Wow, what an experience we are all facing these days. It is my first pandemic, so let’s share how we are facing it. Some experiences frighten us all, some confuse us, but some also make us nutty and happy. I would like to talk about the last type that I mentioned as I am always convinced that creativity can help and guide us to positivity. Therefore, I would like to share this aspect of the pandemic with you.
Here in Germany shops are now allowed to open, as is our headquarters and flagship Rug Star store in Berlin’s Mitte district. For the people who don’t know Berlin well, this area is known for its global avant-garde, as many creative people have settled here in the last twenty years and now call it their home. Alive and vibrant before, now the hood appears empty as Covid-19 rules our routines. The result is an empty city centre and for us it appears as a call to conquer our hood with our latest project ’Joy Jumper, conquer your city’.
I hope that by the lines I am writing I can make you join this project. United we are strong in creating a visual statement. We want to be seen by others around the globe with happiness, no more, no less. Here we are demonstrating the passion we feel towards the work we are creating, in the cities that we love and inhabit.
Since mid-May 2020 I have been meeting up once a week with my dear friend, Berlin-based photographer Carolin Saage. Starting from my shop at Rosenthaler Platz, we have been pulling a packed handcart weighed down with eight rugs as our inventory for the next two hours. We explore the normally packed parts of the city with their new empty appearance.
Whenever we see an abandoned space, we stop and throw a rug over our heads and the rest comes automatically in the emotion of the moment. Of course, I love the work of Carolin Saage. It was with her that we created the KingsRobe campaign in Berlin and in Jaipur, in the village of the weavers. But to be honest, every one of you could do the same with a phone, as snapshots do have their performative beauty, and this is the aesthetic we are talking about.
Carolin and I have made an agreement, we will try do this as a project for the next weeks or maybe even months. In German you would say ’Bis das es uns aus den Ohren herauskommt’. I tried to put this phrase into Google Translate and the result is the following: ’Until it comes out of our ears’. Why? So we can laugh with joy later about the time we faced our first pandemic. Convert what makes us confused or afraid into joy with creativity. Please join us, we are all in this together. From my heart, Jürgen Dahlmanns, founder of Rug Star.
