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CURATORIAL AND TEXT

AN INTERVIEW WITH AIDAN ELON
 ABOUT

Ieva Lygnugarytė's work engages with topics of memory, language, politics of display, taming, animality, ethics, and urban spaces. She also collaborates as part of the artist duo CASE.












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Spit Take, Aidan Elon

Spit Take, Aidan Elon

INTERVIEW WITH AIDAN ELON
BY IEVA LYGNUGARYTE

The Internet replaces the physical closeness to digitized density. This space is never dormant, and profits off of viral multiplication. It provides the ability to reach information other within the touch on a screen, or turn into a virus an individual—through the process of memefication. The Internet partially replaced the need for dense living, using density as both protective, informing, comfortable in its anonymous voyeurism, and threatening. 

Aidan Elon's performance art works exist partially within the internet's rumor-verse. Elon describes public performance as something inherently fortuitous: "Performance does exist in this sort of rumor, in the spread of information," she says. What circulates socially after the act is part of the material. Her “Spit Take” performance, for example, was filmed but gained interest primarily through both real and digital shares (such as viral Instagram pages). A woman in a black gown and heels (Elon), repeatedly drinking and spitting water onto a city sidewalk as if she's receiving or overhearing absurd news.

She appears as if she stepped out of the film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), directed by Luis Buñuel. The dissonance between the operatic dress and street-level “gave a level of absurdity,” she shared.IEVA: The lines of public performance are so blurred. Where does it start and end? Is performance disruptive? Public performance, I mean. 

AIDAN: Yes. I want to lean towards yes. But I think I shy away from disruption, even if that's what I'm doing. I believe public performance is a disruption, even if it's really subtle, even if it's just that somebody walking down the sidewalk has to notice it. There is that moment of some form of de-route from a straight path. But I also think people are good at ignoring and not seeing, especially in New York City. It's like, oh, that's just another thing that happens. I try to be coy. Sort of reserved in what it is that I'm doing, even if what I'm doing is disruptive. 

IEVA: Does New York give you more freedom to perform in a way that you wouldn't elsewhere? 

AIDAN: There’s permission granted by the city, by its history. There's this history of public performance or people doing whatever they want. So there's this permission there, but I feel like there's this other side of that coin, where it almost creates this… It almost turns me or somebody doing some "disruptive performance art” into just another one of "those people.” There's this archetype that one snaps into. There is something embarrassing about that. Or there's, like, this cringe kind of thing. So even though there's permission, there's also eye-rolling. 

IEVA: Isn't it fun to make the eyes roll? 

AIDAN: Definitely. 

IEVA: That's what I would imagine. Like the last time we talked—passing that threshold of cringe. Beyond that, there's an area with this really fertile soil or something.

AIDAN: This is what I'm curious about. Part of it is being in control. It's not just that I'm literally rushing through the city, tripping, falling, and all my shit goes everywhere… And it's embarrassing, and people laugh at me. I am doing something with purpose and parameters. The intent and the aesthetics are considered. If I can do something that in some ways could be cringe or eye-rolley, I should. I think I like this term? An aesthetic category— eye-rolley. I'm using the effect that that exists, that there is this preconceived dismissal. If I can use that and repurpose it or rise above it, I can say, "No, I understand that there's something cringe here; I know that, and that's part of it, and I am succeeding in creating good art regardless." 

That is an exciting challenge. Can I be in control of this but still do something embarrassing in public that will end up on a New York Instagram page where people are making fun of me and still have it so that the artists around me highly respect it. (laughs)

IEVA: I'm also really curious about the act of orchestrating a public performance. Do you desire to document it? Does part of you want to let that go? Let go of an urge to control how events turn out. Performance, the act itself enters the rumor-verse, and the documentation of it potentially goes on the Internet. It becomes an echo-like thing, the oh, let me tell you what I just saw. Let me tell you this ridiculous thing. And then it creates even more excitement around itself because it's not a static thing. It bleeds into the texture of the city, the myth of the town. When I saw your work, I thought you were adding to that myth of the city. Some of my favorite artists do precisely that. It's like the material you work with is the atmosphere in its broadest sense.

