The purpose of this website is to make accessible the material regarding Oude Kerk for study and to show the artistic processes, the exhibition-making, the artistic interventions, the objects in the church, the graves, the church itself, the neighborhood, and the relations between them. Thus, creating new layers of meaning.
The Open Archive is created for everyone, so whether you’re a student, an academic, or someone with an interest in the Oude Kerk, please feel free to roam around. Not sure where to start? Take a look at the suggestions we offer or some of the inspiration!
New to the ‘histories’ in the oude kerk?
The Oude Kerk is the oldest building of Amsterdam. A place where various visions of the world come together; both in the past and present. When acknowledging these different perspectives on the world, one has to reckon with multiple accounts of the same historical events. For this reason, we believe history is not objective, or set in stone, and using the plural 'histories' acknowledges these complex accounts of ‘history’. Part of this idea is the objective to bring ‘contested’ histories back into the public consciousness.
Over the course of the Oude Kerk’s more than 800-year long existence, hundreds of thousands of people have wandered through the building. They have said their final goodbyes to loved ones, gathered in conversation and prayer or signed their names into the city’s official records – or even etched their marks directly into the structure itself. These traces are carved into the very fabric of the building, a building that gradually expanded and transformed into the place that it is today. Generations of craftsmen have worked on it. The Oude Kerk’s archival holdings mirror these many facets and layered histories, capturing not only individual lives but also the broader processes of transformation that mirrors local and global histories.
More about Open Archive: Scope, mission and collaborations