The Most Provocative Performance in Venice

0:03And I try to always be gentle with my audience, you know, so it's definitely not a violent experience to be in our pavignon. And I just like to confront people with the reality of things. So I wouldn't know what's the crime with this.

0:21I'm Kate Brown and this is The Art Angle, a podcast from Artnet News.

0:35At the Venice Biennale every two years, we expect big things from the artists picked to represent their countries. But I'm not sure anyone can quite prepare themselves for the universe of Florentina Holtzinger. After years of becoming a titan in the theater world, Holtzinger is now getting one of the most visible slots in the art world, a national pavilion in the Giardini. She's representing her country of Austria this year, for what is surely going to be one of the most talked about pavilions. Known for feminist performances that push the human body, and by extension the viewer, to their absolute limits, Holtzinger does not shy away from nudity or sexuality.

1:09Flesh hooks, stunt artistry, live tattooing, bodily fluids, and heavy machinery, all of this can be in play, and none of it is ever trying to be polite. The intense physicality of her practice is not for the faint of heart, and it's an endurance test for her performers. Her work tends to divide the room, and that's something that Holtzinger seems to be entirely unbothered by. Opening May 9th, her exhibition, called SeaWorld Venice, fills the Austrian pavilion with water and turns it into something of an underwater theme park, as well as a fully functional sewage treatment plant. There's a jet ski driver doing donuts inside the pavilion.

1:43A performer stands inside an aquarium for hours at a time while the audience lines up to urinate in the on-site portable toilets. Their fluids are essential to the work as they're cleaned, filtered, and cycled back into the tank. Outside of the pavilion, Holtsinger hangs upside down in a giant bronze bell and rings it with her body every few hours. Her performers had pulled the bell out from the bottom of the lagoon during venissage week in an incredible performance of endurance and brought it by boat to hang in front of the pavilion. In short, SeaWorld Venice is about the human body, but it's also about ecology and about Venice itself, a city that's sinking, built on water, and overwhelmed by the waste of mass tourism.

2:23I spoke with Holtsinger about what went into building her trailblazing project for Venice, about the move from theater and dance into art, and about what it means to make genuinely uncompromising work. Hey, Florentina, thanks so much for joining me today. Hi. So I thought that we could start with a work that would build a picture of what you do as an artist. And Bells have recently taken up an important role in your work, and they also occur in SeaWorld Venice. how did you come up with the idea to create what is basically a human bell and what does it demand from a performer well i have to actually work to think back to where really the bell idea originates from because i guess i had quite a long trajectory with bells somehow and i recently was thinking back and i think it all comes back to of course iranemus bosh actually in a certain way you know No, I don't trust my own memory.

3:20My brain is a little bit like Emmentaler, like the cheese. My memory is flawed in certain ways. But I think it was at the Prado in Madrid, where we were looking at the Garden of Earthly Delights, right? And I think I just saw it there, right? The bell with the person inside of it. Maybe it was this, or maybe, I don't know, maybe we just came up with it ourselves. I really don't remember exactly. But I had been commissioned to work on an opera. and we kind of made the decision to work around this piece from Paul Hindemith which is called Center Susanna so it pretty much has the church topic and at its center and so it was clear when thinking about the stage and elements for the stage that we wanted to have a bell present because bell is very important I guess for a sacred building and then I stumbled into a Bell Foundry in Tyrol, right?

4:13That's a place in Austria where they make bells. And family-owned, like, really with, like, hundreds years of tradition in bellmaking. And there I checked out bells because I was curious about it. They had one bell lying around unused in a corner. And I had attraction to this bell. So I asked, can I hang inside of this bell? And they actually made it possible that exactly in that moment there in the bell foundry, they hang the bell. and then I was like we don't need the clapper I'm just gonna be the clapper myself and they made me hang inside of that bell and it was fitting me perfectly in German there is an expression you know if something fits like a glove I think that's like the English synonym for it but in German you say it fits like angigossen so it really has the foundry word in it somehow that something is melted into the right shape and I had the feeling it fitted me like angigossen like a glove and I immediately started banging away in the foundry and everybody was pretty gog smacked and then we took it with us and you know a bell is not an easy object so it's two ton heavy iron thing so it's heavy to carry it around and theaters are not so particularly happy everybody expects that the ceiling comes down with that bell and the first thing actually where we wanted to use it was for a music festival in Berlin called Etono.

