Florentina Holzinger: 'I Live in Your Piss' Interview with the the artist
By Elisabeth von Thurn und Taxis
When Florentina Holzinger meets me at a cafe in Venice on a steaming hot afternoon in late June, she has a large, colorful water gun slung over her shoulder. Since May, she’s used it to spray the scorching insides of the giant church bell she climbs up into, dangles from upside down, and strikes by swinging her body back and forth. This extreme action is part of “Seaworld Venice,” her viral presentation at the Austrian Pavilion of this year’s Venice Biennale.
Holzinger, 40, has gained a cult following for her controversial performances on avant-garde theater and opera stages around the world. Nudity, bodily contortions, and extreme acrobatics are mainstays. Body modification is also on the menu: Skin is pierced live. Sometimes, there is blood. Other times, there is urine.
Now, the Viennese dancer, choreographer, and director has made the art world her rapt audience with the Venice Biennale. Inspired by the city’s waterways, she filled Austria’s modernist pavilion with water; in one gallery, a naked woman on a jet-ski spins in dizzying circles. Just outside the pavilion, visitors are invited to urinate in a porta potty. The fluid is then filtered and passed into a neighboring tank, where another performer—naked, of course, except for scuba gear—sits underwater, staring straight ahead. The pavilion has drawn snaking lines to the Giardini and attracted an estimated 2,000 visitors daily.
Holzinger—who, when we meet, is outfitted in a long black t-shirt and shorts—has been living in Lido for the duration of the Biennale. But she retains a busy travel schedule, with additional performances throughout Europe all summer. (From her cool relaxed demeanor, one would never know she’s booked solid.) After the Biennale closes in November, she will take the show on the road, adapting it for presentations at the Gropius Bau in Berlin and the Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna in 2027, and Amant in Brooklyn in 2028.
CULTURED spoke with Holzinger about nudity, structural violence, feminism, and her recent foray into the art world.
