Hütteldorferstraße 101
2018
RESEARCH PROJECT: PERFORMANCE, INSTALLATION, VIDEO(06"22"), DIMENSION VARIABLE
GERMAN DICTIONARY(AS FOUND IN 2018 AT ZIEGLERGASSE), PASTEBOARD,
Abstract
Hütteldorferstraße 101, Vienna—An Address That Exists in Vienna
This project began with two workshops. Participants walked through the city of Vienna in groups twice: once for three hours at midnight and again for three hours at noon. They had no clocks, no smartphones, and no maps. The group always followed the person walking in front without speaking.
Through this act of blending into the city, I discovered two things: vanished buildings and an ownerless German dictionary. The moment when a building disappears—leaving its mark on the walls of its neighbors—is still just a point on the timeline of history. It is like a child's language acquisition, a gradual process so fluid that the child does not remember learning it. A record that leaves no memory behind.
Some developing languages evolve by interweaving their stories. The lost body of a building is supplemented by a German dictionary, transformed to match the volume of the architecture that once stood at that address.
ウィーンのHütteldorferstraße 101 ウィーンに存在する住所。このプロジェクトは2 つのワークショップから始まった。深夜0 時から3 時間と正午から3 時間の2 回、グループに分かれてウィーン市内を歩いた。時計もスマートフォンも地図もない。グループは常に先頭を歩く人を追いかける。言葉は発しない。街と同化するその行為を通して私が発見したのは、消えた建物と持ち主不明のドイツ語辞書だった。隣接する左右の壁に痕跡を残す建物が消えた時間は、まだ歴史の線上の一点に過ぎない。それはまるで、子供が言語習得の段階を、その緩やかな流れゆえ、本人はその時期を覚えていないような、記憶に残らない記録のようなものだ。いくつかの発展途上の言語は、互いに交互に物語を形成する。失われた身体は、その住所に以前存在した建築物のボリュームに変換されたドイツ語の辞書によって補完される。
In the city of Vienna, there are no gaps between buildings. When a building is demolished, it leaves behind scars on the adjacent walls, like scabs. The city regenerates itself. In fact, when I searched for similar traces of demolished buildings at the Building Authority, I found that either modern architectural plans for the future had already been filed, or the files contained nothing but emptiness—stripped of all past blueprints.
Only at Hütteldorferstraße 101, a former butcher shop, was there no future. What remained was merely a scab.
ウィーンの街には建物との間に隙間がない。取り壊された建物は左右の壁に瘡蓋のような痕跡を残しているみたいだった。街は再生する。実際同じように取り越された跡を残した場所を建築監督署で調べると未来のモダンな建築計画書がファイルされているか、計画のために全ての過去の図面が抜き取られた空のファイルだけが存在していた。肉屋だったHütteldorferstraß101 にだけなんの未来も存在していなかった。残されたのは瘡蓋だけ。
ウィーンの建築監督署でのリサーチから1800 年から2018 年までの建築図面から取り壊しになる前には肉屋があり食用としてこの建物内で動物の解体作業が行われ、建物裏手敷地内には保存のため、氷を所蔵する蔵があったことがわかった。
Research at the Vienna Building Authority, examining architectural plans from 1800 to 2018, revealed that before its demolition, the building housed a butcher shop where animals were slaughtered for consumption. Additionally, at the rear of the property, an ice storage facility was used for preservation.
We live within a cycle of disappearance and restoration. As long as we are alive, everything moves in a certain direction toward the future—this can be a form of progress, but it can also be a form of decline—unless we archive each passing moment. The process of language acquisition resembles the metabolism of a city. Without an archive, the passage of linguistic time goes unrecognized.
At the time, I was a German speaker at the level of a five-year-old. The lost building's mass was reconstructed using wooden blocks made from discarded German dictionaries found in the same city based on its original architectural plans. I then wrote a text in German, Japanese, and English, questioning what it means to exist in a state of liminality. This process was documented in a recorded video, where my childlike German intertwined with the narration.
Like a child playing with building blocks, the blocks were stacked up to the height of the scab left behind by the vanished building.