Dr. Philipp Schulte

Occupying Spaces –

When Beavers Captured an Norwegian Village

Saturday, 24th of June, 2023: Beavers captured the south-east

norwegian village of Hølen at the river Såna. What started with a

wooden tent-like structure at the waterside, went on with a

sabotaged electricity pylon in the hills and a destroyed piano in

the woods, and in the end, the second largest rodents of them all

took over the village’s café even, renaming it in „Beaver Café“.

All of this happened just within a few days during Sånafest 2023,

a festival for contemporary art, theatre, performance and dance.

One of the oldest qualities of artworks is their capability of

fictionalizing reality. In regards to the artistic theatrical practice

of acting, for example, Canadian theatre scholar Josette Féral

once used the term of ‚occupying‘: „[A]cting ist he result of a

performer’s decision (as actor, dierctor, designer, or playwright)

to consciously occupy the here-and-now of a space […].“ 1 And

she adds, „a space different from the quotidian“ 2 , but reading her

full text makes it clear, that this action of occupying easily can

turn and transform the space of the here-and-now into one that

differs from our everyday expectation and use of it. Art always

claims spaces, and interventional art turns the spaces it claimed

into spaces beyond its quotidian use and meaning. As one could

witness in June 2023 – in Hølen. Because those beavers described

before were art beavers, invented by visual artist Marianne

Stranger, sent by her to Sånafest to stir up the rural order

established mainly by us human beings, with the mission to do

what beavers do best: leaving traces of their own – the mentioned

tent (a sound sculpture titled „Hjemme/gjemme“), the piano

 

1 Josette Féral, „Theatricality. The Specificity of Theatrical Language“, in: SubStance,

Vol. 31, No. 2/3, Issue 1998/99; Special Issue: Theatricality (2002), pp. 94-108; p.

101.

2 ibid.

 

being smashed by a logged tree („En,to,tre“), the pylon

(„Avbrutt“).

Unlike a conquest, a occupation can be a rather slow endeavour.

The one who conquers gains powerful ownership by acts of

violence; the one who occupies sits down to reserve a space, to

claim it for future use, in full awareness of the precarity and

ephemerality of the current action. ‚Å besette‘ – to sit down as an

act of defiance and recalcitrance, to go closer to the ground to set

a sign that shows: Yes, you understand this space being like this

and used for that – but it equally could be different. This can be

understood as an act of theatricalization.

The beavers of Hølen remind us, that occupying spaces and social

situations can have this utopian moments to allow us to think: It

is like this – but it could be different. The world seems to be ruled

by human beings; but it could be organized and structured by

home building rodents just as well, and who could tell this would

be worse. Moreover, the art beavers don’t act as conquerors, they

don’t want to banish us festival goers and villagers; they claim

their right to co-exist neighbourly with us, a right we violated

time and again. Due to intensive hunting, the European beaver

was almost extinct at the beginning of the 20th century. Today

we’ve learned: Beavers also provide us humans with all kinds of

services. Beaver ponds filter water, slow down flooding, form a

barrier to forest fires and reduce erosion. 3

Marianne Stranger’s beaver series theatralizes every day spaces

to enable sometimes concerning, sometimes utopian thoughts in

its visitors: Yes, it is like this – but what if…

 

3 cf. Ben Goldfarb: Eager. The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They

Matter. White River Junction 2019.