The Art of Imposition Sara Geisler met Florentina Holzinger in Venice
As Florentina Holzinger descends the stairs to Gate A38 on this February evening – a secluded spot at Berlin Airport that resembles more of a dead end than a gateway to the world – my body suddenly presses itself against the wall behind me, as if of its own accord. As if it had heard what this woman does to other bodies. In the performance TANZ, the choreographer has women lifted into the air by metal hooks that pierce their backs. In A Year Without Summer, hooks pierce cheeks. In Holzinger’s work, in which she always performs herself, women penetrate each other with strap-on dildos and relieve themselves in unison. Swords and camera probes are swallowed, intestines are filmed and the images are projected onto screens. There are said to have been 18 first-aid interventions in just two evenings at Sancta in Stuttgart – not on stage, but in the audience.
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At Terminal 2, I observe Holzinger through the gap between my notebook and cap: with one hand she hoists a small suitcase up the steps, with the other she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Holzinger, who has just turned forty, is wearing a hooded jacket with orange reflective stripes; it looks a bit like something a garbage collector would wear, but a quick online check reveals that it costs around 600 euros. The label: Supreme. She also wears a kind of motocross trousers, also Supreme. Otherwise, Holzinger looks like she always does, at least in the press photos, and there are a lot of those these days; starting in autumn, she will be part of the artistic direction at the Volksbühne under Mathias Lilienthal.
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From May onwards, Holzinger will be performing at the Austrian pavilion at the Art Biennale. Now, three months before the opening, we want to visit a few places together in Venice; some that simply interest her, others that might be suitable for an ‘Étude’. Étude is what Holzinger calls her shorter performances: exercises in public spaces, studies of the body and technology – cars, cranes, things like that.
