Florentina Holzinger To Present“Final Dinner” From Bodily Waste

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Performance artist Florentina Holzinger is concluding her seven-month Venice Biennale presentation, SEAWORLD VENICE, with a performance titled CLOSING É TUDE, featuring a“final dinner” made from bodily waste. This act marks the culmination of her work at the Austrian Pavilion, which opened in May.

Holzinger's SEAWORLD VENICE combined performance and installation, beginning with the resonant sound of a colossal bell salvaged from the Venice Lagoon. The artist, nude, served as its initial human clapper. Since then, the bell has continued to toll hourly over the pavilion, with an installation featuring human refuse and lagoon waste. Visitors were invited to use on-site port-a-potties, with their urine filtered into a dunk tank.

For the upcoming CLOSING É TUDE, the bell will be transported in a ceremonial procession from the pavilion to the Scuola Grande della Misericordia in Venice's Cannaregio district. This historic building, founded in the Middle Ages as a guild and reopened as an exhibition space in 2015 after restoration, boasts a soaring ceiling and frescoes attributed to the school of Paolo Veronese. The event is described as“a final dinner,” symbolizing a transformation from solid to liquid and creating a relic.

According to the announcement,“This last Venice Étude traces a material transformation from solid to liquid, forging a relic. Containing all the bodily waste collected from pavilion visitors over the past seven months, the distilled remains serve as a monument for the future, which will be presented in front of the closed pavilion on November 22.” The exhibition concludes when the bell becomes silent and water circulation ceases. An adapted version of SEAWORLD VENICE is scheduled for presentation at Gropius Bau in Berlin next spring, followed by a stop at Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna that fall, and finally at Amant in Brooklyn in March 2028. Nora-Swantje Almes, curator for live programs and outreach at Gropius Bau, who organized the Venice presentation, will oversee the new iteration. A spokesperson for Amant confirmed to ARTnews in June that preparations were underway, though they declined to confirm whether elements like jet skis and porta-potties from Venice would be included. The spokesperson noted,“If you saw the show in Venice, you know it's very site-responsive, so [Almes] needs to figure out how to adapt it for Berlin after the Biennale closes in Venice this fall. After that, we'll have a better idea of how our own team can further adapt it for Brooklyn.”

Source: ARTnews

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