In Search of the Blue Danube

“When I was aged around 7 years old, every morning at school we would enter morning assembly to some preselected recording playing on an old record player that would be wheeled in on a movable trolley. Each musical selection would be played every day for a week, or two. I remember walking in single file and silently sitting cross-legged waiting for the headmaster to arrive and raise his arm as a signal to sing the first hymn of the morning. One such piece of music was The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss 2. The name and the music brought rise to feelings of being adrift on the turbulent flows of a majestic river in some far-away land.” Journal entry, September 2015.

The above memory inspired this walking project, In Search of the Blue Danube – my first practice-research I conducted as part of my doctoral thesis. In October 2015, I travelled to Vienna with my partner, who was attending a conference. While my partner was in seminars, I set myself the simple task of drifting through the city in search of the Danube River that inspired the piece of music from my childhood memory. The concept of drifting began as the dérive (Guy Debord 1981), a psychogeography method where individuals or groups wandered cities and “let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there” (1981, 62). Similarly, I allowed the drift to guide my actions and methods of reflection. With my daughter sleeping in her stroller (Image 2), I walked and meandered, documenting my experience using only a mobile phone to take pictures and write notes. I would be inspired by spaces and sights, such as large tortoise graffiti I found on the banks of the Danube Canal (Image 4-5), or walking under a large iron bridge that made me feel I had been swallowed by a whale (Image 9). I allowed my body and my imagination to respond to these spaces, writing short stories and meditating on them. As I drifted towards the Danube, I was drifting towards an understanding of how my practice could begin to respond to my research questions. It felt like I was on a drift with my research, as opposed to being adrift in my research.

The following text is a journal account this walking-as-research.

I set off from the Vienna Rathaus at around 13.00pm, heading in north-easterly direction through the Rathauspark and crossing the Universitätsring into pedestrian side streets (Figure A.1). My first photograph (Figure A.2) was taken at 13.38pm. By this point my daughter begun her post-lunch nap and I therefore estimated I had around two hours of uninterrupted observation ahead of me. I was conscious of how I was documenting events and cautious of spending too much time looking at my phone and allowing it to mediate my experience. I added constraints: My observations were to be succinct and to the point, I would note where each photograph was taken, and I would only take a photograph if something ‘caught my eye.’

This first photograph shows a cobbled street about which I made my first observation. A line of tarmac ran down its centre, luring people onto its trajectory as they walked, creating an unintentional path. I imagined what decisions, or combination of events, led to the replacement of cobble-stones with tarmac? The laying of pipes? Financial constraints? Time? Did cobbles ever exist there? Could it have been an open gutter? By setting the intention of walking I was becoming more aware, perhaps artificially aware, of the environment I was walking in.

After a while I reach the Danube. I pause to take it in, looking down at the river from the road (Figure A.3). It isn’t blue. The water, the concrete and the graffiti feel familiar, reminiscent of my neighbourhood of Hackney Wick in London and the canals we often walk as a family. I dwell on the scene before me, the imagined river from a piece of classical music that stuck in my memory for over 30 years. I am not disappointed by its lack of majesty. I make my way down to the Danube.

‘I am currently walking Mercan to sleep. Leaves are being blown by the estate gardener with a petrol-powered leaf-blower in bursts of a few seconds at consistent intervals. The notes and experiences I am recounting grows further away. It is Wednesday, and I am “working from home” and the tasks I need to achieve are as present in my mind as this exercise of re-counting and re-telling. It sounds as though the leaf-blower has found a particularly troublesome pile of leaves. I have my first meeting with my supervisor, Juliet at 2pm in the café of the British Library. I wonder what it is I am writing about and how it even relates to my research.’ Journal entry, 4 November 2015.

I walk down via a slope wide enough to be accessed by a car and onto the wide pedestrian pavement that runs alongside the water’s edge. Turning around I see more graffiti much like that which I had seen from the bridge (Figure A.4). One read: I’m alone but I still push people away (Figure A.5).

