In piano parlance, an étude is a technically tricky piece of music typically practiced to push a musician beyond their limits. Following that logic, the name of Florentina Holzinger ’s final Venice Biennale performance, CLOSING É TUDE , suggests that after seven months of her propriety-imploding, waste-wonderland SEAWORLD VENICE , there are feats of endurance still ahead.

Part performance, part installation, SEAWORLD VENICE opened at the Austrian Pavilion in May with the piercing peal of a colossal bell salvaged from the Venice Lagoon. In line with her body-first philosophy, a nude Holzinger served as its human clapper. The bell, sans artist, continues to mark the passage of time, ringing every hour over the pavilion and its guests, a grotesque altar to the ongoing Venetian apocalypse. Human refuse (freshly sourced) and lagoon waste, the sort that occasionally washes in with the high tide, form the material of her installation.…