Minne Kersten: There’s Always Another Twist

On three circular screens, 16 mm films show objects such as chairs, tables, and staircases slowly detaching from their surroundings, appearing to float weightlessly through space. In collaboration with sound designer Jacob Oostra, Kersten created a composition of field recordings from the Oude Kerk, which links the films and reveals the layered character of the site, as if multiple times can be heard simultaneously. By filming on 16 mm, Kersten introduces a physical delay. The analogue image, with its grain and texture, exposes that there is more in the transition between light and darkness than is immediately perceptible. When darkness falls in the mid-afternoon, due to the church remaining unlit, our perception shifts. Rather than evoking fear or menace, the darkness now invites receptivity, creating space for other stories and ways of seeing.

In the Board Room, a four-metre-high spiral staircase slowly rotates around its own axis. Kersten based the sculpture on the spiral staircases of the Oude Kerk. Here, the revolving staircase becomes a moving image in itself. In films, spiral staircases often symbolise psychological tension or endless repetition, a movement between fear and desire, descent and ascent.

In There’s Always Another Twist, Minne Kersten explores how religious architecture and myths, like early film techniques, use visual illusions and effects such as visions and hallucinations to evoke an alternate reality. The installation reveals how architecture is shaped by the events that take place within it and by those who inhabit it, and how spaces and interior elements, such as a window or staircase, carry symbolic meanings in literature and film, just as a black cat is associated with bad luck or an owl with wisdom.

Within the interior of the Oude Kerk, one can also see depictions of mystical stories, such as in the wooden carvings of the choir stalls, where faces transform into leaf patterns or animals, and in the vault paintings, which feature angels and other magical figures. In a similar way, nineteenth-century film inventors, with the magic lantern and phantasmagoria theatre, sought methods to bring ghostly apparitions to life using light and movement. In the Oude Kerk, Minne Kersten revives this technique.

During the run of the exhibition, we are organising an extensive public programme featuring an artist talk, a film evening in collaboration with Eye Filmmuseum, concerts, workshops, and guided tours. View the full programme here.

Minne Kersten has been invited to create new work for the side spaces of the Oude Kerk. It invites visitors to explore the space in a different way.

Minne Kersten (b. 1993) lives and works alternately in Amsterdam and Paris. Her practice encompasses installations, video, sculpture, and painting. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux (FR, 2024), Glasgow International (UK, 2024), Bonnefanten Museum (NL, 2023), and the 16th Lyon Biennale (FR, 2022). In 2022, she received the Volkskrant Visual Arts Audience Award and was nominated for the Royal Award for Contemporary Painting. She has participated in residencies at De Ateliers, Amsterdam (NL), Triangle-Astérides, Marseille (FR), and Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (FR). She is represented by Annet Gelink Gallery in Amsterdam.

There's Always Another Twist is is supported by Pauwhof Fonds and Outset Netherlands.