Image: Kunsthaus Bregenz
Kunsthaus Bregenz will present Florentina Holzinger’s Bodensee Étude as a one-time performance in Bregenz on 11 July, turning the lakeside city into the setting for what the institution describes as a contemporary ritual at the shore of Lake Constance. The event is billed as a specially developed, site-specific project for the museum and its surrounding environment, with the performance taking place at the Sunset Stufen am Molo Bregenz and admission free.
According to the Kunsthaus Bregenz announcement, Bodensee Étude is composed for four percussionists, ten performers, a crane and a bell. The museum says the work was developed specifically for the “complex ecology” of Lake Constance and brings together central elements from Holzinger’s practice, including performative imagery associated with feminism, machine-like elements and bodily endurance. The institution also notes that the performance will last around 40 minutes, with weather-related changes possible and the start time subject to delay in poor conditions.
The project extends Holzinger’s Études, which the museum describes as singular performances in public space that prepare and unfold themes used in her larger productions. On its exhibition page, Kunsthaus Bregenz connects the Bregenz performance to SEAWORLD VENICE, Holzinger’s contribution to the Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year, and says Bodensee Étude will offer a “one-time resonance” in Bregenz. The museum’s text further describes bodies and objects entering the water and emerging transformed, accompanied by drum sounds, while performers and technical equipment become part of an altered natural setting.
Holzinger’s work has increasingly moved across theatre and the visual arts, and Kunsthaus Bregenz places Bodensee Étude within that broader trajectory. The museum notes that her Études have been shown in public-space contexts at venues including Schinkel Pavillon Berlin and Bergen Kunsthall. It also cites her recent major stage works, including A Year Without Summer, SANCTA, Ophelia’s Got Talent, A Divine Comedy, Étude for an Emergency and TANZ, underscoring the crossover between her theatre practice and her site-specific performance work.
The Bregenz event arrives as Kunsthaus Bregenz continues its summer programme, which also includes the exhibition Cyprien Gaillard – When you expect flutes, it’s whistles. The Holzinger performance is positioned as a highlight within the institution’s 2026 season, and the museum has announced limited-edition festival cups and bags tied to Bodensee Étude, available at the KUB counter and on the day of the performance at the Molo. The institution has also said that no photo or video recording is permitted and that the performance contains nudity.
For Kunsthaus Bregenz, the project is significant because it places one of Austria’s most closely watched performance artists directly into a public waterfront setting rather than a conventional stage or gallery. The combination of percussion, mechanical apparatus, water and live bodies points to the kind of hybrid, large-scale event that has made Holzinger a central figure in contemporary performance. In Bregenz, that approach is now being reframed as a local, site-responsive ritual shaped by the lake itself.