AIDAN: Performance does exist in this sort of rumor, in the spread of information. I was really excited after I performed at David Zwirner in Chelsea. I went to Gerhard Richter's opening and wanted to embarrass myself in front of a canon male artist. Embarrass myself in front of the work, embarrass myself by insisting that my performance art existed in a blue chip gallery. I went in with a hose wrapped around under this performance outfit, an awkward length khaki skirt, weird fitting white button down, and little black flats that together look like dressing up but failing, and look like a catering server in this odd place of formality. I opened a water bottle and spit water into the hose under my outfit, wetting my skirt and the ground. I have napkins, and I'm cleaning them up, and I get kicked out.

Subsequently, I had a couple of interactions that spoke to exactly what we discussed. I had this girl, an assistant registrar at David Zwirner, reach out to me at the time. She had been there, and she just wanted to chat with me. We had talked about it, and she said they had a meeting to increase security at openings the next day.

Later on, I ran into this girl I knew in the city; she was with a friend, and we started talking, and all of a sudden, this performance came up. The girl said, oh my God, you're the girl who peed in Zwirner. And I was like, yeah. Whoa. She was a friend of this girl who was the registrar, and that to me was like, wow, that's what it's all about. 

I do struggle with documentation. For the Zwirner one, I had a friend videotaping the whole thing, and I have good documentation of it, but again, it becomes this thing. Where does that live? I would love for video performance documentation to live in a gallery, but then there's something different happening when you do it that way, versus what felt really exciting was like, oh, someone knows about me, just by what I went and did in the world. 

There is this excitement surrounding the performance when people hear about it. Somebody realizes that I'm the person who did that. 

IEVA: Does the distinction between, oh, like you're the girl who peed herself in David Zwirner or you are the girl who performed at David Zwirner matter to you? It is nearly impossible to control these oral narratives of the aftermath. How does it affect you?

AIDAN: I correct people, but not by telling them that it was "a performance," because I think they understand that even if they're saying it is as if I actually peed. 

A lot of people say it that way.. The people who have talked about that performance to me say, oh, you’re like the peeing girl or whatever. And I corrected them, saying it was fake. They're like, no, I know, but it's still what you did, which then is cool because the hose-apparatus succeeds in being like a “practical effects” thing.

I also correct people because there is part of me that's like, no, I'm not a performance artist who goes into a gallery and actually pees myself like, that's not the aesthetic of art I'm doing. No, I'm doing something more bizarre, absurdist, and Dada-esque. I'm actually subverting like, the shock value of performance. I feel stubborn about that.

IEVA: I was gonna bring up the Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Have you seen the film? 

AIDAN: I don't think so. 

IEVA: It's from the 1970s. It's a French film that shows the bourgeoisie trying really hard to be bourgeoisie. I think the way you play with fashion and all these tropes is subtle, but these tropes are still really strong. Because a part of being bourgeoisie cares about being subtle and not having bad taste.

I want to return to the discussion about the permission the city gives you that we already discussed. Permission that's not a policy, but is simply a feeling. The permission to take space and be a part of someone else's day, in this intense way. 

Let's talk about your Spit Take performance. The drinking and spitting repeatedly as a public performance, as if you heard something completely ridiculous. What do you think the city sidewalk gave for that performance? 

AIDAN: It gave a level of absurdity. There was this way that I was finally getting myself to do a performance because I realized that I couldn't just wait around for a performance to be able to exist in a gallery space. I've always been drawn to restrictive and formal aesthetics that exist partly in performance art because of the white cube gallery. So if I go and do my performances with this aesthetic out on the street it makes it more absurd. I do spit takes out of about 7 jugs of water for forty minutes while I wear this black gown and high heels. In my mind, I was imagining that outfit as an operatic thing. Sort of like the alto soloist standing there performing while the orchestra is playing. 

There is this elegance and formal score thing that would have slipped more easily into the gallery space versus the street, where it's so clearly out of place. 

IEVA: If your work were a city rumor, where would it echo first? 

AIDAN: The aspiration is that the rumor circulates uptown—the Upper East Side among the people who live in the Upper East Side. That is aspirational. In reality, it echoes downtown. Dimes Square. I sort of hate for that to be the answer but that is where the rumor has literally echoed back at me and where that girl said “oh you’re the girl who peed in Zwirner.” 

IEVA: Thank you so much for talking to me. I'm gonna transcribe it. Yeah, we should connect and hang out whenever I'm in New York.

May, 2025