Ring the alarm—the most striking performance of this year’s Venice Biennale is going on tour.
An adapted version of Florentina Holzinger’s Seaworld Venice, created for the Austrian Pavilion, will be presented at Gropius Bau in Berlin in spring 2027, followed by a stop at Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna that fall, before concluding its run in March 2028 at Amant in Brooklyn. Nora‑Swantje Almes, Curator for Live Programs and Outreach at Gropius Bau, who organized its Venice presentation, will reportedly oversee this new iteration.
In the unlikely event you haven’t heard (of) it, a refresher: Holzinger hung upside down inside a great bronze bell recovered from the Venetian lagoon and suspended above the pavilion. Assuming the role of a human clapper, Holzinger struck its lip again and again, sending a sonorous peal across the Biennale grounds. In an adjoining installation, nude collaborators floated inside a dunk tank flanked by port-a-potties; visitors were encouraged to use (the urine was filtered into the tank). Elsewhere in the pavilion, a jet ski driven by a naked woman cut through the flooded pavilion as a massive rotating structure carried more performers through the air.
Visitors explore the Austrian Pavilion on May 12, 2026, at the Venice Biennale.
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Spectacle, Holzinger seems to argue, is the last recourse for warning us about the imminent environmental apocalypse. Seaworld Venice riffed on Kevin Costner’s 1995 sci-fi blockbuster Waterworld, in which melting polar caps give way to a planet consumed by rising seas. Addressing the crowd outside the pavilion, Holzinger noted that the same fate awaits Venice, whether or not its visitors care. Even then, after days of heavy rain, polluted lagoon water lapped at the edges of the city.
A spokesperson for Amant told ARTnews that the exhibition will likely occupy three of the art space’s four exhibition spaces, as well as its outdoor lot at 316 Ten Eyck Street in East Williamsburg, with intermittent art performances. The institution could not at this time confirm whether the jet skis and porta-potties will make an appearance: “If you saw the show in Venice, you know it’s very site-responsive, so [Nora‑Swantje 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.”
Holzinger, meanwhile, has kept busy. Just weeks after the Biennale’s opening, she premiered Pfingstspiel (Pentecost Play) at Hermann Nitsch’s castle in Prinzendorf an der Zaya, near Vienna. Created in collaboration with the Wiener Festwochen and the Nitsch Foundation, the nine-hour, one-off performance carried forward the spirit of Sea World Venice. Divided into two parts, it featured Holzinger racing a black car across the grounds of the Vienna Skating Club, among other feats.
Reflecting on her place within Viennese Actionism—the visceral performance movement pioneered by Nitsch—Holzinger told The New York Times: “Actionism was so graphic and violent and loud and noisy because there was a strong desire to break this blanket of silence. Conceptually, I can totally relate to this.”
She added: “It’s important to be sometimes radical in statements, to use art as a power, as a tool, against things you’re not OK with.”
