text by Tom Common, Mike McCarthy, Tim Etchells, Cath Baker, Jean Cromar, Alan Deadman, Jim Steinke, Carolyn Buterworth, Dan Sequerra, Colin Harvard, Roland Miller, Gwen Robertson
Encounters are Ruth Ben-Tovim and Trish O’Shea, Sheffield-based artists who have developed a pioneering programme of projects that involve community participation and urban histories. They use disused spaces, interventions, interactive media, text, performance and photography to map and collect traces of everyday urban life. From 2002 – 2004 they took over three disused shop spaces in Sharrow, Sheffield - a diverse inner city neighbourhood - and opened the shop to visitors. Hundreds of people came in and this book reveals the vast urban catalogue of stories, memories, journeys, objects and images that they found and collected during their time as shopkeepers. The shop collections were exhibited at the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2006 in the British Pavilion as part of Echo Cities.