As part of this year’s Rietveld Academie Studium Generale conference We Are The Time, curator Grant Watson invited If I Can’t Dance to consider how to present a Vanity Fair interview with Michel Foucault. On 14 March at 15:00 hrs at the Rietveld Academie, If I Can’t Dance will present How We Behave, delivered and conceptualised with Snejanka Mihaylova, Adva Zakai and Veridiana Zurita.

The idea that life can resemble a work of art was suggested by Foucault in an interview with Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, which was published in the November issue of Vanity Fair in 1983 under the title How We Behave. In this interview Foucault comments – “what strikes me is the fact that in our society art has become something which is related only to objects and not individuals, or to life. That art is something specialized or done by experts who are artists. But couldn’t everyone’s life become a work of art?”

Foucault’s proposition that life can resemble a work of art is explored in a one day programme of talks, performances, screenings and artist interventions. As part of the programme, David Dibosa will give an account of Foucault’s epistemology. Adrian Rifkin will discuss the aesthetics of being a Maoist, drawing on aspects of his own biography, as well as the work of others including the composer Cornelius Cardew and the Scratch Orchestra. AA Bronson will discuss Foucault’s concept folding together professional and biographical categories. Yael Davids will give a lecture/performance that develops with the audience, ideas about listening, recording and speaking. The day has been conceived by Grant Watson for the conference We Are The Time, Art Lives in the Age of Global Transition.

We Are The Time is a week-long conference festival that explores the role of lifetime and life experience as a crucial source of ideas and inspirations, as a force that shapes ones’ art practice. From Monday 12 March until Friday 16 March, curators Aneta Szylak, Grant Watson, Jorinde Seijdel and Afredo Cramerotti, together with many guests, present their programmes at the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. For more information and the full programme, visit: wearethetime.info