Börcsök Boglárka - Andreas Bolm - Török-Illyés Orsolya: SENSE INTO NONSENSE

Through a performance walk culminating in a concert, the project brings to life the radical art and spirit of the Baroness, who became known for her urban performances, poems, and ready-made creations and, in the words of Marcel Duchamp, “came from the future.”

“True death must be earned through life—that is why I am still alive” E FvL

🇬🇧 Part performance, part concert, part urban intervention, the project draws on the Baroness’s anarchic energy to question how we live, move, and desire in the modern city. Engaging with urban realities, it critically explores artistic freedom, consumerism, and social exclusion within the contemporary neoliberal landscape—connecting past provocations to today’s struggles for expression and autonomy.

More information: https://trafo.hu/en/programs/sense_into_nonsense

SENSE INTO NONSENSE is a performance, concert, and urban intervention that draws on the Baroness’s anarchic energy to question how we live, move, and desire in the modern city. The performance winds its way through unique urban locations and public spaces—from Ráday Street to Boráros Square—before unfolding as a concert upon returning to the Club, featuring experimental musician Áron Porteleki. Through Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven’s legendary street provocations, the creators examine questions of artistic freedom, consumer society, and exclusion in the contemporary neoliberal urban environment, and connect the past evoked through the figure of the Baroness with our present struggles for autonomy and self-expression.

Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven was a German-born Dadaist artist who is often referred to as “New York’s first punk.” She became known for her avant-garde performances, her poetry, and her performative and installation-based use of found objects—some researchers even attribute Marcel Duchamp’s work *Fountain* to her. Her public interventions are legendary: wearing costumes made from street trash, meat, and other found materials, she transformed her own body into a living sculpture and, parading through the streets, subverted the social hierarchies and norms of the time as “class struggle incarnate” (she was arrested several times because of her attire). In his performances, he expressed his rage against being “trapped in the patriarchal system” through liberated, often gender-fluid sexuality, and used sensory tools—such as body odors—to remind his middle- and upper-class audience of the unspoken yet ever-present social realities of modern urban life. Thanks to a brief marriage, she acquired a noble title, which she consciously used as a prop for her avant-garde persona to challenge bourgeois etiquette and the sense of entitlement stemming from social status.

Following the presentation of their internationally acclaimed performance-installation Figuring Age, Boglárka Börcsök and Andreas Bolm return to Trafó to join forces with Orsolya Török-Illyés in focusing their attention on a boundary-pushing and avant-garde, yet now largely forgotten, female artist. Artistic direction, concept, production: Boglárka Börcsök & Andreas Bolm

Artistic collaboration: Orsolya Török-Illyés

Dramaturgy, set design, costumes, text: Boglárka Börcsök, Andreas Bolm, Orsolya Török-Illyés

Original text: Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

Performance: Boglárka Börcsök, Orsolya Török-Illyés

Sound design and guitar: Andreas Bolm

Drums: Áron Porteleki

Music composition: Boglárka Börcsök, Andreas Bolm, Áron Porteleki

Vocal coach and music consultant: Vera Jónás

Lighting: tbc

Production assistant: Margit Hodován

Costume assistant: tbc

Co-production partners: Goethe-Institut – International Co-Production Fund, Trafó – House of Contemporary Arts, Pact Zollverein

A program realized with the support of the Goethe-Institut – International Co-Production Fund.