On 23 November 2021, during the 12th Ethnofest in Athens, the Encounters project launched its first issue of an online editorial, through our partner Arts Cabinet’s web space. This editorial presents experiences of encounters from our ongoing explorations in this project, yet in the situation of lockdowns, confinement and distance. What did encounters look like in 2020-2021? The perspectives from participating researchers, educators, artists and student residents explore how encounters seep out where you wouldn’t expect.

In this project, as for everyone and everywhere else, we have had to change our plans; Exploring encounters in a time of confinement, we have turned to carrying out local explorations of encounters, each in the surroundings where we were able to act; in the confinement of a flat, through digital meetings and spaces of online communication and education, or through experimental ways of being together digitally. Others have explored encounters in places where we were supposedly not allowed to meet, but where life and encounters seeped out anyway. Others experienced encounters through walking, alone or together, or connected online. Some explored attempts at care and self-care, some were experiencing what was happening to our bodies and our social relations. We were rethinking our practices, and exploring what encounters might mean at all in the midst of this.

You may study these multimodal works on Arts Cabinet’s website!