5:37So it's pretty much club, electronic music festival. And there is this fantastic industrial space, which is called Kraftwerk in Berlin. And it made perfect sense that there we hung our bell for the first time. Because I guess rave culture gets perceived as a church-like experience for many people somehow. There we experimented with the bell for the first time and then we took it into our opera and there it is supposed to do what it also is supposed to do in a church. So ring in the canonical hours in a way. And you know, a bell is such a multifaceted object in terms of what it stands for, also the meaning of it being rung.

6:22So, I mean, we have the bells that call the community together for worship or service and bells that are used to warn from floods or worn from war or worn from catastrophes. They are used in times of war. They are used in times of peace. They are used to bring in a life, you know, like at a birth, at a wedding, at a funeral. There are so many different special moments that a bell can initiate through its ringing. And especially also in this German context or Austrian context, or I guess worldwide context, if you really research more, the bell is fascinating because you know many bells got melted into weapons in times of war and to a certain degree also the other way around right many peace bells that we have are made from weapon shells or the really famous bell that we have in vienna right it's called pumarin and it's hanging in the schäffen storm and it's huge and heavy and it was actually made from artillery of turkish cannons or something like that.

7:26So there is also a symbol that has all of this very contradictory things in it. It stands for peace, but it also has something to do with the opposite of that. So it's a fantastic symbol, I thought. Yeah. And, you know, as we'll come to later in the conversation, it's really a centerpiece of your work in Venice. I think the situation you just described at this foundry in Tirol encapsulates your ethos really well to go into a space and ask basically, can I do this? Is this possible? Which I want to also talk about later, you know, like pushing the boundaries of maybe what an object can allow you to do or what a structure or an institution can allow you to do.

8:05But first, just sticking with the idea of you hanging inside of a bell and ringing yourself around. I mean, this is extremely physical and all of your performances have this extreme physicality to them. So maybe we could start talking also a bit about how you came to dance and how you also arrived at this physicality in your dance practice. Yeah, so I guess this is pretty important for still the work that I'm doing that I really come from a dance background and from very physical place somehow, right? Really the body is really the first medium and then everything else comes after that or in relation to that very strongly.

8:42And I mean, I happened to stumble over dance, honestly, very accidentally. I mean, I don't come from childhood fantasy of wanting to become a ballerina, not at all. Like I come more from sports, I guess, or athletics or acrobatics. Did a lot of this as a child, but not super ambitious because it was clear for my parents also like this is not something where you will ever make money with if you're not like super high level, which for sure I was not. so that was never an option in my head you know to make money with my body let's say or as a dancer which I still very much connected with certain idea of skill and training but it was just the fact that as a teenager late teenager already is more like 16 17 18 I was part of let's say call it the alternative scene in Vienna and had many crazy friends and they would do all kinds of crazy shit And there was, of course, also a part of it more like this Ausdruckstand stuff somehow, like just expressing yourself really with the body.

9:48And in a way that was ironically an eye opener for me. I mean, it's more because, you know, like many people also make fun of that or like look down on that, like that this is what 60 year old housewives are doing, dancing the five rhythms or something like that. but I guess this was an experience that I hadn't had before about okay how can I express myself or how can I not only work against my body which I guess was something I was used to from being a teenager being very anti-body like I really did not feel at home in my own body at all and I perceived it really very much as this site of struggle somehow and there in this dance classes I suddenly perceived my body as something that I can actually work with and use for myself and also derives pressure from somehow so that's why i got stuck with dance and then i just happened to become part of some theater projects or something like that where i just also really enjoyed the creative work around it somehow and being developing my own material let's say and then it was still a long time before i actually managed to come into a dance academy or something right because if you want to be a dancer you better go to dance school i train very hard and go to the best dance schools because otherwise there will be no chance for you to succeed in that market.

11:03And yeah, I did not manage to get in anywhere. So I really come from that place where I ran from audition to audition. And everybody just told me, no, no, no, no, no, not enough skill. That body isn't right. La, la, la, la, la. And I mean, yeah, they were terrifying experiences, of course. And then there was one school that I got into, and that was a kind of choreography school in Amsterdam, right? the SMU and I guess I hated it for that matter because they did not really keep the skill as a holy thing but it was much more really creative in that sense of that from first second you were asked really to define your own notion of what dance means or can be or who can be a dancer or even who belongs onto a dance stage and this is very central questions I think that I still asked myself in the work alone.

11:57Right. And one could say maybe a big breakout moment, although it's hard to sort of pinpoint, one would be, you know, when you became a resident artist at Volksbühne in Berlin, and you did many performances and theater works there. And then from there, transition slowly but surely to work in this art world context, which, you know, brings us somehow to the Venice Biennale, which is certainly the most prestigious event that an artist could ever present at. How did you find your way from dance to the theater world and then to the art world? Like, does it even surprise you in a way that it happened this way?

