The artistic experience will focus on personal experiences of sound
By Thomas Ansell
De Stroom is an artistic music experience, devised by Jan Mars and Gijs Deddens, and supported by City Central, which will take place on July 25, with two sessions at 17:00 and 18:30.
Mars and Deddens usually work behind the scenes organising various concerts and gigs at the Aa-Kerk. During the Coronavirus outbreak, the pair spent time in the empty church building, wandering and wondering at its ambience.
They have come up with a ‘deep listening tour’: where each participant wends their own way through the cavernous building, finding a ‘musical path’, or more likely being enchanted by the columns of light, hushed atmosphere, and grand architecture.
The collective say that they want to show how “music and specific settings can play a role in inducing transformative experiences”, and go on to say that they want to show how music can be “a means to expand consciousness and perceive new aspects of oneself”.
The opaque description reveals why Mars and Deddens are holding this experience in a place of worship, which have functioned for several thousand years as places where the profane can come into contact with the sacred. Churches, mosques, synagogues; temples, Gurdwara and so on have functioned as ‘liminal spaces’ like this; which act as the gateway between the physical world and the generally spiritual hidden worlds of meaning within each religious tradition. The use of music within worship, whether as a way to inspire the power of the divine in people, or as a group-led way to soften entry into the spiritual or metaphysical space is well-known.
Though the Aa-Kerk was removed from use as a church over a decade ago, some of the echoes of worship evidently still remain to be discovered!
Free and donation-based tickets to De Stroom are available via Eventbrite.
Image via Thomas Ansell
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