Someone was here before me and left a story for me to read. Who wrote this? What events created the need for this individual to write on this wall? Is this an act out of many, or a one off? Does this individual carry a pen with them for this purpose? Is this a public commentary? A cry for help? Am I now the audience in a performance of public art? Whether the intention I felt sadness when I thought about the individual who wrote the message. I turn towards the Danube with the words repeating in my head, resonating. The words begin to conjure up a world beyond that which is in front of me. A world in which I am no longer me, sitting with a pen in my hand, but a character of a story. The view is familiar to this character and all they feel is sadness.

To the right of the text has been drawn a huge tortoise (Figure A.6). Its neck extends out grotesquely towards the text, however there is no evidence that they were created by the same person. Its position suggests the text is a more recent edition. As my eyes follow the tortoise’s neck it becomes transformed until its head is that of a snake, a hybrid of a reptile and serpent.

So many stories exist in this place I wonder what I could add. But then it occurred to me that this place, or indeed any place, exists, and is informed and perceived through a complex interlinking mesh of stories. I exist in this moment because of a childhood memory. I am experiencing sadness in a place I have never been before. Does the sadness belong to me, or to this place?

I turn towards the river and sit down. What story could I leave for someone? If I had the means to have my story heard what would it be? I create another constraint for my observations. In no more than three sentences tell a story that, if found by another in the place it was written might make them see, feel, or hear those surroundings differently. This is the first thing I wrote (Figure A.7):

‘A tortoise sits. Staring at the fast green flow of the Danube. Wondering if it should walk slowly into its velvet coolness. I’m so alone… But I always push people away.’

I didn’t stick to the constraints I created as I wanted to hear how someone/something would respond to the tortoise’s despair.

‘I will never push you away said the river. I will hold you and hug you for ever more. Come… walk into me.’

And so, inspired by the graffiti and the feeling I experienced through them, I leave a story of a tortoise contemplating suicide on a piece of paper by the concrete banks of the Danube.

I continue to walk along the Danube heading west and notice that the act of writing my first story has created a heightened sense of my surroundings. I consider the power of restriction as a creative act. How short a piece of prose could be to have the desired effect. One sentence, perhaps? A single statement whispered in the ear of a passer-by to tweak, to nudge their perception of where they stand, of what they can (or cannot) see.

‘I am now on my multiple re-edit of these notes. It is November and the once leaf-laden trees outside my bedroom window are all but bare. Bird’s nests and squirrels are revealed in their branches. I see more of my neighbours yards and the park in the distance. I don’t believe in coincidences but I cannot find a better word that fits. So, I will say it and then disown it. The coincidence is the tortoise. Such an important figure in my partner’s work and now an inspiration in my first story.’ Journal entry, November 2015

I come to the underside of a bridge that passes over the river. Its iron structure looks organic. It is noticeably cooler and damper than where I stood seconds ago. I notice my breath and allow my imagination to anchor to its rhythm. ‘I am swallowed, calls Jonah. I hear its heart echo. Its ribs swell and shrivel with my own breath’ (Figure A.8).

After two stories I am beginning to see things that aren’t there as my imagination takes hold. Spiders holding up bridges ‘I cannot hold it. I cannot hold it. I cannot hold it’ (Figure A.9). I am leaving stories to be read, on scraps of paper, hoping that they are found.

I retrace my journey back to the Vienna Rathaus (Figure A.1). When I return food is being served to the conference guests in a beautiful inner courtyard and my daughter has woken up. As I wait for my partner to finish her last presentation of the day Mercan walks up and down a large hall, her path defined by the fascinatingly ornate iron grills of a long disused underfloor heating system that spans either side of the room. As I look at my route on Google Maps I realise that I had only made it as far as the Danube Canal, a waterway many miles south of my intended goal. I plan a longer walk tomorrow.

I did find the Danube the next day while also stumbling upon an unusual air defence tower built during the Second World War in the process.

View my thesis page, for more context of this project. Or,  download my thesis, Bodies (in)Form: Reconceptualising Embodied Design as Intercorporeal Encounters, on the Goldsmiths GRO website to read about project outcomes.