Shaving The Baroness

Overview

In 1921, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray reputedly shot their first film together in New York with the dada artist Baroness Else von Freytag-Loringhoven. The film was lost and all that remains is one still-image, conflicting written accounts and a title: Elsa, Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven, Shaving Her Pubic Hair. Lene Berg’s Shaving the Baroness is a restaging built on rumours and conflicting sources, and can be seen as a tribute to the so-called Dada-Baroness. As no original exists, Berg attempts to recreate the lost filmscene with two actors. A real situation is played out, one that cannot be rehearsed and where the director has little control. We are voyeurs of an intimate exchange something perhaps originally intended as a provocation and which might have changed the baroness’s life and destiny.