August 2023 in a city on the Eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea.
In recent years, the town has become famous for transforming a military harbor into a luxury marina. Along with the marina came a new part of town, shaped by two densely built roads parallel to the coast. The buildings host stores, bars and restaurants on the ground floor, and high-priced apartments on their first, second, and third floors.
In summer, the city reaches around 40 degrees Celsius. Sun rays fall from the often cloud-free sky onto the surfaces of buildings, the light and dark paving stones, the asphalt that the ground is composed of, and on bodies – human and others – moving through and dwelling in the city. Materials and bodies trap the heat of the sun, the heat emitted by electrical air conditioning back into the streets; they convect it into the air.
I meet Jasna there, a woman in her late 20s, and her small Maltese dog, Orion. I want to explore their co-sensing of heat and modes of being in the hot city – getting to work, going on walks, hanging out. Together, we want to attune to their multispecies practices of being affected by the heat immersing them. Being only around 30 cm high, it is Orion’s proximity to the ground that Jasna problematizes the most. Noticing Orion’s heavy breathing and slow walking pace, she lowers her head down to the ground, touching the street with her hands; even in the shade, it is much hotter ‘down there’ where Orion is than up here on the level of our heads, she notes as she summarizes her multispecies co-sensation. Thus, when moving through the city, she often carries Orion on her arm in the higher and cooler air.
Like many urban pet dogs, Orion lives embedded in a modernist urbanism where spaces of separated and different airs shape cities. On the one hand, indoor bubbles provide cooling, humidifying, purifying, and an atmosphere of thermal comfort. The outdoors, on the other hand, are spaces of exposure to the unfiltered, elemental forces of weather, where one needs to protect oneself from sun, rain, wind, and cold. While devices designed for humans, like hats or sunglasses, were never really adapted for canine customers, the market for clothing with the function of sponge coolers attached to a body quickly became a multispecies one. At the end of Summer 2023, Orion also became a proud owner of a cooling jacket and a cooling collar, pieces of cloth made of slowly drying microfiber and polyester. They are soaked in cold water, put on the dog before exposing him to the heat of the city, and keep him cool while wandering around outside of the well-modulated bubbles of indoor thermal comfort.