On a damp Venice morning, art world luminaries boarded a boat in the lagoon to witness a one-off performance by Florentina Holzinger. Women, naked but for tattoos and boots, emerged on a barge, creating an intense wall of sound. An electric guitarist clipped onto a crane, climbed high, and rocked out. A vocalist screamed like Yoko Ono. After 20 minutes, the boom rose, hoisting a cast-iron bell from the water. Suspended upside down inside was a long-haired woman who slammed her body against the bell, sending ringing across the water.
Holzinger's Provocative Art
Holzinger, representing Austria at the Venice Biennale, is known for performances that provoke fainting and outrage. Her opera Sancta features a climbing wall, a pregnant pope on a robot arm, and nuns on roller skates. In Seaworld Venice, she transforms the Austrian Pavilion into a temple-gallery-theme park-sewage plant. Performers do jetski stunts, contortion acts, and pose suspended from harnesses. In the central courtyard, a performer stands submerged in a glass tank filled with filtered urine from adjacent Portaloos.
Audience Reactions and Social Media
During the preview, visitors treated the pavilion like a human zoo, ignoring no-photography signs and posting videos to Instagram. Holzinger's Instagram account was temporarily suspended due to the flood of content. She remarks, "It's outrageous that nobody seems to be able to perceive art without the screen."
The Role of Toilets and Labor
Holzinger installed functioning toilets in the pavilion, addressing the biennale's lack of facilities. Performers rotate roles, from jetski stunts to tending lavatories. "I didn't realise how important the role of the toilet women would be," she says, noting how people treat them as "just" toilet women. This highlights the value afforded different kinds of labor.
Sustainability Concept
Holzinger recalls the application form for Venice, which emphasized sustainability. "For us, the content is the sustainability concept," she says. The urine tank performance drives home the environmental relationship between water and waste. Visitors must face a woman submerged in their own filtered urine, forcing a confrontation with bodily functions.
Comedy and Hope
Despite the dark themes, comedy is essential. Sancta featured a stoner Jesus, and Seaworld Venice has a slapstick fake sewage system. "Comedy is an essential part of art-making for me," Holzinger says. "I want to take on substantial existential questions, but I cannot do it without trying to laugh it away. There always needs to be a suggestion of hope."
Commitment and Pain
Holzinger's performers have backgrounds in circus, stunt work, and body-piercing. One performer has 25 scars from Sancta performances. Another, who works with body-piercing, has done "maybe 200 suspensions already in shows of mine." Holzinger herself was hoisted naked from the lagoon, hanging from the bell, appearing Amazonian and impervious to cold and pain.
Holzinger's Seaworld Venice runs at the Austrian Pavilion until 22 November.
