Encounterism: The Neglected Joys of Being In Person

Product Information

In this deeply rewarding book, Andy Field brings together history, science, psychology, queer theory, and pop culture with his love of urban life and his own experiences--both as a city-dweller and as a performance artist--to forge creative connections: walking hand-in-hand with strangers, knocking on doors, staging encounters in parked cars.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. From the history of the haircut to the mystery of The Jetsons, Andy Field is the freshest, most down-to-earth, most constantly surprising (and endearing) explorer of urban life I've read in a while. It allows him to reminisce on the original joys and behaviour patterns of past decades (and millenia) and mix them with the new post-internet, post-pandemic age we live in.We must not lose sight of working with people we love working with… Therefore, meet in person, share those experiences, get hungry together, get hot/cold together, share in each other’s pains, radiate, share in joy, confidence, awkwardness, nervousness, and everything else that defines what it is to exist on this planet – together. This attention to detail flourishes in other chapters too, such as the John Updike "Spring Rain" references or the euphoric nightclub leitmotif of "Your Love". He is codirector of the award-winning Forest Fringe, and a regular contributor to publications including the Guardian .

My thoughts and feelings about getting a haircut are entirely different from his, but I felt that he was stretching out his writing. Andy Field – along with his partner Beckie Darlington – have an international programme of projects which is really helping forge the next generation of architects, planners, urban designers and flaneurs, by asking them what they want from their cities. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Each essay is carefully crafted, and full of questions that lead the reader onto further contemplation.To me, the word "encounter" brings back the groups in that I participated back in the 1970s, we spent a couple of hours each time sitting on bean bags in a circle. I am definitely an introvert and would be quite content to sit at home by myself, but I still found a lot of the author's words to ring true. In this deeply rewarding book, Andy Field brings together history, science, psychology, queer theory, and pop culture with his love of urban life and his own experiences―both as a city-dweller and as a performance artist―to forge creative connections: walking hand-in-hand with strangers, knocking on doors, staging encounters in parked cars. As human-beings with over 14 unique senses, just remember that Zoom/Teams only caters to two of those senses. However I found myself skimming toward the end of each section as it felt like a repeat of what he just said, like he was trying to reach a certain word count.

Receiving no public funding, the RA depends on the continuing generosity of our supporters and Friends. This book has 9 different story's within using everyday situations, some might not be as everyday depending on who you are and where you live. The light touch of a hairdresser's hands on one's scalp, the euphoric energy of a nightclub, huddling with strangers under a shelter in the rain, a spontaneous snowball fight in the street, a daily interaction with a homeless man--such mundane connections, when we closely inhabit the same space, and touch or are touched by others, were nearly lost to "social distancing. We learned how to build trust, and that invited us to be daring in what we said and what we revealed about ourselves. All it took was one world-stopping pandemic that demanded we keep our distance from one another, and taught us to use technology to maintain that separation for months on end.Andy Field's prose feels like you've just sat down with a random stranger who is sharing their experiences and musings with you. Urban life really does require human interaction, Field explores this with child-like passion, and helps remind us that remote-desktoping your life is not life at all. Given Feld's theater background and openness to experience, I enjoyed imagining these experiences if they were crafted into scenes of improv and fringe theater.