For more than a decade, the Scottish artist Katie Paterson has been pursuing a truly singular artistic project: the Future Library. The principle is simple: select an unpublished work each year, accumulate the pieces, and keep them secret until 2114. What is the meaning behind this peculiar vision?
A Work Deliberately Demanding Slowness
The Scottish artist Katie Paterson is the initiator of a project spanning an entire century (2014-2114): the Future Library, whose management is entrusted to the Future Library Trust foundation. For more than ten years, this committee meets once a year to select a new author who has already made a notable contribution to literature. The chosen author then hands over a text, a novel, an essay or a piece of poetry, of which only the title is revealed. Yet, absolutely no one will be able to read it before 2114.
On the project’s official website, Paterson describes the Future Library as a living work that evolves across generations. According to her, the idea for this project was born during a trip, while she observed a drawing showing the growth rings of a tree. Those circles reminded her of chapters in a book and also highlighted the link between the leaves of trees and the sheets of paper.
Katie Paterson has also explained that she intentionally created a work that demands slowness. One aim is to reconnect humanity with the concept of “long time” in an era heavily influenced by technological immediacy and rapid information, etc. Yet, if a century is very long for a person, this period remains minuscule in the scale of the Universe. Moreover, since almost no present-day human will ever witness the outcome of the work—not even the authors themselves—the project also carries the meaning: we must accept our mortality.
Enduring Dimension and the Sanctuarization of the Work
It turns out the Future Library also carries an environmental dimension. Indeed, the organizers planted a thousand spruces in 2014, in Nordmarka forest on the outskirts of Oslo (Norway). At the end of the project, these mature trees will be used to print the entire collection. Furthermore, a long-term partnership with the Oslo municipality is intended to ensure the protection of this new forest dedicated to the project.
The works already entrusted to the Future Library Trust are kept in backlit glass drawers on the top floor of the Deichman Library in Bjørvika, Oslo. This space, named “The Quiet Room,” opened to the public in 2022 and was built using wood from the felled trees that made way for the new forest that will eventually be used to print the books. Additionally, the collaboration with the city of Oslo is meant to sanctify the work and thus shield it from potential political or economic fluctuations in the future.
Since the project’s launch, several authors have entrusted a work to the Future Library Trust. Notably the novelists Margaret Atwood (Canada), Han Kang (South Korea) and Karl Ove Knausgård (Norway), the writer Elif Shafak (Turkey) or even the actor and comedian David Mitchell (United Kingdom).
