Actual True Love

Actual True Love is a project that included a week-long community happening, a series of collaborative performances, and the release of an original album of duet love-songs. What started as a simple wedding engagement between Conarro and her partner and answering the common question following that engagement, “What kind of wedding are you going to have?”, the planning quickly became an expansive and large-scale 10-day social engagement project. Beginning with a week-long happening at 3 Cent Farm in Sparta, GA, Conarro invited 15 other artists to share their ideas about love, play music, create sculptures around the theme and develop a zine with contributions in the form of collage, poetry, drawings, and more. For some, it was the first time meeting and collaborating.

Following this excursion, the artists went to Athens, GA to join the 325 wedding guests for the “rehearsal dinner.” This “dinner” took the form of comedy, readings, storytelling, and fire-throwing, all devised around the theme of “Actual True Love” rather than toasts to the couple. The next day, the “wedding ceremony” featured a highly curated color collage as all guests dressed based on provided color swatches and mood boards, live performance of original music, and readings of original texts by the “officiant” and other guests. The “reception” became a showcase of video artists, culinary artists, and experimental bakers. Sarah wanted to explore the familiar traditions in weddings to create an accessible way for people to feel participatory. She included some guidelines of participation like a registry that prompted all guests to share an original piece and color swatches in the mail.

That evening, the Actual True Love band (led by Conarro and Bozeman) performed original duets at Creature Comforts Brewery, following performances of love songs by Hank Williams (AK), Sean Nicholas Savage (Berlin) and Weyes Blood (LA). The final component of Actual True Love came in the form of a public showcase of performances hosted at The Goat Farm Art Center in Atlanta, GA. 

Bringing together a different pull of people and prompting them to share an original piece, Conarro employed the social dynamism that characterizes her practice. As an artist dedicated to community engagement, Conarro seized the opportunity to create an inclusive event at the time when the highest number of people from her immediate community would be in the same location. Using a wedding as a skeleton to create a multifaceted, collaborative performance and exchange, Conarro created a large-scale collaboration between the attendees by what they wore and those who contributed more tangibly through cake-making, video, projections, story, song, and performance. There are few opportunities to gather people who are close to you as a catalyst, or as Conarro put it, “This is my chance to do what I love with the people I love.” The couple legally married in a private ceremony three weeks later. 

“Someone felt confused by the cake, and I felt very successful.”

References

 “Perfect Lovers” by Félix González-Torres, Rudolf Laban dance notations, Helena Almeida, Phases of the Moon, “Untitled Two” (1960) by Jules Olitski