Page - 169 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

169 #Hallstatt various types of reproductions of places that recur, such as in paintings, models, and television reports. As Raidel explained to an interviewer at the Rotterdam Architecture Film Festival, she is interested in how images are created, distributed and per- ceived, and what kind of reality is created with these images. I would say that Double Happiness is a lot about what’s going on with images, first of all, what’s copied […] from The Sound of Music to the village, which is actually now a backdrop for wedding pictures. They’re also shooting soap operas there. So what’s going to happen with all these images and how will they transfer and become something else? (Raidel 2018) Adding to the conglomeration of images is not her priority as much as drawing viewers’ attention to it. As Ackbar Abbas not- ed in the context of Hong Kong, a historical site, even one that is preserved, such as the Hong Kong Cultural Center, can be cre- ated to be a consumption sight, which has the effect of the pres- ervation of history being used “to bring about the disappear- ance of history” (Abbas 1997, 66). Part of our introduction to the original Hallstatt in Raidel’s film includes a pair of swans (two, of course, not just one), which is intercut with a beautiful Chi- nese woman in an Austrian folkloric costume, who hums and stretches her neck out in a manner similar to the swans. View- ers may wonder whether they are being encouraged to consider whether there are swans in the Chinese Hallstatt as well and, if so, whether the Chinese have gone so far as importing “real” Austrian swans. However, when swans recur in the documen- tary, as they inevitably do, they are neither Austrian nor Chinese but in an oil painting. It also turns out that not all the swans in Austria are “real” in the sense of living birds, as pedalboats in the shape of swans are a popular pastime. Hallstatt See, Raidel’s documentary suggests, has come to life through images. Monika Wenger shows us the initial plans and photographs she discovered of her village, and a brochure for the Chinese facsimile that she claims tourists could not distin-