From "These Toilets in Venice Have the Art World Aflush/Undoubtedly the biggest talker at this year’s Venice Biennale is the Austrian pavilion, where visitors can make their own contributions to the work on show" (NYT).
I clicked on that link for "Seaworld Venice" and was confronted with big red letters saying "I live in your piss."
This is the kind of degradation of women that feminists used to rail against, but, here, the artist is female, so I guess we're not supposed to notice. The message is purportedly environmentalism. Also the artist puts herself out there: "Part of the performance at the pavilion involved Holzinger swinging her body from side to side inside a metal bell attached to a crane to make it ring out." Video at the link. Holzinger is naked. A commenter over there notes that she risks deafness, performing as a bell clapper.
ADDED: I don't remember ever seeing "talker" used to mean the thing being talked about: the show is "undoubtedly the biggest talker of this year's Biennale." I understand "talker" meaning a person doing that talking, but not This show is a big talker, meaning it's what everyone's talking about. I guess it's like the use of "-er" in "looker" used to refer to someone people look at and not the one doing the looking.
The OED defines "talker" only as the one doing the talking. An example from Jane Austen (from "Emma"): "I am rather a talker; and now and then I have let a thing escape me which I should not."
And then there's that Shakespeare adage, from "Richard III": "Talkers are no good doers." I think we don't use that one too much. We're more likely to go with: "All talk and no action," "Actions speak louder than words," "Talk is cheap," and "Walk the walk, don't just talk the talk."
పోస్ట్లు
45 కామెంట్లు:
Who does she think she is? Piss Christ?
When did art turn into competition for attention?
Meh. I felt the same way when my law professor auctioned off her dignity to eat a creamy sandwich for the boys but it's empowering when women show they can con suckers out of their money... she said. As long as it's consensual and nobody HAS TO do it for the money... then it's cheap and degrading. Otherwise, it's fun. The rules they never teach you aloud.
I suggest you ask Grok or GPT to produce charts for you on the dramatic success we’ve achieved in providing clean water and sewage disposal across the globe. The left is lost festering in problems that either have been, or soon will be, resolved.
Most performance art is garbage and most performance artists are garbage people.
"When did art turn into competition for attention?"
In Ancient Greece?
Reminds me of that old tourist attraction with "mermaids" in a tank.
It's still there: https://www.floridastateparks.org/WeekiWachee
Before we went scuba diving off of Pt Dume, we would always drink five or six cups of coffee and hold it in until we descend it to the bottom below the thermocline and then let loose with that natural heater of 98.6°F.
I have peed for art, but only in the snow.
Holzinger ... Holzinger ... I can't recall ever hearing that name, but her face rings a bell.
Overheard at the Seaworld Venice exhibit after the show:
"Hey, Frank, it's time to change the asparagus filter again."
Boredom with life is apparently a great source of inspiration.
I once saw a show where a guy drank a generous portion of gasoline, some nitroglycerin, then ate a goodly amount of gunpowder, and ingested some uranium 238. Then he lit a match and ate it. It was boffo!
Oh, um…I guess that was a cartoon I saw and the guy was a duck. See you in the funnies.
How many comments there before Trump gets dragged in?
I put the over/under at 5.5.
When Democrats tear down the White House ballroom, they can bring Holzinger’s exhibit and hook it up to the portajohns.
I thought the banana duct-taped to the wall was Peak Decadence. But it appears that it is, instead, a journalist's decision to pee on a naked woman in public because she asked him or her to - at least so far. I'm dreading the rediscovery of Two Girls One Cup.
I saw the video on X. An attractive naked lady. I didn't think a fleshy human body could cause the bell to ring out, though. And, how long can she hang upside down like that?
As for swimming in refined urine, don't astronauts on the space station recycle and drink theirs?
but is it art?
Ew.
The hills are alive..... with the sound of muuuusic.....
And yet we must remember, a flush beats a pair.
Are they sure all viruses are filtered out? Gross. Just plain yuck.
The more scatological and disfiguring elements of her show remind me of the Jim Rose Circus sideshow that used to tour with the Lollapalooza concert festival in the early 1990s.
The feverish opening week is to be avoided as it is a big meet up and performance for the art professionals and the freeloaders amongst the state supported art scene.
My wife and I prefer to go in September or October when all the fuss has diminished and it isn’t as hot or crowded. The Biennalle itself is on two sites and one cannot do them both in one day if you actually look at the art. Additionally there are a large number of simultaneous exhibitions (famously Hirst’s “Wreck of the Unbelievable” which overshadowed the entire official event for one example) at Palazzo Strozzi and various sites elsewhere. These take time to identify, locate and visit. I also recommend a visit to Mestre’s superb modern museum complex for relaxation depending upon what it is showing. In my opinion the non-official shows are much more interesting that the overly politicized ‘main event’ whose curators are apparently chosen for meeting critical social theory intersections primarily. 2024 illustrated that these characteristics do not lead to artistic quality in my view.
