Page - 27 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

27 introduction residence of the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperors beginning with Ferdinand II (1578–1637), and its central thoroughfare, the Ringstrasse, was established with the growth of the bourgeoisie in the second half of the nineteenth century. The centralized vi- sion of Vienna that resulted was challenged in the aftermath of World War I and the collapse of the Habsburg Empire with the growth of a socialized housing culture in the outer districts on the part of what has come to be called Red Vienna and then by waves of immigrant guest workers and refugees in the aftermath of the destruction of World War II and the Wiederaufbau, or reconstruction, that followed. These counterhegemonic groups have become associated with sites in the city that have taken on the connotations of these associations and become available for cultural practitioners to tap into. These sites, however, remain as counterhegemonic as the groups associated with them. The Vienna one often encounters is of a piece with the en- chanted, neo-baroque playground the city appears as in Before Sunrise (1995, Richard Linklater), (cf. Ingram and Reisenleitner 2013, 43). In Film Spektakel’s almost three-minute infomercial for the city, for example, the second in their “A Taste of …” time- lapse series after New York, the city appears in all its touristy splendour, diverting from Linklater’s vision only at 01:13 with a shot of the D.C. Tower 1 in Donau City, which at its opening in 2014 was the tallest skyscraper in Vienna. The interjection of its towering, criss-crossed facade into the usual tourist sites seems intended, as are shots of the Donauinselfest8 and the neon lines of traffic that also appear occasionally, to provide assurance that Vienna has more to offer lifestyle-seekers than musealized Eu- ropean cities like Florence and Venice. It is also a hulking re- 8 This outdoor music festival takes places on an island in the Danube at the end of June and, thanks to Austria’s Social-Democratic Party (Sozial- demokratische Partei Österreichs, SPÖ), is free to attend. Attracting some three-million visitors over three days, it claims to be the largest free music festival in the world.