Page - 177 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

177 #Hallstatt around the cathedral, whose original is in Bristol, is usually something going on, as it’s a popular backdrop for wedding photos. Otherwise in Thames Town one mostly finds secu- rity guards and cleaning personnel.] (Lachmann 2015) By 2018, however, Bianca Bosker reported that: “The 27-year-old owner of a boutique selling clothes by up-and-coming Chinese designers told me Thames Town had grown busier since 2014, thanks in part to the expansion of the subway system, and in part to the swelling population of Shanghai proper. (Between 2000 and 2016, the city had grown by the population of New York City, pushing the city limits closer to Thames Town)” (Bosker 2018). At the same time, she was quick to admit that “Not every former ghost town has come to life. In Shanghai’s Holland Vil- lage (no relation to Liaoning’s), most storefronts along the main street stood empty or deserted, their dusty concrete floors lit- tered with desiccated bouquets or curled posters. […] Several buildings, including replicas of Amsterdam’s Maritime Museum and De Bijenkorf department store, were under construction— just as they had been during a previous visit in 2008” (ibid.). “Tianducheng (Sky City),” the replica of Paris on the outskirts of Hangzhou, may have recovered: “In recent years, as more people moved into Tianducheng, the city has been transformed from a ghost town to a normal place where people live. Nowadays, most of the parking spots are occupied, couples stroll its streets in the evenings, and beneath the faux Eiffel tower, tourists and wedding parties can be seen posing for photos throughout the day, every day” (Zhao 2018), as has the northern port city of Tianjin’s replica of Manhattan (“China’s Copy of Manhattan Is No Longer a Ghost Town” 2017). But many have not. What is striking about Hallstatt See is that, like Sky City and also, to an increasing extent, the original Hallstatt, it has become “a tourist town and a mecca for wedding photographers” (Mess- mer 2015). That is, it is not merely the case that Hallstatt See was brought into existence via images — the photographs the Chinese took in, and the plans they made of, the original that Ella Raidel has Moniker Wenger present us with in Double Hap-