the walking up and down bit

Documentation of Sigune Hamann's 'the walking up and down bit' video project. This project celebrates the centenary of year of Max Wall (1908-1990, one of Britain's most remarkable comedians and performers. Wall perfected an eccentric walk which is the subject of this project. Variations of the video were shown at the BFI Southbank and projected on the exterior of Glenshaw Mansions, Wall's birthplace and former home.

Sigune Hamman

Research Interests

Moving image; narrative structures & non-linear storytelling; sound - image relationship; video and photography.

Profile

Sigune Hamann's work encompasses video and film strip installations, photography, animated films and interactive media projects, exploring narrative structures through filmic images, languages and sound.
After studying Visual Communication in Berlin, Hamman received a DAAD scholarship for Great Britain (1990-91) where she graduated from the Royal College of Art, London. She was also awarded a scholarship from the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung (1991-93), the Prince Albert's Vision Award (1992) and Delfina Studio Award in 1994.
In 2006 Sigune was TrAIN artist in residence at the Kunstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral (Bad Ems, Mainz), Germany.

Recent Research

Recent projects include the multi-narrative video installation 'DinnerFor1' which toured both Germany and the UK in 2005/06. Inspired by the cult German television production 'Diner for One' from 1963 (based on a British Vaudeville act from the 1920s), Hamman's 'Dinerfor1' is a collaboration with the actor Hayley Carmichael which plays on cultural stereotypes on British life and national identities through themes of wit, war and royality. Launched at the Goethe Institute in 2005, it now forms part of the International Verbund Collection, Vienna, Austria.

'I'll Walk Alone - You'll Never Walk Alone' was commissioned in 2005 by the Harris Museum & Art Gallery in Preston as part of the exhibition 'Temporal 'Landcapes: Artists Working with Photography'. Referencing two popular war songs from 1944 in its title, Hammann's site specific installation was inspired by the sequential reading and narrative structures of Greek and Assyrian friezes in the Harris Museum. The panormaic film-strip imagery was taken at a game between Preston North End and Derby County at Preston's Deepdale Football Stadium in May 2005.

The online docu-fiction 'NothingButTheTruth' was first screened at Interfiction IX - arte-Faction, Kassel (2002), and subsequently at the Stuttgart Film Winter Festival (January 2003), The Irish Museum of Modern Art Net, Dublin (2003), and since 2003 is represented in the Rhizome art-base collection. Other ecent commissions include a large scale photographic diorama for Northampton Theatre, RHWL Architects, curated by Judy Adam (work in progress).

Artist Statement

"My work operates in the space between the still and the moving image. I experiment with moving images and images created through movement, and explore non-linear narrative structures through panoramic images, language and sound. I aim to engage the viewer/listener through manipulation and fragmentation of factual and fictional texts. I am interested in the way factual text becomes fiction through intervention and fictional texts comment on factual events."