videocompany & Komun present

Roman Signer

The Ideal Travel Speed

Die ideale Reisegeschwindigkeit

In 2002, Roman came to me with a postcard—a picture of a ski jump, a practice jump very close to Zakopane, the hometown of his wife Aleksandra. He wanted to perform an action using this ski jump, involving an Ape. Those are the three-wheeled little Vespa cars. Maybe we could film it. At that time, I had already worked with Roman several times—we had been together in Venice, America, England, Scotland,Spain, Japan, France, Iceland...

And I knew that travelling was an important part of Roman‘s work. It wasn’t just about going somewhere, setting up, opening and returning again. It always involved visiting an unfamiliar area. That always sparked Roman‘s curiosity. What do they do there, how do they live, is there a museum, a bookshop, a fire brigade, industry, what does the area look like?

„Nöppis go luege“ („Let’s go have a look“) was his wish.

Thus, it was clear that we wouldn‘t simply go to Poland and perform the action. We would take a journey with Roman. And so it happened that we, a crew of eight people in three vehicles, set out on the road with Roman. There was no plan, no concept, no script. We just set off and filmed. Nothing was repeated—that was the agreement; filmed is filmed. And there were hardly any conversations in front of the camera, partly due to Roman’s experiences filming „Signers Koffer“ (Peter Liechti, 1995). Those were our two agreements. Otherwise, everything was open; we had a timeframe of 20 days and enough blank tapes. The journey began at Hotel Waldhaus in Sils, where we screened „Signers Koffer.“

In Chiavenna, we bought the second-hand Ape from a friendly Italian. Travelling through Italy, Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, we eventually reached Poland. Along the way, there were many „kleinen Ereignissen“ („small incidents“), as Roman often calls his works—encounters and observations. In Poland, we first had to restore the ski jump. We met with the builder of the jump, with the local youth, with the village priest who blessed the Ape and Roman (and the film crew) right away. Finally, the Ape stood on that Polish ski jump. At the fire station, we screened „Signers Koffer“ again, parts of which had also been filmed there. Everyone came; the priest had invited them during Sunday mass.

After two and a half weeks, we had countless hours of footage, wonderful photos, no money left, and once again the realisation of how damn difficult it is to make another film with Roman after Peter Liechti‘s film. The bar had been set very, very high. Thus, the tapes ended up in the archive, occasionally copied onto new formats and watched every now and then. But nobody really dared to start editing. There was enough work to do without this film—major exhibitions and many other wonderful projects.I once spoke about it with Peter Liechti, who knew about the project and asked how far we‘d got. I explained that it was extremely difficult to make another film about Roman after his masterpiece. One would always be compared with „Signers Koffer“ and would likely fail.

But it was Peter Liechti who felt that we needed to do it. Perhaps he was right. Recently, Karin and I sat with Roman in a café in Sardinia, where he had an exhibition, reminiscing about that journey from long ago. And so, after many, many yearswith distance and a certain calmness—we agreed that it was now time to finish this film. It is also Roman‘s wish for it to be released for his eightieth birthday. Meanwhile, it‘s now 2025, 22 years later. Roman Signer is 87 years old—Kunsthaus Zürich has also discovered the artist by now—and the film has indeed been completed. It‘s about travelling, about being on the road, about Roman‘s fantastic works and it‘s also a retrospective.

Filmed originally in 4:3 format, not HD, yet colourful and 74 minutes long. A film for Roman.

Aufdi Aufdermauer