12:29I mean, everything and nothing surprises me, to be honest, because for me, my work has always developed in kind of an organic way. So I really try to go with the flow and take the waves at the right time somehow. So if a wave offers itself to me, then I'm more than happy to take it. And this is a bit how this Venice thing happened. And at the same time, you know, same as in my work, I don't differentiate so much between genres and so on. Like, I think my work, whether it's happened in a dance context or in a theater context or in an opera context, has always been also, I would say, appealing maybe for visual arts world because I am creating big visual universes somehow.

13:20So it's also not that I have to change my work in order to be present at the biennial. It's just for me a fun new context to create in or to create for. And every new project, I really look at, okay, what is this specific context and what are the expectations that come along with it? And what is the spec data ship of the place like this? And then we make the project and the work, taking all of this into consideration. So, yeah, I mean, for me, that enables a great organic development for the work, you know, that you encounter new audiences and new spaces and also different means of production and so on, because it changes the work naturally.

14:00And the work is based on all this change of places bring also. Yeah, so I enjoy it quite a lot. And I also think we have our right to be in all of these places. So why not? Absolutely. And I like that you refer to this sort of feedback between these institutions and structures as something that brings something to the work. You've mentioned, you know, the theater world, also the opera world. And I wanted to, you know, ask you about Austria in specific, because this is a country that is relatively small, but has become through Western art history, this titan of all of these forms. You know, there's Mozart, Schiele, Klimt, Freud, Rilke, Nietzsche.

14:36There's a Vienna Opera Ball, of course, which is kind of like the most elite event of the year there. And I wonder what kind of a burden or freedom comes from this kind of dense and very specific cultural history and how it influenced the artist that you became. Yeah, that's a good question, of course, because when you grow up in a place you somehow it's just very much the norm for you the things that you're surrounded there like the water exactly so obviously i was living in amsterdam for a really long part of my life actually and now because i'm kind of artist in residence there at the forksbunner i'm producing a lot there and we are part of the repertory there so i don't yet pay my rent there to be honest but i'm there probably more than i am in vienna where i actually pay my rent and you know berlin uh oh my god isn't it the ugliest city on the planet i don't know some people find exactly this very beautiful about it the trash level but for me it's like oh my god it's gray and rainy and it's fucking ugly and then it really hits me when i come to vienna and there is this baroque renaissance this art history everywhere present you know a lot of people say it makes so much sense the kind of work that you do but for me that was quite meaningless because all of this is very normal for me somehow but then it hits me of course oh yeah okay and i mean it's similar in venice there is this exuberance of art history that you're surrounded by every day And of course, it took me some time to also really reflect on this in a way.

16:15All of these buildings were really made to project power of a certain kind, took certain sacrifices to build all of this. You know, not everybody was a benefactor from the richness displayed there, for sure. So this also always indicates that conflicts are a big part of something like this. So a complete division between a lower class and the elite that affords this and likes to show this and so on. So, yeah, it's definitely, I guess, what I do work myself off in the end. And for sure, the artists that you mentioned, who most of them, right, they come from this turn of the century, 1900s. They were very much reflecting on this.

16:58OK, what is underneath this glamour and what is underneath this gold and the underlying fabrics of culture to reveal them somehow. Making kind of this invisible things visible. That is a huge aspect, I guess, also in my work, like the things that are there and are present, but nobody is talking about them. Or maybe they are not supposed to be then there on a stage of the high art, like an opera or something like that. And yeah, Nietzsche and Vienna Actionism, that's something that more I started to actively deal with after it was brought up by a lot of foreign journalists, I would say. It would be like, oh, you're also one of these crazy Austrians.

17:41This has something to do with Vienna Actionism. And this was basically when I confronted this for the first time really consciously myself, because, yeah, I guess I grew up with this. And even for my grandmother generation, it's normal that an artist might use their thesis and exhibit it in a museum. And this can be culture. Yes, I guess I grew up with that notion. But at the same time, Vienna actionism also did not exactly have its heydays at the moment where I grew up and where from my perspective of young upcoming female artists, it was like, OK, they were still a dude party. and there were also certain things that were you know like even abuse scandals that came up in relation to this so it was not a heritage to deal with let's say in a certain way but yeah i'm totally back into it now because i don't know if you know but i am doing an event at castle of prinzendorf which is the big place of hermann nietzsche where he made all of his orgy and mystery theaters and this is the first time where i'm really very consciously dealing with that heritage and where i also developed for sure a lot of fascination and respect for the work also so this vienna action is obviously something that originates from post second world war where in a very austrian manner suddenly there was a blanket of silence over what is the austrian involvement in the Second World War and how do we deal with it?

19:14So, you know, many people just went on with their jobs. It was not done in that way how it happened in Germany that there was a lot of dealings with this, but it was more this blanket of silence. And I think Vienna action is most really like, that's why it's very graphic imagery because it was really, okay, we need to break this silence in a very radical way somehow. And of course, I can relate to this a lot. And also a lot of, of course, anti-Catholic imagery in a certain way. shocking people out of their silence about things. So I think it's nice for me now to also close this circle somehow and being able to deal with that tradition and art history.

19:53And on the other hand, also being allowed to continue the story somehow in this historical place. Right. You know, you mentioned that, you know, a boomer generation knows about Viennese actionism and they're not maybe afraid of seeing blood thrown around or a carcass of an animal brought onto a stage. And I want to ask you that in relation to bringing your work to Venice, because there it's going to have this wide audience and perhaps maybe the widest that you've ever had. And, you know, of course, there's American culture, which is, let's say, more puritanical when it comes to the body and you work with always nude performers.

20:26Of course, you had this residency in Germany where nakedness, they don't flinch. So I guess I wanted to ask you, how do you think about different audience contexts? And maybe we can come to Venice in that way. The work in Venice will be in front of people who may not understand these references or may not be, quote unquote, equipped for them. Does that excite you or worry you or do you even care? I would say I try to be conscious about this, that this is, of course, different than the theater context where people will most likely only end up in a show when they have read something about it or heard something about it or even they got it recommended.

21:02and I mean it really rarely comes for people as a surprise that we are naked on the stage because usually they have read something about it there is of course different type of a commitment when you're paid for a ticket to see something I mean to be honest like one of my shows is called Tants and it has happened that people thought oh that's a ballet performance and they're like oh boy but this happens very rarely you know so I do take this into consideration for the Venice context But we have also been doing stuff outside, you know, outside of the theater space. And for me, like the counterpoint to the theater is really if you enter into the public space and what that means if a work like mine enters this space.

21:43Because then suddenly different rules exist and different laws exist and so on. And, you know, in a theater, I'm really a friend of the trigger warning. So I grew up with a trigger warning and I'm friends with the trigger warning because I'm happy that people can decide for themselves what they want to subject themselves to and whatnot. And at the same time, of course, I'm aware of the limitations of trigger warnings too, or maybe that they are just marketing. I don't care. But of course, in a public space, a trigger warning is difficult because it's just not accessible for everybody. I am aware of this in the Venice context.

22:22Still, at the same time, it's not exactly the public space because it's the Cerdini. It's still a kind of cultural bubble that develops an interest to go there. But yeah, we have trigger warnings in Venice for our pavilion because it's still also an enclosed space. And in this enclosed space, we can really invent the rules. And we do bring it to people's attention that there is work around nudity. and I try to always be gentle with my audience you know so it's definitely not a violent experience to be in our pavilion and I just like to confront people with the reality of things so I wouldn't know what's the crime with this and I also even think there are people digging a certain way for certain people and I mean yeah of course I grew up in a Austrian German way how to deal with that body but also a lot of people have a lot of different let's call it just problems around the naked body or especially naked female red body.

23:20And, you know, I just yesterday I was building a skate ramp actually for an art space in Hanover. It's part of an art exhibition. But the skate ramp was standing in front of the museum, not in the museum. So we were like, OK, we will initiate it. But of course, we initiated in our style. So we will skate it naked. And of course, it was semi-public space. So there are also children outside there and so on. And there was a picture then online where you see that there is also a kid in the background while we are skating this ramp naked. And of course, especially from the US, it was like, oh, my God, how can you do that?

23:54There are children there. And for me, it's really like, what the fuck? Like, I think this is one of the big problems that the naked body gets sexualized in a way where you would say it's not possible to normalize the body to that degree that it cannot be something that can be shown to kids. I mean, that really is just the opposite of what I stand for and think. Like, we have a right to normalize the naked female red body. And it's unjust to sexualize it at all times. to instill in a kid this consciousness that it's a thing that is forbidden or that is meant only for the private it's bad then you're also supporting the narrative that a naked female red body should only exist in the four walls of their own household or in pornography or in another super only commodified way and that's really against what i stand for with my work so it is very much about normalizing this and that's also our mission for venice and sorry especially when being confronted so much with the cultural history with whether female naked body is over represented you know and that nobody has a problem with this so i think venice is interesting because it is the birthplace of what is called an art history the lying nude female act do you say that in english like this the reclining nude Reclining notes.

25:17Okay, that's the right term. And I mean, this was really what put Venice onto the map as a center of art history somehow. So if then 500 years later or 400 years later, people have a problem with the real female body, yeah, I think that's then interesting to deal with it. For sure.

25:57So in the Giardini, visitors walk up and they see this bell hanging from a construction crane and a massive sign that says, I live in your piss and there's two urinals outside. And these are essential to the functioning of this work because inside you have effectively flooded the Austrian pavilion and created this circular waste treatment facility. So visitors, from my understanding, really complete the work. They are a part of this work. Why did it feel important to bring the audience in in this way? Because this is sort of a new position for you, as I understand. Yes, I mean, I would say I come from pretty postmodernistic context.

26:31So also in theater, we are very much busy with throwing the ball back to an audience at a certain moment. It is, for me, important that people are not only passively watching something, but also perceive their own role inside of this dynamic somehow. And even get also the opportunity to act along in a certain way and contribute to the narrative of things somehow. But it's of course also about, yeah, we all have responsibility to make this thing. Same as in society, we all have a responsibility to carry in this regard. And it's not enough for me to criticize something. We also all need to look ourselves into the mirror somehow and understand what is our own part in this somehow.

27:18And yeah, so in the pavilion, and especially in this very loaded context of Venice, also something like the Biennale. Yeah, it's important to give a chance to people to reflect, let's say. And the water, right? It's this mirror for us. So what else to do there than to reflect on things? I call it in a way a sacred building, right? because I was looking a little bit at the history of this pavilion. So it was made in between the wars, constructed by this architect, Josef Hoffmann. His concept for the pavilion was to create an art temple. That's really how he called this. And there was another guy, famous church architect, also really active in the designing of the pavilion.

28:02So it's really constructed like a modern church from the setup and the symmetry and the way how light floods the building. It's really supposed to make art look like relics in a church. So I thought that was pretty interesting. And at the same time, this topic of water was something, of course, that pushed itself to the forefront when we were thinking, me and my team, about, okay, what would be cool to bring to Venice somehow as a proposal? Because water is just the dominating material. There are so many aspects to it. Everybody loves to swim. But it is also that resource that is important for life, but it's also in danger.

28:44And of course, all of these aspects in relation to the climate change and so on, they play a very, very big role in Venice. Nobody can ignore this, that the floods are getting more and what are the consequences of human activity on the city of Venice. It's really a bit like a kaleidoscope for consequences of the Anthropocene somehow. And at the same time, Venice is so dependent on the tourism, of course. It's really the city where this sector is absolutely dominating everything. There is a lot of tension there because everything that has been done there in order to prevent the city from the floodings just meant building new industry for this, which is then super bad again for the ecosystem of the Laguna.

29:33So it's a very complex setting. And also us as artists, they're supporting this system of tourism in a way through the Biennale. We are all even an active part of that. And not only us as artists, but also the people who visit us there. So this was just for me topics to be conscious about. So we are all participating in this circle of things. And I mean, I really expect the entertainment. It's important in my work. I do perceive myself as an entertainer first and foremost. And so, yeah, it was clear this pavilion for us, it will be a underwater theme park somehow. Because Venice is such a kind of a theme park, you know, it's a kind of Disneyland for adults.

30:16It's an underwater theme park with a little bit special rules, I would say. So, yeah, for me, it's underwater theme park. It's kind of a sacred building. So it's a room for contemplation. But it is also a sewage treatment plant. What happens in the pavilion and in our installation is that all the time dirt becomes cleaned and becomes dirt again and becomes clean. And there is this constant circle of transformation from impure to pure somehow. So those are all concepts, right, that are not only very important in an underwater theme park, I would say, but also in the church. But as we all know, also on a toilet, like there's topics of pure and impure, of clean and dirt.

31:01So this is very central topics in the pavilion. So in a nutshell, our installation explores a bit this idea of some people are living in the trash of other people and how this life is livable. And definitely to portray this living in the dirt of others, it is important to get certain donations from our audience. maybe there is a little bit of an anecdote from myself that also plays into it that if you know the Giardini the Austrian pavilion is very much at the end and usually when people arrive at the Austrian pavilion they have had hardcore art experience for two or three hours so their bladders are filled I'm sure I was not the only person that used the Austrian pavilion kind of as a public toilet so behind it is a nice little garden and that really smells like a toilet, you know.