How We Behave / An Archive of Radical Practice

How We Behave is an on-going project initiated in 2012 by curator-researcher Grant Watson. The project is based on interviews that document queer, feminist, and transgender stories of art-life practice. Taking French philosopher Michel Foucault’s notion of “technologies of the self” as a point of departure, Watson’s archive is driven by an interest to hear people’s stories – people who are mostly in the arts; more from the edges than the centre; sometimes linked to political work but not necessarily so; disproportionately queer rather than definitively LGBTQIA+; and privileged in the sense of having cultural capital but often precarious.

In 2021, at the invitation of Hoetger and If I Can’t Dance curator of archive Anik Fournier, Watson returned to the project for an archive activation. Developed over a three-year period (2021-2023), How We Behave / An Archive of Radical Practice moves through different typologies from the project’s process, sharing materials from 22 selected interviews at different phases of their articulation, from initial sound recordings to final video portraits. As the activation went along, Watson considered how to make constellations across the geographies, concerns and years when the interviews took place. In so doing, he invited listeners/readers to engage with the textures of “the political” that (re)turn across time and space—precisely what the archive as a repository has the potential to make possible. Eventually the online activation also resulted in an exhibition and public reading performance.