Page - 53 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

53 (re)forming Vienna’s culture of resistance with the Palais Kabelwerk. At one point the largest factory in Europe for producing cable, it had been taken over by Siemens, who shut down its production in 1997. Afterwards the area was gradually turned into a new neighborhood with apartments, businesses, and a cultural center, which cost the city nearly three and a half million Euros to renovate and just over one and a half million to run for five years (L. Lorenz 2019). In 2014 WERK X opened at the Kabelwerk with a mission similar to the one at the Petersplatz. Its intellectual pedigree as well as its politi- cal orientation were on display in the English website it had for the 2016-2017 season, which opened with a quote from Anto- nio Gramsci about fascist monstrosity — “The old world is dy- ing, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters” — and ended with a reference to Giorgio Agamben’s coming community — “We will feature critical perspectives on contemporary monsters, neo-nationalistic and neo-fascist as well as the contours of a ‘coming community’ […] defined by an unconditionality that eliminates the very need for membership.” One can understand WERK X’s desire to stage a revival of the Proletenpassion as one of its signature pieces, especially in light of the piece’s continued popularity. After premiering on January 22, 2015 to a sold-out audience in its cavernous new digs in the Kabelwerk, it not only played that season and was held over in the fall, but like the original, it also toured in Germany and Aus- tria, and June 21–23, 2016, it played the Arena.25 Indeed, many of those attending those performances were under the impression that they were in the same building that the original had been performed in, and not the smaller slaughterhouse nearby, which lent an appropriate sacrality to the Passion’s performance. from various institutions and from the municipality of Vienna” (Mandl 1968, 41). 25 In the spring of 2019, it went on another Austrian tour: April 19, 2019, Arbeiterheim Fohnsdorf, Heimgasse 4, 8753 Fohnsdorf; April 26, 2019, Stadttheater Wels, Kaiser-Josef-Platz 50, 4600 Wels; May 11, 2019, Lugner City, Gablenzgasse 11, 1150 Wien; June 25, 2019, Posthof - Zeitkultur am Hafen, Posthofstrasse 43, 4020 Linz.