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This fragment is part of the "CulturalxCollabs - Weaving the Future" carpet.
Through the fragment we trace the journey of the fragment owners and their collabs as they explore, experiment and creatively advance socially relevant themes. Here is the fragment as we are sending it on this three and a half-year journey.
Follow this story to observe the transformations the fragment undergoes over the course of these years...
The journey continues...
...with Elena Alimurzaeva | Wiciya
DIALOGUE WITH DRAGON
Water for the Dragon
A Dialogue with the Seventeenth-Century Caucasian Dragon Carpet
Introduction
This dialogue begins with a seventeenth-century Caucasian Dragon Carpet preserved in the Museum for Islamic Art in Berlin. During the Second World War, an incendiary bomb destroyed a large part of the carpet. During its restoration, the missing areas were deliberately left visible rather than reconstructed, allowing the history of destruction to remain part of the carpet itself.
Many years later, a contemporary Doppelgänger was created to enter into dialogue with the original. Through the CulturalxCollabs project, I received Fragment No. 65 of this contemporary carpet and became part of the dialogue it had already begun.
This dialogue is especially meaningful to me because I come from the Caucasus.
The Author’s Act
While preparing to work with the fragment, I felt that one element was still missing: water.
The carpet carried fire, loss, memory, restoration, and the continued presence of the Dragon. I did not want to answer the fire, erase the damage, or intervene in the history of destruction. My attention remained with the Dragon.
In my act, I pour water into my hand. As the water disappears, one transparent bead remains. That single bead enters the surviving woven field and rests almost invisibly within it, like a drop of water.
I do not answer destruction with another act of destruction. I do not attempt to extinguish what belongs to the carpet’s history.
I answer life with life.
I offer water to the Dragon.
Within Bead Impact Art, the bead is not decoration and is not used to construct an image. It is the material point through which intention becomes action and enters reality.
Here, the transparent bead does not depict water. It fixes the act through which water was offered to the Dragon.
The Dialogue
This dialogue does not challenge the history of the carpet or attempt to correct it. I accept everything that already exists: the original weaving, the fire, the areas of loss, the restoration, and the contemporary dialogue created through the Doppelgänger.
My act does not replace any of them. It enters what is already there through one additional real action.
The transparent bead is fixed within the part of the woven field that remains. It does not occupy the areas of loss, repair what was destroyed, or attempt to reverse the history of the carpet. It enters the surviving field as water offered to the Dragon.
The original carpet carries its history. The Doppelgänger continues the dialogue with that history. My act enters this continuing relation and introduces another presence: water, life, and care.
The field remains. The act enters. The dialogue continues.
Music
An original musical composition was created specifically for the video of this action. The composition accompanies the act and is heard in the video documentation of Water for the Dragon.
The Unit
One transparent bead. One real act. Water for the Dragon.
Wiciya
Founder of Bead Impact Art.
...AND ON WE GO...
...with Uta Baldauf
This is the first creative collaboration by the couple: Musician Craig Sutton aka The Flamenco Thief and performance artist and poet Uta Baldauf. Craig and Uta were visiting family in Berlin when, over a big plate of Italian pasta and a bottle of good wine, the carpet project was excitingly presented by Anne, who had previously won piece #65 at the opening of the project in the raffle.
Craig is a busy solo artist from Wiltshire who has been touring all around the world playing Spanish guitar with a contemporary twist. Uta is an East German-born English-based artist and nurse whose home in Gloucestershire is her creative playground and outlet between shift work. Together they share a flat in the countryside near Stroud with high ceilings, a love for food, art, humanity, jackets and live performance.
Teppich is a meditation of the object and language of the carpet/Teppich and how time changes meaning and stories.
Teppich
[TRANSCRIPT]
Unter den Teppich kehren
Auf dem Teppich bleiben
Den roten Teppich aus rollen
Under the carpet lays the floor
The ground resting in darkness
Layers of layer
Twisted fibres
Yarn
Threads over threads
Threads of time
Coding they way into a cover
Stories being told on and about
Through out and beyond
Spilled drinks, food, footsteps
Prayers of hope and despair
Years after years
After month
Weeks
Days
Hours
Minutes
Seconds
Echoes
Threat over threats
Threats of humanity
Unter den Teppich kehren
Auf dem Teppich bleiben
The journey begins...
...with Anne Haehnel
Anne Haehnel (AH) imagines herself in a conversation with Fragment #65 (F65)
in October 2023
AH: Good day, FRAGMENT NO.65, welcome to your temporary home.
F65: Good day, Anne. I've had bad luck with you: you have no idea about carpets, especially not about Caucasian Dragon carpets, and you don't belong to any cultural institution or network. Why are you even allowed to participate in the art project?
AH: I won you in one of the three draws on the project's launch day and immediately went to see the original at the Museum of Islamic Art. You're just a bit of a doppelganger and could be a little less arrogant.
F65: Hmm... yes, you're right. I apologize! But I would still like to know why, as a carpet novice, you went to the vernissage.
AH: I've known the project leader, Anna Beselin, for decades, and together with my friend Ilse, we decided to show her our respect for her passion project. The fact that my ticket number was drawn during our trip to the Neuen Hof and I became a Collab'er was a huge surprise.
in November 2023
F65: Actually, I quite like it with you. How boring it would have been to have to hang on a wall in an exhibition.
With you, I could lie at the feet
of Eva Evdokimova,
one of the greatest ballerinas
of the romantic classical
ballet of the 20th century.
AH: Yes, that was a great honor for you.
in December 2023
AH: And how did you like being part of the Christmas decoration?
F65: That was a nice gesture.
F65: But even nicer
I found our
trip to the Spree.
in January 2024
AH: After the Christmas break, I will take you to the Goethe Dancers, former students of the Goethe-Gymnasium Lichterfelde, who have dedicated themselves to international dance folklore. There you will meet Anna again.
in February 2024
AH: Dear Fragment #65, it is now time for you to continue your journey, your destination is the cultural city of Stroud, where you are already expected.
F65: Dear Anne, after the wonderful time with you, I look forward to my new home in England.
Front and Back
About the Project
The Museum for Islamic Art's project, #CulturalxCollabs - Weaving the future, celebrates the transformative power of cultural exchange and the shared threads that unite us all. All the things we love, have loved and will ever love come from cultural exchange, migration and diversity, or as we like to call it #CulturalxCollabs.
100 carpet fragments, cut from a replica of the iconic dragon carpet, will travel the world (delivered by DHL). The fragments will ignite #CulturalxCollabs with co-creators, inspiring human ingenuity, fostering community and ultimately demonstrating how cultural exchange enriches all our lives.
Follow #CulturalxCollabs on Instagram as the project unfolds...
...or learn more here
Weaving the Future
Join us on a journey with 100 carpet fragments as they travel around the world for three and a half years, finding temporary homes while bridging cultural boundaries, fostering worldwide community united by the power of human stories.
Fragment Journeys
100 carpet fragments part of the "CulturalxCollabs - Weaving the Future" project. Follow their journeys through the ever changing owners' over three and a half years.
Creating a carpet
A 17th-century Caucasian carpet, burned by an incendiary bomb during the Second World War, serves as the model for a replica, woven in 2022 by a family in Rajasthan, India. Over 2.3 million knots later, it is being sent out into the world in 100 fragments. This is the story of how it came to be.
Where is the Dragon?
The star of the "CulturalxCollabs - Weaving the Future" project is a so-called Caucasian dragon carpet from the 17th century. A dragon carpet - all well and good - but: where is the dragon?
