RECLAIMING THE CHURCH was a site-specific multimedia performance gathering developed in collaboration with Abbess NuN and organist Samuel Kok inside St.-Martin-Kirche Potshausen, Germany in 2022.
The event brought together fragments of KYBALION the Musical, ritual performance, live improvisation, opera, organ music, symbolic storytelling, and experimental sound environments within a temporary contemplative space exploring spirituality, embodiment, transformation, and collective presence.
At the center of the gathering was an attempt to re-open and reanimate the energetic atmosphere of the church through sound, ritual, improvisation, movement, and collaborative performance.
Abbess NuN and Giek_1 came together in a timeless symbolic space — bonded by fate — seeking to reconnect the energetic womb of Mother Earth with Father Church. Through performance, music, ritual aesthetics, and improvisation, the gathering explored what it might mean to reclaim sacred space beyond rigid structures, inherited dogma, and institutional containment.
Fragments from KYBALION the Musical — a two-hour musical theatre work composed by Giek_1 in 2021–2022 using quotations from The Kybalion — were woven together with Abbess NuN’s operatic and ritual performance Amanita Muscaria, blending Gregorian atmospheres, club culture, symbolic ritualism, and experimental vocal work.
The evening further evolved through large-scale live improvisations with Samuel Kok on church organ, creating moments where opera, spoken word, ritual gesture, organ drones, improvisational singing, and atmospheric sound merged into a collective immersive environment.
The event functioned both as performance and symbolic intervention — an attempt to soften, open, and transform the accumulated atmosphere of the church space through embodied artistic ritual.
Video fragments from the event were recorded by Paul Radtke.
More about KYBALION the Musical here.
