Page - 35 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

35 introduction comedies Kebab mit Alles! [Kebab with Everything!] (2011, dir. Wolfgang Murnberger), Die Freischwimmerin [A Female Swim- ming without Supports] (2014, dir. Holger Barthel), and Kebab extra scharf! [Kebab Extra Spicy!] (2017, dir. Wolfgang Murn- berger), with Planet Ottakring (2015, dir. Michael Riebl), an under-appreciated romantic comedy that takes on the banking industry as the force underpinning the district’s gentrification. In championing the idea of an alternative currency, Riebl’s film shows how mobilizing historical knowledge, made approach- able in a costume of graffiti and grunge, can provide a working, not to mention working-class alternative to the gentrification threatening local housing stocks. The following three chapters then examine the effect that the presence of international stars, the first two of whose rep- utations have in the meantime been overtaken by their tragic deaths, can have in the context of significant cultural sites in the city. Chapter three tackles the Viennese production of Lazarus, David Bowie’s first and only musical, which, to the surprise of many, has become a huge hit on German-language stages. This chapter identifies and analyzes what distinguishes the Volks- theater’s production from the other Germanophone produc- tions and considers how it is in keeping with the history of Vi- enna’s “theater of the people.” Chapter four takes as its focus controversial German film and theater director Christoph Schlingensief’s engagements in Vienna and Austria, most prominently his action in protest against the inclusion of the far-right Freedom Party as a coali- tion partner in the federal government in 2000. In contrasting the documentary of that action, Ausländer raus! Schlingensiefs Container [Foreigners Out! Schlingensief’s Container] (2002, dir. Paul Poet), with Ruth Beckermann’s documentary response to the coalition government, Homemad(e), which depicts encoun- ters in her neighborhood — Vienna’s old textile quarter, I show how the considerable cultural distance between these two docu- mentaries and their locations, one at the southern and the other at the northern edge of the Ringstrasse that encircles Vienna’s first district, reveals the considerable political distance between