Festival Week excitement

When real blood flows on stage

Scene from the performance "Sancta", which is based on a short opera by Paul Hindemith.(Bild: Wiener festwochen / Nicole Marianna Wytyczak)

In the music theater performance "Sancta" by Viennese choreographer Florentina Holzinger, a real wound is cut into an actor. This is brutal, but not new in art ...

"Her limits are the limits of her performers" is how Vienna Festival director Milo Rau answers the question of when Florentina Holzinger's work will end. In her opera performance "Sancta", which is being shown for the last time today, the choreographer, who is celebrated for her provocative, powerful theater, addresses the image of women in the church. She questions the mechanisms of the institution, its saints and their miracles.

The Vienna Festival director Milo Rau(Bild: Karl Schöndorfer TOPPRESS)

One performer has skin cut out of her side. Another puts her finger in this wound. Just as the unbelieving Thomas did to the resurrected Jesus. The "Krone" reported on it and countless readers asked themselves just as incredulously: Why does this injury have to happen for real?

"Because it's only real. It's performance, not theater - and it's Florentina's trademark. With Florentina Holzinger, self-harm is empowerment for the performer, not just some directorial idea," says Milo Rau.

But it is not just her trademark. Artistic self-harm has been established as a performative form of expression since the 1960s. The Viennese actionists Rudolf Schwarzkogler and Günter Brus, for example, are strong examples. Valie Export stuck a knife under her fingernails, Marina Abramović had herself injured by gallery visitors and Orlan had her facial surgery broadcast live while fully conscious.

The Viennese artist Elke Krystufek also carved herself with a Stanley knife, just as Angélica Liddell carved her shins with a blade in "Liebestod", also at the festival. These are artistic experiments about freedom and self-determination, about breaking taboos and exploring boundaries.

Scene from "Sancta"(Bild: Wiener festwochen / Nicole-Marianna-Wytyczak)

A final piece of advice from Milo Rau: "Jesus was tortured to death, the image of this brutal torture is the central image of our Western European culture. Is our culture sadomasochistic? Possibly yes. If you don't want to deal with this, with the idea of transcendence and dignity through catharsis - i.e. the sacrifice of the body - then perhaps you shouldn't go to a play about the Catholic Church."