Vibeke Jensen
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Vibeke Jensen
Holotopia's artist in residence
Vibeke personifies holotopia's art side.
Her grandfather owned a shipbuilding yard; her parents were professors at NTNU. Naturally, they expected that Vibeke would become an academic architect, as she was well on the way to achieve that. But after a post-graduate study at Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, which opened her eyes to so many cultural streams and ideas, and a year at Cornell—Vibeke found the intellectual climate of East Side Manhattan (as it was then) far more congenial. To the dismay of her parents, she left the academia to become an artist in New York.
Art has always been an instrument of cultural change.
What sort of art may bring forth the holotopia?
Vibeke combines the conceptual breadth of a researcher with creative talents of an artist. One of the conceptual giants ‘on whose shoulders she stands’ is Henry Lefebvre. Who saw (the holotopia's point of departure) that when our past work was guided by competition and not collaboration—it left us in dysfunctional systems that stifle our creativity; and vitality.“[W]hat is dead takes hold of what is alive”, Lefebre concluded in his 1974 work “Production of Space” and asked:
“But how could what is alive lay hold of what is dead? The answer is: through the production of space, whereby living labour can produce something that is no longer a thing, nor simply a set of tools, nor simply a commodity.”
Guy Debord gave Vibeke an idea of what this “production of space” might mean concretely. Through her art, Vibeke creates situations that unravel “the spectacle” and sensitize us to what goes on.
Vibeke's Earth Sharing project in Bergen was Holotopia's point of inception
Vibeke and Dino met through a project on the West Coast of Norway years ago, and remained in touch. At some point she told him: “If one day someone decides to take on the whole thing, I’ll make sure to join.” A few years later Dino wrote back that Knowledge Federation had matured, and was ready “to take on the whole thing”. And a few years later she responded by creating an art project called Earth Sharing, in Gallery 3.14 in Bergen, and inviting Dino as co-author.
The name Vibeke gave to this project was “Earth Sharing”. The space and the event she created were meant to strike a match—for a fundamental change, where co-creation and sharing have replaced egotism-based competition.
Gallery 3.14, where this event took place, was perfectly suited to our purpose: A bank edifice in the historical center of Bergen became an art gallery; and it remained to turn this gallery into a space for cultural transformation.
Vibeke and her gallerist had the good sense to invite David Price to take part in this event.