'Teke Heart' by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven at MoMA

For the opening of  Dadaglobe Reconstucted last night at the Museum of Modern Art (NY), I performed “Teke Heart” by Else Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven (as she bills herself on the holograph ms) (1874–1927). I performed it in the gallery next to the ms of the 1921 poem, sent to Tristan Tzara for his never-published anthology Dadaglobe. MoMA’s show presents much of the original art for the anthology and the accompanying catalog (which doubles and the long-delayed publication of the anthology). The catalog includes many of the poems as submitted (that is, not translated, although the accompanying essays are all in English). Poems by Tzara, Picabia, Soupault, Huelsnbeck, Péret, Man Ray, Éluard, Schwitters, Breton, and others make up a substantial part of the book. Since the background noise at the opening makes the poem a bit hard to hear, I also present a  sound recording I made of the work this morning. The text of this poem is included, along with the first page of the holograph, in Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, ed. Irene Gammel and Suzanne Zelazo (MIT Press, 2011). (MIT will be publishig a paperback edition in the Fall.) A transcription of the poem is also included in the Dadaglobe catalog. The MoMA show, a must see, was curated by Adrian and Samantha Friedman. The show opens to the public on June 12. 

(4:08) MP3, wav

take one: mov file
take two: .mov file

Embed of video:

courtesy PennSound