IEVA LYGNUGARYTE’S DATABASE AND PORTFOLIO

CV and full portfolio available upon request.
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CURATORIAL AND TEXT

AN INTERVIEW WITH AIDAN ELON
AN INTERVIEW WITH ARMANTE BROOKS
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
INTERVIEW WITH ARMANTE BROOKS
BY IEVA LYGNUGARYTE

Armante Brooks is an artist based in Manhattan who works in sound. His “selected audio recordings of armante brooks” are sonic diary entries, manically recorded, as he describes. These diary entries are intuitive—working an office job in Manhattan, he records the sounds that feel like cortisol emitting subway boxcar at 7:48 am. 

In the “selected audio recordings of armante brooks,” Armante Brooks is a character down on his luck. After being fired from his job as an office worker at a non-profit and watching his lover get swooned away from him before his eyes during a party, he falls into a short binder in which he abuses a hypothetical substance called USB. This auditory hallucinogen induces musical memory, psychosis, physical euphoria, while also destabilizing waking life. 

This work is an attempt to carve out a poetic space for a broken man in the throes of discovering the frailty, ambiguity, and contradictions when performing masculinity. The backdrop being a cyberpunk-esque dystopia with utopian characteristics. The frenetic soundscape provides an unstable, spatialized, overstimulated environment in which to test the limits of performative sanity. It also attempts to blur the lines between performing poetry while troubling the difference between rap, punk vocalization, and spoken word while treading on the tensions and similarities within these traditions. 

Armante Brooks lives and works in Manhattan. He used to work in the corporate world but was recently fired. Brooks  says he lives inside his imagination, and his work are intuitive manically recorded diary entries; tends to answer my questions rather poetically; he is kind of aloof and distant, yet has a lot to say. Memory, specifically musical memory, noise pollution, and late capitalist disillusionment is central to his work. Brooks is somewhat of a loner — all of his works are merely interior dialogue with the outside world; he admits to being extremely sensitive to his immediate environment.
I heard about his work from a distant friend whom I accidentally encountered in Chinatown earlier this year. 

Brooks makes recordings that are installed in random places in the city, such as the Brooklyn Bridge, a clothing shop, inside the Chinatown mall, and at cafes outside of libraries. He installs his works gorilla style most of the time without permission, but people are catching on and allowing him space. Armante often wanders around the city and tries to channel the voices of people he hears in the street, the memories from his childhood, the injustices he sees, and his alienation from the outside world.

IEVA: How do you record yourself? What drives you to do it? What exactly do we listen to when we get to experience your work? Is it a derive, stream of consciousness, or a carefully scripted and produced collection of urban field recordings?

ARMANTE: Well, when I ride around on the trains or walk around, I’m sometimes struck by these moments where all of my senses are activated, and I feel this string of very flowery words sort of oozing out of my thoughts. I don’t know where it comes from, but I get this impulse to record myself, so I pull out my phone and record a voice memo wherever I am at that moment. While recording, fragments of my favorite songs often start to enter my head, and I try to piece it all together when I’m at my apartment. I'm always looking for hypnotic sounds transporting you somewhere else. 

IEVA: Where are you going, Armante? 

ARMANTE: Nowhere in particular… Just follow the guidance of voices I hear in the street. Tonight, I think I might just try to find the noisiest area in the city and attempt to record my thoughts once I get overstimulated.

IEVA: The layers in your diaristic audio works are so absolute—encompassing the everythingness and the feeling of disappearing into trance-like states. Do these densely packed environments that cities generate register to you as some acoustic organism?

ARMANTE: There's definitely a pulse that lends itself to impulsive acts. I feel like the city is a grid of multiple cans of sardines, and we're all squirming around and being directed to do this and that. I’m just listening, to be honest. I just try to resonate with the pulse. I really just try to imagine all of the songs that I personally like playing in cars as they drive by, as the bass assaults the steadiness of the pavement. I think it's cool that loud bass physically shakes an environment, and you could say it is some acoustic layering.

IEVA: Is this a storytelling practice?

ARMANTE: I'm keeping a record of how I might feel at any given moment in a day and attempting to channel the pressures and anxieties that others may feel in their day-to-day lives. I don't intentionally create stories. I'm just recording aspects of myself and trying to leave traces of myself. Eventually, if I keep doing this over time, it might seem like a narrative is unfolding. I think we’re all telling a story about ourselves every day. 

IEVA: How much do you desire to control the afterlife of your work? The way it exists within art spaces? Is that something you care deeply about?

ARMANTE: I usually install the recordings I make in random locations around the city. Typically, these are places where people wouldn't expect to encounter strange audio recordings. Usually, I like places like bridges, libraries, retail stores, parks, and restaurant bathrooms. I’m not always granted permission to do this kind of thing, so I have to move like a graffiti artist most of the time. There have been occasions where I lose equipment because someone has taken it, or it’s been destroyed because people don't resonate with what I'm doing. I usually try to keep a speaker or recording device and a Bluetooth mp3 player tucked away somewhere unreachable but audible, and I check on it daily, during my daily bike rides, to make sure things are working well. But to answer your question about the afterlife of my recordings, I try not to get hung up or fixated on what will happen to my work after people experience them since it all deals with time and sound. I need somewhere to put my stuff; sometimes, the street feels like the best place, neatly seated alongside all the other noises. 

May, 2025