Gray Area Grand Theater: Saliva Bar — Gray Area Festival 2024 Opening Night Performance

Consumers have been trained to regularly swab, spit, and give up ownership of their bodily substances to corporations and government run centers. These fluids hold the data of our DNA, personal information, and identity. Can an individual human become your saliva deposit center instead? Can we take saliva exchange back into our own hands?

In this opening performance, you are invited to exchange a sample of your saliva with one of Lauren Lee McCarthy’s own. A Terms Of Exchange outlines the artist’s intention to protect the privacy of your identity and biodata. Participants are free to do as they like with McCarthy’s own saliva. The growing collection of saliva collected by the artist through these performances is an archive of a moment when the boundaries of our bodies and DNA is shifting.