A Women's Game with Caro Daur

June 19, 2025|SHANE ANDERSON

032c Issue #47—Summer 2025 “Techno-feudalism,” featuring Caro Daur in A Woman's Game, now available for PRE-ORDER.

When I say “Caro Daur,” I hear “Bernadette Mayer.” Not because there is any obvious assonance or consonance or syllabic rhythm between the names of the famous German socialite and the great American poet (although the endings of their last names have an / r/ sound in my accent), but because they’re both queens of mischief – humorous, with a biting twist, often making use of irony as they poke fun at their wants and needs and deficiencies. What is more, these two very different yet similar women also share literary devices, such as paralipsis, where the speaker pretends to make a strong declaration while actually drawing attention to something exactly opposite.

In Daur’s grid-friendly acrobatics, she declares, “I’m never drinking again unless something’s going on today”; then, two slides later, she gives a knowing wink in a club. Apparently, something was going on that day. In contrast, Mayer performs floor acts fit for the page. She uses paralipsis, for instance, in the poem “On Gifts for Grace,” where she refuses to name said gifts for said Grace before giving a vivid enumeration in jumps and flips: “I won’t even speak about the possible flowers and kinds of lingerie / All linen and silk with not-yet-perfumed laces / Brilliant enough for any of the Graces.”

top ADIDAS WEURO DFB jersey by Jenna Bey, skirt SIA ARNIKA, shoes CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN, sunglasses DIESEL

Springing from “female [poet] to actual famous female or vice versa” (Mayer) may seem outlandish, but it is not farfetched. Having chronicled time in a highly individual manner in such books as Midwinter Day (1982), Mayer is also the creator of Memory (1972), a project wherein she shot one roll of film per day in July 1971, then wrote a 31-part narration as she attempted to recall the context of the 1,200 images, using them as a springboard for her stream-of-conscious leaps into the unknown. And what is such a thing if not a proto-Instagram – a platform Daur masters with 4.6 million followers. There, Daur chronicles her life “full of luxury, grace notes, prosperousness and charm” – Mayer’s words – and proves, in her own words, that “being young and a woman is an asset and not a setback,” something to which I think Mayer would be agreeable. Daur crafts much of this documentation with humor, even making goofy faces on her way to events in New York or Miami; and dropping occasional, hammy “We are Germans” videos, which have spread like a flicked cigarette in parched foothills. Thus, although Daur hits all the notes of a socialite, she often subverts them, as in one shoot, where she lounges in the shower of the Jahnkampfbahn in her native Hamburg as she wears a custom Adidas latex jersey. Designed by Jenna Bey, the pink jersey reinterprets the new women’s DFB away kits (which were recently released ahead of the 2025 WEURO in Switzerland) and is totally unique – as in one of one and not for sale, which is real luxury.

top ADIDAS WEURO DFB jersey by Jenna Bey, pants and coat DAVID KOMA, shoes CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN

First, second, third ... all of the places belong to Daur, who is not satisfied with being limited to a single sphere. A successful entrepreneur and investor who has had, as she told us, a business mindset since she was a baby, Daur can be seen not only on social media but also on billboards as the face of a global Adidas campaign and in a series on Amazon Prime. She has also found ed her own fitness company, DAURPOWER, and was included in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. She seems to be everywhere, but in our conversation with her, she insisted that what we see is only the tip of the iceberg. Many things are coming in the future, she said, including a film on Netflix and establishing her acting career. And although she was secretive about what exactly is inside the crystal ball, she made me wonder whether poetry might be on the way. After all, I can imagine Mayer writing, “My Miu Miu bag is fluent in chocolate.” Instead, though, this line is by Daur. And so, I wonder whether this Bernadette Mayer sonnet makes her laugh as much as it does me: