A Naked Tour Florentina Holzinger by Juergen Teller

Choreographer and performance artist Florentina Holzinger is the biggest sensation at this year's Venice Biennale - The New York Times, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Le Monde, and every art-adjacent Instagram reel are filled with Holzinger's naked body hanging upside down in a bell. Many are scandalized, even more are enamoured. At the Volksbühne, she collaborated on a shoot with Juergen Teller and spoke to Shane Anderson about being a pimp.

The scene begins respectably enough: a narrator in Florentina Holzinger's A Year without Summer (2025) stands on stage and explains how a climate-altering volcanic eruption in 1815 was the catalyst for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Surprisingly, she is wearing clothes - rare for a Holzinger performance - as are the other female and non-binary performers who join her, dancing in pairs. But within minutes, all of the couples are naked and making out, until gradually the entire ensemble has descended into a writhing orgy. Surely this is mostly simulated, but later, when elderly cast members are having excrement wiped from their asses and other performers are projectile vomiting, I'm not so sure anymore.