­ture from the sculp­tures that Sign­er had cre­ated in se­clu­sion. And yet, the evoc­a­tion of a po­et­ic mo­ment through the com­bin­a­tion of ma­ter­i­al and en­ergy is sim­il­ar in this eph­em­er­al monu­ment.

In 2005, on the oc­ca­sion of the Seet­al Po­etry Sum­mer at Hall­wyl Castle, Roman Sign­er­’s artist­ic texts were not read out to the audi­ence as one would ex­pect, but his de­scrip­tions of the ac­tions were trans­lated into sign lan­guage and re­cited by a sign lan­guage in­ter­pret­er. The texts, which de­scribe the pro­cess of an ac­tion in the artist’s own words, were given a new visu­al form with a pictori­al char­ac­ter through the trans­la­tion, thus open­ing up a fur­ther level of per­cep­tion of Sign­er­’s work.

In­spired by this event, in 2006 Roman Sign­er com­mis­sioned a video re­cord­ing of the in­ter­pret­er Gab­ri­ela Spörri trans­lat­ing se­lec­ted ac­tions, res­ult­ing in the in­stall­a­tion Ge­bär­den­s­prache (Sign Lan­guage, 2006). The artist com­bined these black and white re­cord­ings of the in­ter­pret­er­’s ges­tures and fa­cial ex­pres­sions with his ac­tions on Super 8 film. There are two ver­sions of the in­stall­a­tion: two tube mon­it­ors stacked on the floor, com­bin­ing the ac­tion and the trans­la­tion into sign lan­guage, or on flat screens in por­trait format with a split screen. For the first time, all 20 videos, which are today in dif­fer­ent col­lec­tions, can be seen to­geth­er. The artist’s ac­tions, shot on Super 8, are films without sound, which, un­like the texts trans­lated into sign lan­guage, do not primar­ily cre­ate ac­cess­ib­il­ity for the deaf, but rather open up a fur­ther di­men­sion of see­ing for the view­er.

As you ex­plore the brick­works you will find more films, for ex­ample in the kiln, in the lib­rary, in the open space or by the con­crete stair­case. In the ‘rav­ine’ be­hind the kiln, ‘leftover films’ are shown, which bring to­geth­er foot­age of dis­carded film ma­ter­i­al, ex­per­i­ment­al set-ups, pre­par­a­tions for ac­tions, travel doc­u­ment­a­tion and other film se­quences.

Bis­tro

In Weih­nachts­baum (Christ­mas Tree, 1993), Sign­er stands on a bridge high above the River Sit­ter and throws a fir tree with a metal tip on the end of its trunk over the para­pet like a spear. The tree flies in an arc down to the ground and bur­rows into the earth, where it re­mains stand­ing, just as if it had al­ways been there. The artist often works with dif­fer­ent dir­ec­tions of move­ment triggered through thrust and grav­ity, which then de­term­ine the form taken by the re­spect­ive sculp­ture.

Platt­form

Schuss­linie (Line of Fire, 1999) con­sists of two mon­it­ors fa­cing each other at eye level. The first mon­it­or shows the artist him­self hold­ing a rifle in his hand and tak­ing aim. The second mon­it­or shows a bal­loon that bursts at a pre­cisely cal­cu­lated mo­ment – triggered by the artist’s shot. The ten­sion between the calm, con­trolled mo­ment of pulling the trig­ger and the sud­den burst­ing of the bal­loon cre­ates an ab­surd at­mo­sphere between hu­mour and threat.

In this work, Sign­er com­bines his char­ac­ter­ist­ic ex­plor­a­tion of time, en­ergy and phys­ic­al pro­cesses and them­at­ises the re­la­tion­ship between cause and ef­fect, ac­tion and re­ac­tion. The artist him­self be­comes part of the ac­tion by fir­ing the shot that bursts the bal­loon. But the view­er also be­comes part of the in­stall­a­tion when he moves into the line of fire between the mon­it­ors.

Sculp­tures in Pub­lic Space

You will find sculp­tures by Roman Sign­er in the pub­lic spaces of Appen-zell, Gon­ten and the sur­round­ing coun-tryside. Fur­ther works can be found in front of the Hotel Hof Weiss­bad, in the lobby and in the ad­ja­cent park.

www.kunst­land­schaft.ch/karte

If you fancy a Sign­er walk along the Sit­ter (9 km, re­l­at­ively flat), choose route 1

www.kunst­land­schaft.ch/karte/route/1

Roman Sign­er­’s (*1938, Ap­pen­zell, lives and works in St.Gal­len) solo ex­hib­i­tions in­clude Kun­sthaus Zürich (2025), Comme des Garçons on Tokyo, Osaka and Lon­don (2024), Malmö Kon­sthall (2023), FRAC Fran­che-Comté in Be­s­ançon (2022), Ping­shan Art Mu­seum in Shen­zhen (2019), Kunst-

