Page - 165 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

165 #Hallstatt kammergut Cultural Landscape], which has enjoyed UNESCO World Heritage site status since 1997 on account of the village’s Celtic pre-history and the area’s fabulous natural beauty. In what follows, I show how Hallstatt’s qualities have given rise to a reflective mis-en-abîme structure, the dynamics of which are captured in two intricate visual works: Ella Raidel’s Double Hap- piness and Norbert Artner’s Hallstatt Revisited I. After probing Artner’s and Raidel’s works to see how Hallstatt’s spectacular singularity has managed to produce an intrinsically fractured imaginary that continues to invite, and, indeed, thrive on me- diatization, I look into the political potentiality of the way it continues to deal with the consequences of its “having-been- copied” status. Happiness Doubled “‘Jeder in China kennt Hallstatt,’ sagt sie. ‘Jeder.’” [“‘Everyone in China knows Hallstatt,’ she says. ‘Everyone.’”] —Kazim (2018)4 Ella Raidel’s Double Happiness, which won the 2015 best film prize at Lisbon’s Architecture Film Festival, opens with long takes that focus on the elemental beauty of Hallstatt’s location, “nestled into the steep inclines of the Alps” at the edge of a deep lake (Reisenleitner 2017, 206). The salt in the mountains behind it may have provided Hallstatt with its wealth and history of set- tlement, something we are briefly introduced to in a sharp cut to Yan Zhongming, an urban planner who works for Yansplan in Shenzhen; however, it is not salt but its majestic setting that is the key to Hallstatt’s current prosperity. Until the late nineteenth century the tiny village could only be reached by boat or treach- erous trails, and when a train station was built in 1877, it was 4 Thanks to Jing Xu for pointing out the level of exaggeration in this com- ment. It is an important part of the phenomenon addressed in this chapter that the places in question are used for the purposes of distinction in Bourdieu’s understanding of it as a way of accruing social capital.