MARIJKE VAN WARMERDAM, opening at "Bonjour, bon echo", Centre d'Art Contemporain, Fribourg in Switzerland in 1997.
For ground floor of her exhibition ‘Bonjour, bon echo’ in the Centre d’Art Contemporain Fri-Art in Fribourg, Marijke van Warmerdam invited a number of Swiss artists, whose (first-name) initials together formed the word ‘Fri-Art’ and the street name ‘Petites Rames’. These were: Fleury, Rondinone, Ikemura, Armleder, Rütimann, Thomkins & Pozarek, Emch, Toblerone (not an artist, but a huge bar of Swiss-made chocolate), Ireland, Tinguely, Eigenheer, Schiess, Robert-Tissot, Anüll, Moser, Epars, and Schnider. For the first floor she made a film of a typical Swiss mountainside, at which Michel Ritter, director of the CAC, shouted the names of the Swiss artists, which the returned as an echo.
In 2009 MvW made a ‘Hello version’ for the London Lisson Gallery. She hired a number of actors who called out ‘hellooooo’ with an echoing voice several times in the film loop. This was used as a greeting for the gallery’s visitors.
From: "Close by in the distance" Marijke van Warmerdam, a catalogue raisonné, p. 90.