The Instagram channels, galleries, auction houses and major art publications all publish useful guides to the event to help prepare for your visits (we like The Art Newspaper’s supplement).
So in summary you need at least 5 days going around spending two sessions in the Biennale on separate days and to take the time to visit the “peripheral” shows, major museums and more importantly to enjoy the miraculous city itself. Let’s hope the 2026 (our sixth consecutive visit) lives up to those before!
Wow.
No, it's not art. Just another scheme to attract attention and keep the money flowing. The state of the art market.
Filtered urine is ok to swim in. You can drink your own urine if you filter out the bad stuff. See new equipment issued to US army and solar stills.
Speaking of decadence, as long ago as fifty years ago I remember reading in the Pittsburgh Press magazine a story of artists in the Netherlands. One badgered the municipal authorities of The Hague to allow him an exhibit. They relented and gave him a gallery for a month. He locked the door. My favorite was the one who stood in front of a canvas and had a "friend" shoot him in the arm. He then hung the canvas with the blood and tissue and bullet hole. A friend of mine opined, "Pity they didn't add brain matter as well."
The seven months that shook the world.
She's deaf to women's plight is a handmade tale in transition.
"In Ancient Greece?"
In Neolithic Caves if you want to look at it like that, but that's not what I meant. "As you well know Ish."
“When did art turn into competition for attention?”
When was it ever anything else?
When you can't call it what it is; you call it "art".
Only thing I ever saw, related to subject matter that a got a style point for "art" (bonus point for comedy!) was in a newly re-modeled WC at cliffside terrace next to Edelweiss Hotel in Murren.Tiny to point of being "intimate".
Standing at the urinal offloading a bit of Rugenbrau, one becomes aware of the lifesize image of a very attractive Jungfrau a foot or two in front of his face.
But, she's not looking him in the eye. Oh, no. She's staring at the thing in his hand, maybe with a smirk..."Really? That's all you got?"
Eye of the beholder, eh. Actually, in the "Art and Comedy" category, I admit to overlooking the diminutive, "Manneken Pis" ... standing on a corner, a long way from Winslow, Arizona.
Can she cook?
Gerda Sprinchorn said...
"Holzinger ... Holzinger ... I can't recall ever hearing that name, but her face rings a bell."
LOL! Lines like this are when I wish this format had upvotes.
As far as the word "talker". The ungrammatical vernaculary usage brings to mind the patois of the Hollywood trade rag Variety. They call agents "ten percenters" and eschew articles and subordinate clauses and it's all written like it was transcribed out the side of a racetrack tout's mouth.
I checked out the pictures. It's not often you see boobs in the NYT. The prurient content is nil so I guess it's allowable. The artist doesn't ask her models to do anything she wouldn't do. There's a picture of her hanging upside down and naked and acting as the clapper in a brass bell......I don't understand modern art, haute couture, or rap music, but I guess some people find such things a worthwhile expression of the human spirit. There was a photo of the people at the exhibition. They were all well dressed and most of them were richer and better looking than me. Besides modern art and haute couture, I should also mention that I don't understand people.
20th century high school aphorism aimed at boys: "Those who talk don't know. Those who know don't talk."
"Walk the walk, don't just talk the talk."
Don’t let your mouth write checks your ass can’t cash.
This is the kind of degradation of women that feminists used to rail against, but, here, the artist is female, so I guess we're not supposed to notice.
Yes It is degrading, regardless of how many X chromosomes the artist possesses, and I feel bad for any woman so desperate for money that she’d accept a gig swimming nude in public in urine.
That reminds me of a scene from the movie, Desperado.
Exiting American tourist: "And your beer tastes like piss."
Bartender: "We know, because we piss in it!"
Althouse post from 2006. Only 307 comments.
Let’s take a closer look at those breasts.
Art for art’s sake. Doodee for Godsakes.
The human clapper has already been used on all the Fox evening shows. You know this pee tank is going to show up at least on Gutfeld’s Poo Detective block. Maybe it won’t make The Five - a bit too early for water sports. CC, JSM
Wow, Full Moon with a cool link to Althouse of 20 years ago. Just a quick stroll through the first page shows only one name from then that still appears here these days, Madison Man.
I always liked I'm Full of Soup and wondered what became of him or her. Later I'll go through the entire comments and see what olde time Althouse commenters I remember, and if I show up in there with the nic I used to use back then.
Feisty Althouse has been scrapping with her commenters for decades- and she's still never lost a round!!!
Well, I went through the 307 comments to see some old friends from 2006. Saw GAHRIE, Freeman Hunt, The Drill Sgt, and Meade. Did not see myself, probably skipped that post even though it was about boobs... Maybe I was traveling that day.
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