Page - 109 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

109 Hardly Homemad(e) German spirit in the reference to “the failed attempt by activists on day four of the performance to ‘free the refugees’ and shut down the container compound” (Varney 2010, 120n32). This ac- count emphasizes “Schlingensief’s continued provocation to the coalition to tear down the sign, ‘Foreigners Out,’ and its failure to do so, pointed to the path not taken by the authorities” (Var- ney 2010, 116), rather than drawing attention to the protestors’ success in reaching and desecrating the sign with graffiti.11 The action taken to free the refugees from Schlingensief showed his team what real Viennese actionism was about.12 It was also an offshoot of locally organized protests against the national coalition government — the so-called “Donner- stag Demos,” demonstrations that took place every Thursday.13 Moreover, the site of the Container was bound up in a local tra- dition of demonstration, namely the “Opernball Demos,” the first of which was held in 1987 to protest a planned Bavarian nuclear facility. It happened that the arch-conservative Bavar- ian head-of-state, Franz-Joseph Strauß, attended the Opernball that year, and the Green Party organized a demonstration that turned ugly, resulting in street-battles between the police and protesters. The following years saw a continued escalation of schon wieder im Container und weigern sich nach wie vor, abgeschoben zu werden. Das Transparent ist beschädigt, steht aber noch - und wird erneuert. Der Lagerleiter: ‘Der Test läuft, wie lange sich die Koalition dieses Schild leisten kann.’ Heute findet eine Großabschiebung statt, vier Personen müssen Österreich verlassen” (ibid., bold in original). 11 The pro-German slant of the Art without Borders volume can be seen in their not including Chance 2000 Graz in their List of Titles (v). 12 Vienna Actionism refers to the performance actions of a number of radical Viennese artists in the 1960s who, in order to express their rejection of the increasing commodification of art and society, staged transgressive actions such as “Kunst und Revolution” [Art and Revolution] in June 1968. See Widrich and Export. 13 Fiddler deals with these demonstrations at length. They started up again on October 4, 2018 after another ÖVP–FPÖ coalition took power and began dismantling the post-World War II achievements of the social partnership, such as introducing a sixty-hour workweek, and quickly spread to other Austrian cities, and even Berlin. See “3.000 Demonstranten legen Wiener Ring lahm” (2018).