I make a sound with my mouth, this specific kind of click with the tongue rolled back, pressed onto the palate, and quickly released. As a response, a head lifts. The dog stands up, every step towards me a slow stretch. I say Good morning, squat down to put the head through a collar, a movement followed by a mechanical click of attaching the leash. I stand up and touch my pockets. Left: keys, phone. Right: treats, small plastic bags. Our city map I carry in my head. I open the door, and with the movement of an arm, I invite the dog to go outside first.
BEFORE WE LEAVE
Moving through the city in conversation with the dog, I reconstruct my understanding of the environment. I enter a landscape of another, where we meet dangerous plastic bags, stairs bringing joy when quickly jumped up or down, and small mammals I hopefully see before they meet the dog’s teeth. I am an architect, and walking with the dog is part of my spatial practice. Through it, I add layers to my map of the city, not only informed by my strategies of navigating it but extended by observations that go beyond my own body.
LET’S GO
We exit onto a street in Vienna’s 3rd district. It is the early hours of a day already bright. Passing parking cars and trees growing out of brown circles between the grey of the street, we walk ahead until I see a sign: a white letter, a capitalised U surrounded by a bright blue. We enter the metro station. While I figure out the connection we will take, I hold the leash of the dog short.
A SHORT STOP (SCHLOSS SCHÖNBRUNN)
We are in a symmetrical garden, and I know we should not be here. The dog does not know that, the dog did not see the signs at the entry. I try to move through the space as if I, too, am not aware of this transgression of a border made of bold black letters and pictograms and walk with a confidence I copy from the dog. It is a strolling way of moving, following observation after observation. The dog sniffs here and there; I look there and here. We move on gravel that is part of a layout of what looks like a star from above. For us, it is a path along a line of trees cut to have edges. Somebody whistles, and the dog turns around. I try not to, but then I hear words, and I do look, too. A body in a uniform is approaching us, saying Dogs forbidden here! And Can’t you read!, I answer Oh, sorry and No, I was not aware, please excuse… and walk off, now in another way of moving: more focused and holding the leash close. Another whistle makes me stop and turn around again. The closest exit is there!, a finger points into the opposite direction. My eyes follow the gesture while the dog starts to sniff the gravel again. I soften the grip on the leash and let the dog do. The man in the uniform stands there looking at us. He looks at the dog, at me, at the dog, the hand still stuck in the air. The dog is done, lifts the head. I start to move and we walk away into the gesture. The man lowers his hand, turns around, and tends to a branch of a tree. The castle behind the fence, the fence around the garden, and the pointed finger of the gardener are all gestures of a similar narrative.
A WALK ALONG WATER (DONAUKANAL)
We walk along a stream of water without getting close to it. The canal runs through the city, the water it contains unruffled and tamed. Left and right of it walkways similar to streets, even grey glimmering in the midday sun. I touch the ground with one whole hand and start to count One – Two – Three – Four – Five – Six – Seven and stop. If I can count this far with my skin on the street, it is safe for the dog’s paws, too. We continue our walk next to others by foot or by bike, most of them moving faster than us. Between them, the dog runs without a leash. From time to time, I ask the dog to come closer to me again. Suspicious of the excited sniffs of the dog and human’s ideas, I fear there might be pizza or rat poison hidden in the occasional patches of greenery. The dog’s nose now follows something invisible to my eyes, the black of the nose in a zigzag in the middle of the grey of the street. Suddenly, the movement stops; the dog looks up, squats down, and pees. Now, I see something too: multiple lines running towards my feet, the grey darkening underneath the liquid. I step aside and think I also need to pee. I know I will need to cross the canal to access a public toilet, and I know it smells like pee under the next bridge. I also know the pee there is not from a body like mine or a body like the dog’s.
A MEMORY IN THE MIDDLE OF A STREET
I remember the time when the dog would only pee in the middle of the street. It was at a time when the dog was still afraid of houses, freshly coming from another country’s streets. When we would cross from one side to the other, right in the middle the dog would stop, squat, and pee. I found myself standing there too, waiting for the dog to finish, with cars waiting in front of us. The people in the cars were often angry, if at me or the dog, I could not say. It felt irrelevant anyway. I started to shrink my shoulders, thinking These are our streets, too.
A THEMEPARK OF GLASS AND CONCRETE (ALTE WU / ALTHANGRUND)
Already for quite some time, we walk alongside what feels more like a spaceship than a building. On one end, a public transport station with an office building above, it transitions into a university building above a railway freight station. The offices and universities are almost entirely gone, but their architecture stays, stuck in their time. We follow facades replicating the same elements repeatedly (mirrored glass, metal grids, exposed aggregate concrete slabs) on its various layers, sometimes next to us, sometimes above, sometimes below. Climbing up the most generous of its stairs, we arrive at a level that feels like another kind of ground, while it is also a roof. We are standing in front of an entrance with six doors. Signs are pointing in various directions (-> UZA1 / UZA 2, <- WUW), offering ways to navigate between the buildings. Looking around, making sure we are alone, there is the click of unleashing the dog. I will not follow the signs; I will follow the dog. We turn around corners, go up and down stairs, and discover a landscape that is a building. I watch the dog run circles around a ventilation shaft. I catch the dog around corners waiting for me to catch up, the body positioned in a proposed direction of where to go next. I do not understand the layout, the connections of bridges, tunnels and platforms. But on our visits, the dog often leads me to similar moments, to what seems to be favourite elements to run around or jump on.
Following the dog through this megastructure of a future that is not there, I feel like walking through a Sci-Fi novel. The dog, a guide in its landscape, shows how the structure can be used and what senses the dog possesses to use for orientation. The offered world is mundane enough for me to still walk in it without mind or body acrobatics, yet foreign enough to make me wonder about all the ways space could be - and already is - inhabited and experienced beyond my understanding of it, beyond what I can access. I lie down between high dry grass, surrounded by windows that are mirrors. The dog sits next to me. It feels like together we hack the idea of the building’s purpose. We are rewriting its narrative, to include it on the map of the dog and me. Its corners are already inhabited by others, too. I see a mouse crossing the path (from a green over grey to another kind of green), and a rat running along a handrail. I feel an insect on my knee. The facade still reflects the last bits of sun. I hear something I cannot place. I call the dog to come even closer and sit back up. A mechanical click follows. The leash is back on, and we leave.
GOOD NIGHT, PRETTY
Walking back towards the metro station, along the straight long street next to the megastructure, somebody calls from behind. The person also makes clicks with the tongue, they sound like the one I make, too, and the dog turns around. Hey, so pretty, he says and it is unclear if it’s addressed to me or the dog. I stop underneath the next street light, and do not respond. I am already part of another kind of conversation, one between the dog and me and the city. He passes us, and we wait in the light until he is out of view. The dog pees at the light pole, and we continue our way.
published 2024 in VOLUME MAG #66 —