Ingvil Aarbakke
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Ingvil Hareide Aarbakke (b. July 26, 1970 - d. November 23, 2005) was a Norwegian artist. With her husband Ion Sorvin, she was the moving force behind the Copenhagen-based collective N55 in 1996.
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[edit] Biography
Born in Bergen, Norway to academic parents, she studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Art in Copenhagen from 1991 to 1997. She went on to make an impact on the Scandinavian art world by helping to establish, in 1996, N55. Named primarily after Copenhagen's latitude, N55 came into being with its half dozen members sharing their living space and holding all things in common, with minimum private property. N55 holds that material objects ought to be shared and saved from the constraints of private ownership. [1] N55's first showing came in 1996 at an exhibition at Denmark's Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, located north of Copenhagen, to mark the city's year as European cultural capital.
Ingvil Aarbakke's own thinking here was shaped by the Danish philosopher Peter Zinkernagel. All of N55's work product is freely accessible; their books, manuals, manifestos and images can be seen online and are not copyrighted. A prolific writer, Ingvil Aarbakke wrote many of the 400 pages of the N55 Book Together with her husband Ion Sørvin.
[edit] Land
In the project they called Land, N55 began to acquire and dedicate small plots of land, from northern Norway to the Californian desert, in less sparsely populated places in Denmark, Holland and Switzerland, and in waste patches of cities such as Chicago, all to public use. On each is erected a steel polyhedric cairn by which the area is declared to belong to "the commons". Anyone may use it as long as it is acknowledged that "Land gives access to land." While N55 has not been subject to serious legal harassment, it has received favourable attention from those concerned to protect the public domain, and from those looking for workable and just alternatives to patents and copyright.
[edit] Snail Shell System
In 2002, with support from the Henry Moore Institute, Aarbakke attracted interest when she rolled, through the centre of Leeds, N55's Snail Shell System, a cylindrical polyethylene tank to enable people to move around and live in various environments. That same year, N55's Shop caused some consternation at the Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Arts; goods were exchanged, borrowed and taken, but no money was involved. The Shop enjoyed further success in 2003 with an exhibition in New York City.
[edit] Spaceframe/Micro Dwelling
From 2002, the members of N55 lived in the Spaceframe, mounted on a raft of their own construction, in Copenhagen harbour. A truncated tetrahedron, with a floorspace of 20 square metres, the Spaceframe requires no foundations and can be assembled by hand. N55 appreciated the possibilities that modern technology provided for a revival of nomadic living. Their Micro Dwelling is a minimal space in which one person might live, supported on a tripod, thus minimally disturbing the Earth; it can also be floated or submerged.
[edit] Death
Ingvil Aarbakke's impending death from cancer was approached without regard for convention. She was reportedly a model of composure.
She was survived by her husband, Ion Sorvin, and their one-year-old son, Frode, as well as by her parents and siblings.
