Siting Futurity: The "Feel Good" Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

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Date

2021

Authors

Ingram, Susan

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

punctum books

Abstract

Description

Siting Futurity: The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna shows how cultural practitioners in and around Vienna draw on their historical knowledge of locality to create rousing productions designed to get audiences to inform themselves about useful aspects of history, to get them to engage their presents, and to help make possible more socially equitable futures. Analyses of politically engaged works of contemporary theatre, film, and photography set in and around Vienna help to identify a historically oriented mechanism that enables artists to tap into Vienna’s extraordinary, and extraordinarily under-appreciated, tradition of protest culture that dates back to the action that brought about the Wiener Neustadt “Blood Court” in the 16th century, but really came into its own with the city’s most influential occupation of an abandoned slaughterhouse for 100 days in the late summer of 1976. It also shows how work with a connection to Vienna by international stars like David Bowie, Wes Anderson, and Christoph Schlingensief has absorbed the same principles.

Keywords

activism, Austria, capitalism, Christoph Schlingensief, contemporary art, contemporary theatre, cultural studies, David Bowie, Film Studies, Hallstatt, Hans Weingartner, Jurassic Park (film), Jurassic World (film), Lazarus (musical), locationality, Ottakring, photography, radicalism, Red Vienna, resistance, Ruin Porn, schizophrenia, social protest, tactical culturalism, The Grand Budapest Hotel (film), urban studies, Vienna, Wes Anderson.

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