Битеф

biem of how to identify our ’data’. What are they? Is my huldumadur a piece of data, or are data only those narratives about the ’hidden people’ that people are prepared to tell me? And the narratives themselves, are they to be listed as ’reality’, ’belief, or just narratives? The point is that there can be no single answer to this. The huldumadur is a kind of figure which will stand out against a background made up of people’s narrations of their first- or secondhand experience with him. my extensive radings on the matter, and the fieldworker’s experience in the mistry mountains. Immersion into the alien world is a necessary precondition to the identification of ethnographic data. This identification depends upon the fieldworker’s experience of a shared cultural space in which, she lives with her 'informants’. There is no way of isolating meaningful units of analysis except through an implicit (internalised) knowledge of local cultural standards. This is where the visit of any possible huldumadur becomes of prime importance; we should not resist seduction. 4. Bernhard Severin Ingemann (1789-1862). Confession Often I am happy, and yet would like to cry as no one shares my hapiness. Often I am sad and yet I must laugh so no one sees my frightened tears. Often I love, and yet I must sigh as my heart retreats in silence. Often I am indignant, and yet must smile as my indignation is directed at fools. Often 1 am warm, and freeze in my warmth as the world embraces me with frozen arms. Often I am cold, and yet 1 burn as the world can not extinguish my love. Often 1 speak, and yet would like to be silent as my words can not follow my thoughts. Often I am mute, and wish my voice would thunder to liberate my oppressed heart. Oh you, who alone can share my joy, you on whose breast 1 could freely cry; Oh, if you knew, if you loved me, then I could be as I am - beside you. □

The Role of the Anthropologist Why does an anthropologist choose to deliver herself weaponless to a theatre group which wants to create a performance about her biography? And what does it mean for an anthropologist to see her own figure remolded and represented by others, and inserted into a context defined by a group of actors? These two questions arise naturally in relation to the new production of the Odin Teatret, whose protagonist is named Kirsten Hastrup. But before I answer them, I must speak a little about the background of the play as it relates to my personal experience. I had written some articles concerning my ethnographic fieldwork in Iceland in which I tried to demonstrate the importance of personal experience in the sceinces. My point of departure in the articles had to do with the fact that by living in other worlds, the anthropologist becomes a part of and participates in ’otherness’. In so doing, she has access to a hidden insight: by sharing life of a community, she acquires knowledge of another world. This means that her culturally conditioned way of thinking and judging is partially suspended. Only when this happens can she gain access to the reality of the ’others’. This reality often contains elements of unreality. It means that there exist experiences which cannot be immediately understood within the framework of known explanations, but which cannot be refused because they have, in fact, been experienced. In this way, the borders of the real are displaced. My meeting with the Icelandic huldufólk (hidden people) is an example of such a displacement. In my articles, 1 have tried to put into words this type of experience, which seldom finds a place in scientific works. I was astonished when Eugenio Barba, after having read some of my texts, asked me what I would say if Odin Teatret used me as a character in a production. But 1 said yes, and agreed to write a series of short texts, which described my life. The texts should convey an image of the person who became an anthropologist.

and through this, consciously tried to go beyond the borders of the known world. Those texts, and the meeting with the Odin people, took on the form of a self-exposure. Apparently defenseless, I passed on a series of details from my childhood, my student life, and my adult life as woman and anthropologist. And now we are back to the question of why. The answer is strictly connected to what I tried to do with my articles concerning my fieldwork. It is a question of creating a relationship between the personal and the general, or between the subjective and the objective in the sciences. In fact, I believe that this opposition between these two dimensions is false. The desire to uncover my own history is related to the desire to demonstrate this falsehood. Such a formulation in the context of what I am writing here is, of course, a rationalization after-the-fact. But it was already an intuitive part of my acceptance of a character which bore my name. At that time, I knew already that it was not a question of making the private public. On the contrary, it was a question of demonstrating how anthropology as a science ■shakes valid concepts pertaining to both reality and science. The work with Odin Teatret offered the possibility of such a demonstration, and I grasped it. The production itself has surprised and overwhelmed me, first because it is exciting theatre, and second because it treats me so intimately. I have handed over some texts and some keywords, but as a character, Kirsten is no longer mine. On stage she is therefore both me and not-me. The Odin people have been loyal to my images, and have with overwhelming precision captured some of them in a dramatic expression which gives the experience back to me. Nevertheless it is not me. but her that I see on the stage. Here lies the answer to the other question. What does it mean for an anthropologist to be represented dramatically? It means that an ’other’ represents you, and inserts your life into a context which is not your own. In other words, it means that the anthropologist experiences herself in the role which she normally attributes to her own objects of study. And through this experience, she learns something new about what it means to be an anthropologist. That is why the anthropologist, has left her weapons backstage, and has given herself to a theatre. □ Kirsten Hastrup

Four Spectators The natural borders The theatre’s nature is ephemeral. What consequences can be drawn from this true yet banal affirmation? One could dive into the culture of the emphemeral. One could, on the other hand, oppose the unavoidable transcient nature of theatre. This opposition brings us to a discovery of its meaning. It is an attempt to dilate the theatre’s boundaries, to refuse the predetermined role which it assumes in our culture. Thus: to negate the theatre by doing it. This means knowing how to hide the negation in the heart of a work which must above all be well-done. We can transmit the meaning of the revolt without naming it, simply by means of technical principles and professional attitudes. Ephemeral means that which lasts but one day. But also that which changes from day to day. The first meaning evokes the image of death; the second, on the other hand, evokes the ever-changing flow which characterizes being-in-life. It is the performance, not the theatre, which lasts only a short time. The theatre is made up of traditions, of conventions, of institutions, of habits, which endure throughout time. The weight of their endurance is so heavy that it often prevents life from emerging and replaces it with routine. Routine is another of the theatre’s natural boundaries. To fight against the theatre’s ephemeral nature does not mean to protect that which endures: tradition. Nor does it mean to fight for the conservation of performances. The electronic shadows as ther Chinese called film and the electronic shadows do not menace the theatre. They threaten to seduce it. Film and electronics realize what was unthinkable until this century: performances which can be conserved practically unchanged. And thus they obscure the awareness that the essential dimension of the theatrical performance resists time not by being frozen in a recording but by transforming itself. The extreme limit of this transformation is found in the individual memories of the individual spectators.