Vibeke Jensen

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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, followed by 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.

As Michelangelo as icon might suggest, art has always been an instrument for federating knowledge; and creating culture.

What sort of art may holotopia bring forth?

Vibeke combines the conceptual breadth of a researcher with creative talents of an artist. I’ll illustrate the conceptual giants ‘on whose shoulders she stands’, by mentioning two.

Henry Lefebvre took what we call the power structure as his point of departure. In a similar manner as Bourdieu, Lefebvre saw how past ‘turf strife’ left us ‘the rules of the game’ that hold us in check.“[W]hat is dead takes hold of what is alive” he 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.”

The second giant, Guy Debord, gave Vibeke an idea of what this “production of space” might mean concretely.

Through her art Vibeke creates situations—which unravel “the spectacle” and sensitize us to what goes on.

Vibeke's Earth Sharing project in Bergen was Holotopia project's inception

Vibeke and I Dino through a project on the West Coast of Norway years ago, and remained in touch. At some point she told me: “If one day someone decides to take on the whole thing, I’ll make sure to join.” So a few years later I wrote her that knowledge federation had matured; that I was ready to “take on the whole thing”. A couple of years went by, and she responded by creating an art project called Earth Sharing, in Gallery 3.14 in Bergen; and inviting me as a co-author.

The name Vibeke gave to this project was “Earth Sharing”. To Vibeke it is obvious—as it may be obvious to you, I hope this book might help—that “free competition” must give way to sharing. The space and the event she created were meant to strike a match.

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; it remained to turn this gallery into a space for cultural transformation. The details are provided as the conclusion on holotopia.info; and on Wibeke’s blog.

Vibeke and her gallerist had the good sense to invite David Price as well.

VibekeJ.jpg
Vibeke Jensen in her Berlin studio.