From streets to cars, parks to barbers, nightclubs to restaurants, these nine exuberant essays explore how we meet fellow humans, how we share space and what we gain from the physical presence and interactions of others. 'I have spent most of the last sixteen years creating unusual performances in everyday locations - in cafes and cinemas, on rooftops, in parks and out on the crowded streets of towns and cities. Doing so has meant spending a lot of time thinking carefully about these everyday spaces and the kinds of encounters we have in them. Encounterism draws from this history of messing around in everyday life to tell stories about a range of ordinary human encounters. The kind of interactions - with hairdressers, nightclubbers or strangers we pass on the street - that would normally disappear unnoticed into the great ocean of activity occurring around them. Our lives are littered with these little interactions, occupying a grey space between ritual and routine. Ways of meeting we