Page - 127 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

127 from grand Hotels to tiny treasures tion it has attracted: “Fakt ist, die Bekanntheit der Stars färbt auf die Szenerien ab und auf die ganze Stadt, in der allein 2014 vier neue Hotels eröffnet wurden” [“it is a fact that the high profile of the stars is rubbing off on the scenery and on the entire town, in which four new hotels opened in 2014 alone”] (Heinz 2015). Renovations of the Görlitz Kaufhaus have been announced: “Ein Investor will aus dem Prachtbau das KaDeO, Kaufhaus der Oberlausitz, machen. Allerlei Zeichnungen hängen schon in den Schaufenstern und werden von Passanten entschlüsselt, ein Schriftzug verspricht „Hier wird renoviert, was Sie morgen fasziniert“” [“an investor wants to turn the majestic building into a KaDeO, department store of Oberlausitz” [a reference to Berlin’s famous KaDeW, Kaufhaus des Westens]. All kinds of drawings hang in the windows and are decoded by passersby; a sign promises ‘here is being renovated what will fascinate you tomorrow’”] (Heinz 2015). If these renovations go ahead, the site will no longer be as appealing to future filmmakers and their crews, just as the grand hotels in the Czech Republic did not have the right kind of decrepitude for Anderson, raising the question of who exactly it is that investors are imagining will be the department store’s future customers. Görlitz’s appeal and struggles are, then, much more akin to Detroit’s than Hallstatt’s. Both the filmmakers who seek Görlitz out for location shooting and the tourists who flock there to go on “Film ab!” [“Rolling!]” tours are drawn by the onscreen im- ages of the town as a run-down, crumbling, dingy place. In other words, and not to mince them, Görlitz is finding itself forced to peddle ruin porn. Most commonly associated with Detroit, the concept of ruin porn receives masterful analysis in two excellent books by academics at Detroit’s Wayne State University pub- lished in the aftermath of Detroit’s declaration of bankruptcy on July 18, 2013: Beautiful Terrible Ruins: Detroit and the Anxiety of Decline by Dora Apel in the Art and Art History department and A Violent Embrace: Art and Aesthetics after Representation by renée c. hoogland in the English department. Both aim to understand the mechanisms of ruin porn, the underlying forces driving its creation, and the political and ethical implications of