The research project How We Behave by Grant Watson is one of four commissions within the Performance in Residence programme of If I Can’t Dance’s Edition V – Appropriation and Dedication (2013–2014). How We Behave was inspired by an interview of the same name with Michel Foucault, published in Vanity Fair in 1983, in which Foucault asked – “why can’t life be ‘the material for a work of art?” The project by Watson extends this provocation by asking: “If art is expanded to include life practice, then how does the curatorial intervene?” In more than fifty interviews, conducted in New York, São Paulo, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London and Amsterdam, the project explores how people shape their lives. 

This publication includes stills of the video portraits, an essay by Watson introducing the notion of the ‘care of the self’, the original Vanity Fair interview, and interviews with Paul Rabinow and Leo Bersani.