A library where the books are unreadable until 2114?!
"Tree rings become a bit like chapters in a book"- Katie Paterson
The Future Library silent room, Katie Paterson
Future Library was inaugurated in 2014. A forest was planted in Norway, which will supply paper for a special anthology of books printed in 2114. Every year of the project, one writer will contribute a text, with the writings held in trust, unread and unpublished, until one hundred years have passed. The manuscripts will be stored in the specially designed room (shown above) in the new public library in Oslo.
See
Site in Oslo’s Nordmarka forest where 1,000 saplings were planted for the Future Library.
The beautifully crafted Silent Room is designed in collaboration with artist Katie Paterson and architects Atelier Oslo and Lund Hagem. Intended to be a space of contemplation, it is built from wood cut from the Future Library forest.
100 drawers will each be filled with the author’s manuscripts, year after year. Cast glass, hand-etched with the author’s name and the year of their text, will cover each drawer, with the manuscripts just visible. Built into 100 layers of wood, the drawers are scattered throughout the space, one per layer.
Margaret Atwood and artist Katie Paterson in Oslo’s Nordmarka forest. Photograph: Giorgia Polizzi
Paterson knows she will probably not see the finished product of her century-long project; however, she plans to attend the Handover Ceremony as long as she can. At the ceremony, held each spring, the author selected for that year’s text holds a reading in the future forest before delivering the manuscript. (Atlas Obscura)
Say
In 2114, the drawers will be unlocked, and the trees chopped down – and 100 stories hidden for a century will finally be published in one go.
"It's a project that's not only thinking about us now, but about those who are not born," explains Paterson. In fact, she adds, "most of the authors are not even born yet"
Why build a library where no one alive today can read the books?
What might be learned from its story so far?
Why is Margaret Atwood a great choice for the inaugural author of this project?
Do
Think about what life might be like in the year 2114 when the library is open.
Consider how you might foster long-term thinking in yourself and others.
Watch the artist talk about the Future Library (see Margaret Atwood at 12:45)
Carefully draw one hundred tree rings. Does it help you understand the significance of 100 years?
About the Artist: Katie Paterson
Katie Paterson in the Oslo forest (Credit: Future Library/Jola McDonald)
Katie Paterson (born 1981, Scotland) is widely regarded as one of the leading artists of her generation. Collaborating with scientists and researchers across the world, Paterson’s projects consider our place on Earth in the context of geological time and change. Her artworks make use of sophisticated technologies and specialist expertise to stage intimate, poetic and philosophical engagements between people and their natural environment. Combining a Romantic sensibility with a research-based approach, conceptual rigor and coolly minimalist presentation, her work collapses the distance between the viewer and the most distant edges of time and the cosmos.
Katie Paterson has broadcast the sounds of a melting glacier live, mapped all the dead stars, compiled a slide archive of darkness from the depths of the Universe, created a light bulb to simulate the experience of moonlight, and sent a recast meteorite back into space. Eliciting feelings of humility, wonder and melancholy akin to the experience of the Romantic sublime, Paterson’s work is at once understated in gesture and yet monumental in scope.
Katie Paterson has exhibited internationally, from London to New York, Berlin to Seoul, and her works have been included in major exhibitions including Turner Contemporary, Hayward Gallery, