“I live in your piss”: How Florentina Holzinger turns performance into an artistic weapon
To make art is to put oneself out there as boldly and fearlessly as humanly possible. The worst-case scenario for most is failure and ridicule, but for Florentina Holzinger, that’s the least of her worries.
The Austrian performance artist has spent most of the past decade risking her very life and limb in her works. It’s hard to care about people thinking you look ridiculous when you’re hanging upside down 20 feet in the air, completely naked, your body being lurched left and right and smashing against a gigantic bronze bell. When the best case scenario is a cracked rib or three and the worst is falling to your death, people can think whatever they want.
The aforementioned performance art was part of an installation that Holzinger created called Seaworld Venice for the Venice Biennale, a cultural exhibition that has showcased the greatest names in contemporary art for the past century, since it debuted in 1895. I can’t imagine anyone who attended the exhibition’s debut saw a production quite like SeaWorld Venice coming.
It’s an uncompromising, weirdly beautiful, yet most often outright disgusting work summed up by its unofficial tagline: “I live in your piss.”
The tagline isn’t just for shock reasons either. The entire work is a comment on how Venice lives in the refuse and waste of others. Away from Holzinger’s act of performance art, several other living exhibits reflect this. Case in point, the dunk tank featuring live performers, where the water is clean, recycled water from a fully-functional sewage treatment. In fact, attached to the tank are two portaloos where one can even top-up the tank.
Shocking? Absolutely. Crass? Holzinger would be the first to agree with you. Surprising? Only if you haven’t taken in any of her work over the past decade.
Who is Florentina Holzinger?
After all, Holzinger’s big break came in 2019 with her critically acclaimed piece Tanz, a mix of ballet and performance art that often sounds like little more than a parade of the most disgusting things imaginable. This is a piece that features guided masturbation, a suspension artist hoisted above the stage via meat hooks in her skin, and a performer graphically giving birth to a rat. Honestly, SeaWorld Venice looks PG in comparison.
Over the next few years, her work continued to blur the lines between high and low culture. Shows like Apollon, Sancta and Ophelia’s Got Talent showcase acts that would be cut from most carnival freak shows for being too graphic through the medium of ballet and opera. Take Sancta, it saw 18 of its audience members treated for severe nausea over its opening weekend.
Let’s not be mistaken, shock is the point, but it’s not the be-all and end-all of her work, though. Nothing is there for the sheer visceral reaction alone. Even down to the stunt at SeaWorld Venice with her naked body ringing a bell, the act that might just have gotten more international attention than anything else she’s done. Yes, it’s a bizarre sight, but just like the rest of the show, it’s a comment on climate change.
The bell is tolling for all of us, and that should shock us a hell of a lot more than some piss being turned into water.