Page - 112 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

112 siting futurity A Homemad(e) Take on Intercultural Relations In stark contrast to Schlingensief’s deliberately outrageous, highly visible orchestration of one of the most prominent central tourist locations in the city, Ruth Beckermann’s Homemad(e) (2001) quietly introduces viewers to the locals in the street in which she lives at the opposite end of the first district from the Staatsoper, namely, the Marc Aurel Strasse, which runs parallel to the Judengasse and is quite close to the city’s central syna- gogue. After making her film debut with Arena besetzt [Arena Occupied] (1977), discussed in chapter one, and then estab- lishing her countercultural credentials with Auf amoi a Streik [All of a Sudden a Strike], (1978) and Der Hammer steht auf der Wiese da draußen [The Hammer is in the Meadow Out There], (1981), and co-founding the Filmladen, one of Austria’s largest film distributors, Beckermann turned her attention to her Jew- ish heritage in the trilogy Wien retour [Vienna There and Back] (1983), Die papierene Brücke [The Paper Bridge] (1987), and Nach Jerusalem [Toward Jerusalem] (1990), establishing herself as a prominent member of the second generation of Jews in Austria, who “embraced their Jewish identity in protest against Wald- heim and his supporters […] in a public way that put them at odds with the survivor generation” (A. Reiter 2013, 1–2). As in Die papierene Brücke, so too is Beckermann’s point of depar- ture in Homemad(e) “the house in Vienna where she lives”; here too is her interest “her father’s Ashkenazic culture of origin in Eastern Europe” (D. Lorenz 2014, 72). Yet this time, with a bla- tantly anti-Semitist party ensconced in the federal government attracting the wrath of the EU and European avant-garde media circus directors such as Schlingensief, her travelogue remains firmly grounded in her local surroundings and documents the comings and goings around the Café Salzgries, which is now a hip hangout called the Billiardcafe Küü, of mostly creative types, retirees, and a few older housewives. As her opening voiceover explains, she has arrived back in Vienna after mak- ing Ein flüchtiger Zug nach dem Orient [A Fleeting Train to the Orient] (1999) and wants now to turn her attention to her