Come Closer: Audiovisual Collective Volle Band and Mathematician, Artist Hans Kuiper

With Oude Kerk Untitled (2015), Germaine Kruip removed all electric light sources in the church, causing the building to undergo a visible transformation into darkness at the end of the day. This moment of twilight, as well as Kruip's interest in geometry, mathematical patterns, abstract forms in religion and the perception of space and time, formed the basis for the scenography for four editions of Come Closer. Each month, the programme began exactly half an hour before sunset, giving each edition of this series a different starting time.

From then on, performance artist Luca Hillen and three to five co-performers walked large circles throughout the church, inviting visitors to join them - without saying so literally, but through movement. These continuous one-hour walks, in which many visitors participated and others preferred to watch, proved to be an immersive experience in which the speed and manner of walking was determined by the dynamics of the group, like a flock of birds. Through repetition, a pattern emerged that opened up new ways of looking at the interior of the church as the surroundings gradually darkened. In the same hour, two other short interventions took place each time on different parts of the church, including in the side rooms. On 6 February, the first edition in this series, the programme consisted of a presentation by mathematician and artist (or wiskunstenaar) Hans Kuiper in the Library and a performance spread throughout the church by collective Volle Band.

Come Closer was a series of educational performance programs in the Oude Kerk, developed in and around the specific artistic interventions inhabiting the space at the. Artists, musicians, researchers and visitors together explore an underexposed past, alternative versions of the present and possible futures. Curated by Radna Rumping, the Come Closers took the form of intimate evenings, where visitors and artists explore the sonic space of the Oude Kerk with dance, performance and deep listening exercises.