Florentina Holzinger performance shocks Venice pavilion

Florentina Holzinger’s Venice Biennale project has become one of the most talked-about works at this year’s national pavilions because it pushes the Austrian Pavilion into live performance, bodily risk and audience participation. The work, titled “Seaworld Venice,” is Austria’s official presentation at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. It opened to the public on May 9 and runs through Nov. 22 in the Giardini. Official Biennale materials describe it as a permanent live installation with performances, while contemporaneous reporting from Venice focused on naked jetskiers, a bell-ringing body and scenes involving urine. ### What exactly is Holzinger showing inside the Austrian Pavilion? La Biennale describes “Seaworld Venice” as a project built around water, bodily fluids and the human body in what it calls a radically changing landscape where nature and technology collide. The official pavilion text says Holzinger turns “visitors’ bodily fluids into environments for the performers” and presents the installation as part underwater amusement park, part sewage treatment plant and part sacred building. The Austrian government’s culture ministry says the project combines a permanent live installation at the pavilion with performances and site-specific “Études” across Venice and its lagoon. The ministry says Holzinger, an Austrian choreographer and performance artist, is working with performers, musicians, stunt coordinators and producers under curator Nora-Swantje Almes. (labiennale.org) ### Why has this pavilion drawn so much attention? The Guardian’s May 19 profile of Holzinger, cited in the briefing for this story, described the work through its most confrontational images: naked jetskiers, a performer ringing a bell with her body and another immersed in the audience’s urine. Those details matched the official Biennale framing of the pavilion as a work built around managed water, excretion and ritual. (bmwkms.gv.at) ArtReview, in its opening-week roundup of national pavilions, also singled out Austria and referred to “naked piss-tank dancers,” underscoring how quickly Holzinger’s pavilion became shorthand for the Biennale’s shock-value conversation. ### Is there an official explanation for the bodily-fluid element? La Biennale’s text gives the clearest institutional explanation. (labiennale.org) It says the work complicates “purity and pollution, sin and expiation,” and makes visible waste that is usually kept out of sight. The pavilion text also frames ritual as part of the project’s response to an ecosystem “out of control.” Austria’s culture ministry says Holzinger’s long-running research into water is being expanded here into an exhibition format for the first time. (artreview.com) The ministry says elemental forces including water and bodily fluids recur in her work as agents acting on bodies and implicating audiences who watch. ### How does this fit into the Biennale’s wider controversies? The 61st Venice Biennale has faced disruption beyond Austria’s pavilion. (labiennale.org) ArtAsiaPacific reported that about 27 of the exhibition’s 100 national pavilions closed fully or partially during a May 8 strike organized by the Art Not Genocide Alliance and allied Italian activist groups, with protesters demanding Israel’s exclusion from the event. (bmwkms.gv.at) ArtAsiaPacific said Austria was among the pavilions that sealed their entrances during the strike, and that some pavilion entrances carried “We Stand with Palestine” signs. The outlet also reported that some artists in the main exhibition attached Palestinian flags or solidarity signage to their works. ### What happens next for visitors trying to see it? (artasiapacific.com) The Austrian Pavilion remains part of the Biennale’s public program through Nov. 22, according to La Biennale and Austria’s culture ministry. La Biennale said in a notice dated May 19 that the pavilion will be closed on Mondays and Tuesdays over the next few weeks because of maintenance work. (labiennale.org) (artasiapacific.com)