Oorlog Dichtbij / War Up Close

Listen for: This stop is heard while looking at one striking object: a poetry album. Listen to the writing, placed binaurally close to you and kept separate from the narration, as if it happens beside you while the story is told. The music opens the scene and gradually turns it towards the darker part of the story. The sound design is deliberately sparse, so each sound gives weight to the story instead of filling it. The music falls silent when the story needs room, and carries it when it needs support. Listen to how phrases alternate with sound and silence, so the story has room to land.

Listen for: Over just over four minutes, this stop tells the story of the church in wartime, starting from what you see around you. It is designed for a fixed listening position. Listen to the church’s own organ, recorded especially for this exhibition, including a pro-Orange song the organist secretly played during services under the occupation. Then listen for the hidden radio: it sounds from the direction of the pulpit, where it was once concealed. Between the narrator’s passages, a resident of the time adds a personal view of the situation. The stop closes with the radio itself, as the resistance in the church might have heard it.

Listen for: This is the soundscape that plays in the sacristy. From inside the church, you hear the city as it sounded back then, so the present-day space slowly dissolves into the sound of the past. A low rumble builds a sense of threat and ends in silence: the quiet before the danger. Then, in the distance, the air-raid siren, followed by the planes and bombers passing overhead. These are the aircraft that actually flew at the time, traced through research so the sound stays authentic and true to history. People flee to the shelter. To bring the fear closer, the scene ends with the frightened breathing and sobbing of a mother and child, which fades back into the sound of the city, so the loop can play continuously. In the sacristy itself, the room was measured and the speakers placed so the planes come from above and the street sounds come from the right direction.