Roman Signer

A sole-authored book commissioned by Dumont/Flick Collection; with English and German editions published Spring 2007, launched Autumn 2007 alongside a major solo show of Signer at the Rieckshalle, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin. Only two illustrated critical surveys of this artist's work exist (the other: Roman Signer, Phaidon 2006).

This commission arose from a two-hour sound interview conducted on the occasion of the artist's 2003 retrospective at Hauser and Wirth, St Gallen (extract in Audio Arts magazine, 2004). Signer was the subject of an Artforum International review by Withers (October 2003 pp.198-199) and commented on Signer's work in the review: Liverpool Biennial I in Nu, The Nordic Art Review (December 1999 p.79). These ideas were subsequently developed for the book.

The monograph includes a 25,000-word interview edited from material recorded in Signer's studio in St Gallen, Switzerland, over seven days in 2005. The most extensive Signer interview in print, it contains much previously undocumented information and commentary by the artist. The book comprises a 25,000 word interview edited from material recorded in Signer’s studio in St Gallen Switzerland over seven days in 2005; and a 16,000-word essay considering the interrelationship of temporality with themes of catastrophe, ecology and humour in Signer's work. The text in part responds to Paul Good's philosophical study of Signer's work, Time Sculpture. It contrasts the time-theories of Henri Bergson, Gaston Bachelard and Cornelius Castoriadis and argues that a necessarily spilt consciousness of time underpins the temporality of Signer's 'time-sculptures'. New links are made between Signer's work and the contested chronotypes of the twentieth century ecological movement. New comparisons are made between Signer's humour and Buster Keaton's films.

German language