Strangers need strange moments together

This book frequently uses the word ‘we’. We, as in the general public, engaged citizens, humans of planet Earth… And we, Mouna Andraos and Melissa Mongiat, together with our team at Daily tous les jours, as we seek new models for living together. Welcome to our journal. 

We crave living in environments that support us, nourish us and inspire us. We dream of places to go through our lives together, inclusively and tolerantly. Can we re-enchant the raw material of our collective daily experiences?
We have been creating interactive art and narrative experiences in public spaces around the world for fifteen years. Using music, dance, art, and other mediums to emphasize the joyful, whimsical, and unexpected, we create moments of connection and care between strangers. 

Through this book, we share our experience in building an emergent practice combining technology, storytelling, performance, and design, while asking fundamental questions to create meaningful work in a world in crisis. Meet us outside the urban masterplan, where we experiment with infrastructure for the human spirit. 

“Interrupting the drab homogeneity of the globalized city is the important work of Daily tous les jours, makers of beautiful public experiences that take place while simultaneously “place making”. The great American composer Frederic Rzewski said that the clearest objective of art is to bring people to come together, something that Andraos and Mongiat’s work does everyday, magnificently.”
— Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

“Mouna and Melissa have invented their own discipline. It was such a revelation to see the courageous journey through their beautiful work!”
— Bruce Mau

Mouna Andraos and Melissa Mongiat—together with their team at Daily tous les jours—have been creating celebrated interactive art and narrative experiences for public spaces around the world for over 15 years. Their groundbreaking work is part of an emergent practice that combines technology, storytelling, performance, and placemaking to build a new infrastructure for the human spirit.

In Strangers Need Strange Moments Together, Andraos and Mongiat invite a broad range of readers—fellow practitioners, urbanists, policy makers, educators, and engaged citizens—to take a joyful approach to building resilient urban communities and re-enchanting public space. 

In times of unprecedented pace of urban growth, with increasing loneliness and division, they shed light on the importance of moving beyond purely data-driven urban planning methodologies—which prioritize productivity, efficiency, and automation—and forging new modes of public interaction. Cities must be spaces for the whimsical, unexpected, and weird, and for the wasted time and strange moments of serendipitous encounter. Andraos and Mongiat use the raw material of the “daily everyday” to propose new models of living together in the 21st century, and to foreground the dimensions of life that characterize what it means to be human in the first place. 

Building on the work of thinkers like Jane Jacobs, William H. Whyte, and Jan Gehl, whose writings on the dynamics and social life of public spaces put the focus back on humans, this book is a  journal, a series of case studies and engaging thinking.