haus Zug (2019), Kun­st­mu­seum St.Gal­len (2018), Isti­tuto Svizzero in Rome (2018), MAN Mu­seum in Nuoro (2016), Mid­del­heim Musuem in An­t­werp (2016), Bar­bican Cur. Gal­len (2018), the Isti­tuto Svizzero in Rome (2018), the MAN Mu­seum in Nuoro (2016), the Mid­del­heim Musuem in An­t­werp (2016), the Bar­bican Curve in Lon­don (2015), the Centre d’art in Cher­bourg-Octeville (2015), the Kun­sthaus Zug (2015), the KINDL Centre for Con-tem­por­ary Art in Ber­lin (2014), the Kun­st­mu­seum St.Gal­len (2014), at the Kun­sthalle Mainz (2012), at the HAB Gal­lery in Nantes (2012), at the Sala de Arte Pub­lico Siqueir­os in Mex­ico City (2011), at the Ham­burger Bahnhof in Ber­lin (2007), at the Isti­tuto Svizzero di Centro Nazionale di Fo­to­grafia / Museo Dio­ces­ano in Padua (2007), at the Aar­gauer Kunst-haus in Aarau (2006), at the Centro Galego de Arte Con­tem­poránea in San­ti­ago de Com­postela (2006), at the Cam­den Art Centre in Lon­don (2001), at the Bon­nefant­en­mu­seum in Maastricht (2000), at the FRAC Poltou-Char­entes in Angoulême (1993), at the Kun­st­mu­seum St.Gal­len (1993), the Helm-haus Zurich (1992) and Le Creux de l’En­fer in Thiers (1992).

Roman Sign­er has par­ti­cip­ated in nu­mer­ous in­ter­na­tion­al art ex­hib­i­tions, in­clud­ing doc­u­menta 8 in Kas­sel (1987), the Yoko­hama Per-form­ance Art Fest­iv­al (1987), the Skulp­turen Pro­jekte in Mün­ster (1997), the Venice Bi­en­nale (1999) and the Shang­hai Bi­en­nale (2012). In 1999 he rep­res­en­ted Switzer­land at the Venice Bi­en­nale.

CUR­AT­ORS
Stefanie Gschwend (Direk­t­or­in / dir­ect­or Kun­st­mu­seum / Kun­st­mu­seum Ap­pen­zell)

OR­GAN­ISA­TION
Re­gina Brül­isauer, Stefanie Gschwend, Luca Tarelli

EX­HIB­I­TION IN­STALL­A­TION
Chris­ti­an Hörler, Chris­ti­an Meier, Tomek Ro­gowiec, Ueli Alder, Bea Dörig, Raoul Doré, Fla­vio Hodel, Carina Kirsch, Elias Menzi, Luca Tarelli

ART EDU­CA­TION
Domenika Chandra

MU­SEUM AT­TEND­ANTS
Rita Do­bler, Domi­n­ique Franke, Mar­grit Gmünder, Ian Groll, Priska Hüsler, Bar­bara Met­zger, Heneisha Mor­ris, Madleina Ru­tishaus­er, Luca Tarelli, Petra Zinth

ED­IT­OR
Kun­st­mu­seum / Kun­sthalle Ap­pen­zell

TEXT
Stefanie Gschwend

PROOFREAD­ING & TRANS­LA­TION
Car­men Eb­neter, Stefanie Gschwend, Katja Nau­mann

GRAPH­IC DESIGN
Data-Orbit / Michel Egger, St.Gal­len

AC­KNOW­LEDGE­MENTS
Car­oline Achaintre, Elif Akinci, Cris­ti­an An­der­sen, Aufdi Auf­der­mauer, An­dreas Brül­isauer, Mari­anne Burki, Se­basti­an Bürkner, Gio­vanni Car­mine, Nicole Cher­ubini, Mar­tin Chra­mo­sta, Collezione la Gaia, Car­men D’A­pol­lo­nio, Woody De Oth­ello, Ed­mund de Waal, Robert Dia­ment, Myri­am Ge­bert, Clare Good­win, Lena Guévry, Tom Gut, Mat­thi­as Hal­de­mann, Cora Hansen, Mi­chael Janssen, Christa Kamm, Matt Kirkum, Jan­nik Konle, Kun­sthaus Zug, Stephan Kunz, Leo Lencés, Fa­bi­enne Loosli, Fe­li­city Lunn, Geor­gia Lurie, Isa Melsheimer, Lind­sey Men­dick, Erica Mir­anda, Mai-Thu Per­ret, Se­basti­ano Por­tunato, Shah­pour Pouyan, Pa­loma Proud­foot, Emma Robertson, Tomek Ro­gowiec, Kacper Ro­zicki, Alex­is Sar­fati, Aleksandra Sign­er, Bar­bara Sign­er, Roman Sign­er, An­nette Stadler, Team Kun­st­mu­seum / Kun­sthalle, Seraina von Laer, Karin Weg­müller, Peter Zi­m­mer­mann, allen Stif­tun­gen für Ihre sub­stanti­elle Un­ter­stützung und Ihr Ver­trauen.