“Come Say Hey” is an ethnographic project that connects community, land, dialogue, collaboration, and artists. This interactive project explores “advice” as a place-based phenomenon with overarching themes that transcend location. “Come Say Hey” combines face-to-face interpersonal interactions with data collection and analysis. A performer travels to a high foot traffic site with a stand emblazoned with the prompt “COME SAY HEY.” The performer dons a wig and some red lipstick to embody the persona of ‘Fiora For Your Information,” a personable and chatty advice collector. Fiora casually interacts with passersby who approach the stand and eventually asks them to write a piece of advice on a 4" x 6" piece of paper and clip it to the stand. Following the performance, the advice cards are funneled into an ever-growing digital database. Using the collected advice as content, Conarro collaborates with interdisciplinary artists to create multimedia work such as letterpress cards, video and animation.

“Come Say Hey” combines brief community interactions and contemporary digital forms, blurring the boundaries of analog and digital; small-town and big-city; and rural and urban, as strangers cross paths and interface on the same project. Each participant engages directly with the stand and sees advice other participants have contributed at that specific site, allowing them to explore connectability for themselves.  “Triangulation is the process by which some external stimulus provides a linkage between people and prompts strangers to talk to other strangers as if they knew each other.” This quote from Holly Whyte, an American urbanist and sociologist, serves as a point of departure for the artist. This interactive project explores “advice” as a place-based phenomenon with overarching themes that transcend location.

Project Sites: 

• Asheville, NC - at Warren Wilson College

• Baton Rouge, LA - at Baptist church block party

• Brooklyn, NY - Brooklyn Bridge Park in Dumbo, NY (in the park and on display in the 99 Plymouth Community Room as
  part of the park’s Public Art Installation project.)
  (Collaboration with John Crowe and Elizabeth Collins)

• Juneau, AK - (Collaboration with Giselle Stone) - at Alaska Litho for the annual “open gallery walk”

• New Orleans, LA - at Rock N’ Bowl zydeco festival

• New York, NY - Manhattan for 2018 Women's March

• Philadelphia, PA - at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. 

• Portland, ME - at Willard Beach

• Providence, RI - at India Point Park
  
  

References include: 

Holly Whyte, American urbanist and sociologist, 14th-15th century Ming Dynasty Map, 1837 Ireland map by Henry Drury Harness, Personality enneagram, History of typography, Yogi tea bags, Helena Almeida,  “Marilyn Monroe I Love Your Kiss Forever Forever” by Andy Warhol