2020 started with a BIG BANG and now we all have to adapt to the change. Today, more than ever we need a place where we can feel at home. Quarantined in our apartments, we trying to feel comfortable. But what do you need to feel at home? And what does exactly the phrase “feel at home” mean?
The project aims to document Berliners during quarantine and investigate the meaning of “home” and to connect people. Despite being isolated in our places, we can still be connected. I would like to create a network of people that support each other, personally and professionally.
IT IS NOT EASY, I KNOW, BUT WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER.
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JEWELLERY DESIGNER – ROMANIA
What does home mean to you? For me, home is more than a place. Home is a feeling. A feeling of safeness, intimate familiar space, freedom, and environment for expressing creativity. Since I was a kid I’ve always had a special bond with my home. Every time I’ve left for a summer camp or a long journey I’ve always missed my home. I remember missing the smell, smell that I only rediscover when I came back after a long time.
At home, there is a certain familiarity with the sounding objects, each of them being accepted, having a history and paying a role in this private environment.
Home is like a magic place. A tiny, personal, fairytale world. It is almost like an entity that we create.
MIHAELA’s INSTAGRAM
RELOCATION CONSULTANT – GERMANY / ISRAEL
What does home mean to you? My home is my place to chill, relax and be myself. It is always my safe place, the place that allows me to do great things and supports (and mirrors) my growth, development and wellbeing.
STUDENT – VENEZUELA
What does home mean to you? In general home for me is a place, where I can feel safe, comfortable, where I can relax without being disturbed. It’s also a place, where I set up the rules.
DANCER + YOGI
What does home mean to you?
I’m coming home to PEOPLE.
I’m coming home to LANGUAGE.
I’m coming home to PLACES.
I’m coming home to my PRACTICE.
BUT MOST OF ALL
I’m coming home to MYSELF.
AGAIN + AGAIN.
VISUAL ARTIST AND ART HISTORIAN
What does home mean to you? Home means a safe and comfortable place for me. A place where I can be creative and relaxed. My home is my own corner of the world, with cosy spots and beautiful light, a nice kitchen and a big table to host many guests and feed them delicious food I’ve cooked. My home reflects my personal aesthetics and the colors I love. I enjoy when my home is filled with flowers and art.
JEWELLERY DESIGNER – USA
What does home mean to you? I’m an extroverted introvert, so home is always one of my favorite places to be. If I really think about it though, it’s more of a feeling than a place. Of course there’s my actual home that I share with my amazing husband, Tom. I’m happiest when things here feel warm, inviting, and bright. But home is also every city I’ve ever lived in, from Berlin to Chicago, Los Angeles, to Portland and everywhere in between. Home is my friends and family, and all the people that I keep close.
ARCHITECT – 3D ARTIST – SLOVENIA
What does home mean to you? Home is an extension of my very being.
PHOTOGRAPHER – GERMANY
What does home mean to you? Home for me is a mixture of cozyness and style. I love a mixture of modern furnitures and old pieces with history of that place.
MARKETING STRATEGIES AND CONCEPTS – USA
What does home mean to you? Home is more than where the heart is, or where I lay my head down to sleep. Home is a safe place, a comfortable place. A space that I have built up around me made up of physical objects, but more importantly the memories associated with the objects.
Home is my bedroom, my bed. Fresh sheets, quiet, with a faint hint of lavender or bergamot; and usually a whiff of marijuana somewhere in the background. The dog bowl is full, or empty, and there is always fresh water.
SOFTWARE EFFICIENCY ENGINEER – GERMANY
What does home mean to you? Home is where I can be myself.
WRITER – ENGLAND
What does home mean to you? Home is the place in the world that you make for yourself.
ART STUDENT – INDONESIA
What does home mean to you? Home, for me, is the condition of possibilities that allows me to represent all kinds of subjective dimensions within a space: power relations, intimacy, (semi-)public encounters, imagination, memory, attention, desires, understanding.
PHOTOGRAPHER, WRITER – CANADA
What does home mean to you? I think home can be many things…inwardly, to me, it’s the feeling you have when you’re living with integrity (when your actions align with your values). Physically, it’s a place where you can easily transition back and forth between your comfort/default zone and your growth/learning zone. Beyond that, where the surrounding infrastructure supports you in the ways you most need. For me, it’s my flat in Berlin that I share with my partner, filled with books, movies, music, and good food…and the kind of pillows I like…my hidden chocolate stashes…and my beloved desk where I can work and unwind and decompress, sometimes all at the same time…and where I can really just ‘be’.
MUSICIAN – SERBIA / SYRIA
What does home mean to you? For me, home is the place where I practice, teach and compose music. it gives me freedom to be creative.
COACH AND DESIGNER – GERMANY
What does home mean to you? To me, home is a place in my heart. A warm feeling of trust, security and love. To an extend, I believe that I can take home with me. I truly feel at home when my husband is with me and when I have enough space for myself to just be. When it comes to places, I feel a sense of home in both Germany and England, where I have lived for a while. Most at home I feel in southern Germany, in the small town where I spent my teenage years.
VISUAL ARTIST – IRAN
What does home mean to you? Since I left Iran a few months ago, I was asking myself where is home exactly? And I was thinking that I want to live in many cities and countries and home doesn’t have a meaning, but after Iran’s internet was shot down for over a week I came to the conclusion that where ever I go, Iran would be my home forever. The feeling in that week was like the feeling that I had when my grandparents sold their house where I have grown up in. I felt unsafe. It was like if I had agreed to board a boat and the boat was destroyed in the middle of the way and I had to use another boat. No matter how much better the second boat is than the first boat, the important thing is that I agreed to go to sea with the first boat that I trusted and felt safe on. For me the meaning of home is where without a doubt you feel you belong to and also it is where you first learn how to pronounce it.
gina
JEWELLERY DESIGNER – USA/UK
What does home mean to you?”Home is where the heart is” sounds kinda cheezy, but I really can feel ‘at home’ in many places depending upon how I organise ‘my’ space, the energy and creation of a sense of stability. Right now my home is my actual home in Kreuzberg, Berlin. What do I need to feel at home here? Plants help big time. A clean bath tub (with candles) where I can relax at the end of the day. A kitchen which has some of my special bits and bobs so that I know I can cook nourishing food. A few of my little knick knacks and some sage or palo santo. Objects that remind me of home are hand-me-downs from my grandmother, for example, and little gifts from friends, photos, some stuff I’ve made….
WRITER – GERMANY
What does home mean to you? Home is, to me, a collection of snapshots I mentally took over the years, that are, luckily, always with me. They are always vivid, continuously living, and unfolding, even if I sometimes changed my address.
For instance, sitting one day at the hairdresser’s waiting for the dye to dry, I peeked outside to notice the windows of my former apartment, where I have spent 1,5 years in 2017. The lights were on, the feeling was of strange nostalgia, a waned down nostalgia – my hair color wanes down too. It hurts and it doesn’t hurt: it has happened a life away.
This is the quality of all (temporary) homes:
It is like seeing an old lover on the street and not daring to go to them and tell them hello. But we can still take a sneaky peek…can’t we?
ARCHITETTO – ITALY
What does home mean to you? Home is for me the place where everything is exactly as I want it to be. The materials, colours, lights, furniture arrangement, temperature, everything contributes to create my nest where I can relax or be creative.
Everything that can inspire my creativity must be in sight.
Tidying up or upsetting the arrangement of furniture is part of the creative process, it is experimentation, adaptation, chaos from which order is created and which can be questioned at any time.
Home is the place where I am free to express myself.