Page - 175 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

175 #Hallstatt be celebrated in China, where the guests will be shown the pictures from Hallstatt.] (Kazim 2018) Fittingly, even the weddings in Hallstatt turn out to be doubled.13 Once one is looking for it, it is hard not to notice doubling in Hallstatt, most strikingly in the altar of the town’s main church, Maria am Berg, which consists of a late Gothic and nineteenth- century historicist model next to each other, labelled so that tourists appreciate which is how much older. One also cannot fail to catch sight of reflections that make one sometimes won- der which the copy is, or if both are. Indeed, for each of the late nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century images of Hallstatt in the Austrian National Library’s collection, it is not difficult to provide a twenty-first-century update. What this doubling points to is fracturing, which one sees in the remnants of Celtic culture on display in Hallstatt’s museum as well as in a number of public artworks around town. That Hallstatt is a fractured space and that the artists who engage with it cannot seem to avoid replicating its fractured quality can be traced back to its history as the oldest known salt mine in the world as well as to the large cave structures in the neighboring Dachstein. The history of Hallstatt’s mountains being cleaved apart by both human and natural forces could also have been part of its appeal to the Chinese. As Reisenleitner notes, there are some remarkable parallels between the original Hallstatt’s history and its replica’s context and aspirations. It is with the question of aspirations that I wrap up my read- ing of the Austrian visual imagery of the Hallstatts. What has happened to Hallstatt See since its ceremonial opening in 2012, which the Austrian mayor attended? Rather than the residen- tial area it was planned to be, Hallstatt See would now seem to number among the many underpopulated places Wade Shepard writes about in Ghost Cities of China. Similarly in his feature 13 The immersive yet temporary quality of wedding photography parallels that of the very popular “rent a dirndl” service in Hallstatt and could well point to an interest in cosplay and certain video games.