A Year without Summer

Radical, vibrant, uncompromising: Florentina Holzinger’s work is among the most impressive that the cultural scene currently has to offer. Holzinger will represent her home country of Austria at the 2026 Venice Biennale, and starting with the 2026–27 season, she will be part of the artistic leadership team at Berlin’s Volksbühne. In extravagant stage spectacles, the Viennese choreographer liberates the female body from beauty standards and gender roles to reveal it in all its vulnerability and strength. The asphalt Festival has been showcasing Holzinger’s genre-bending works since the beginning of her career and is now presenting her latest piece as a co-production.

The year 1816 originally went down in history as the “Year Without a Summer.” Following the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, the sky was filled with ash, the sun had vanished, the harvests had failed—and the world was starving. Eighteen-year-old Mary spends the cold summer months with other poets on Lake Geneva, where storms and darkness inspire them to tell ghost stories. Mary conceives of Dr. Frankenstein, a scientific genius who forces nature to bend to his will and ultimately meets his end through destruction alongside his monster, assembled from pieces of corpses.

Florentina Holzinger and her ensemble explore stories about the body, health, and identity, our decline, and our environment: the pursuit of immortality in the 21st century, medical promises of rejuvenation, and the dangers of uncontrolled technological growth in a world shaped by AI, robotics, and bioengineering. “A Year without Summer” tells the story of nature’s transformation from enhancement to perversion and is an attempt to pit the promise of eternal life against certain death. Holzinger’s latest theatrical coup is a blend of musical and horror story, a tightrope walk between utter terror and great beauty, punctuated by beguilingly quiet, gentle moments.