JoyJumpers
Wow, what an experience we are all facing these days. It is my first pandemic, so let’s share how we are facing it, as some experience do frighten us all, some do confuse us, but some do also make us nutty and happy. I like to talk about the last ones mentioned, always convinced that creativity can help and guides to positivity, so I like to share this aspect of the pandemic with you.
Shops are allowed to open again, so is our headquarter and flagship store RUG STAR in Berlin, district Mitte. For the ones who don’t know Berlin too well, this area is known for their global avant-garde, as many creative and liberated people settled here in the last 20 years and call it now their home and hood. But alive and vibrant before, now the hood appears empty as COVID-19 rules the routine, the result is an empty city center and for us, the call to conquer now our hood with our latest project “JoyJumper, conquer your city”.
I hope in the following lines I am writing right now I can make you join. United we are strong to create a visual statement, with the happiness we want to be seen by others around the globe, not more and not less. Talking about the passion for the work we are creating in the cities we are loving and inhabiting.
Since the middle of May 2020, I am meeting up once a week with my dear friend and Berlin-based photographer Caroline Saage. We start moving from my shop at Rosenthaler Platz, pulling a packed handcart with 8 contemporary rug designs as our inventory for the next two hours and explore the normally packed places in their new appearance.
Whenever we see a space abandoned, we stop and throw a hand-knotted rug over our heads, the rest comes automatically in the emotion of the moment. Of course, I love the work of Carolin Saage, with her we created also the KingsRobe campaign in Berlin and Jaipur in the village of the weavers, where we shot our contemporary rugs as robes wrapping our bodies. But to be honest, everybody of you can do it with a phone, as snapshots do have their performative beauty, and this is the aesthetic we are talking about.
Caroline and I agreed, we try to do this for the project for the next weeks or maybe months. In German, you would say „Bis das es uns aus den Ohren herauskommt“. I tried to put this phrase into my google translator, the result is the following: “Until it comes out of our ears”. Why: so we can love with joy later about the time we faced our first pandemic. Convert what makes us confused or frightened into joy with the ability of creativity. Please join us, we are all in this together.
From my heart,
Jürgen Dahlmanns, founder of RUG STAR
All JoyJumpers
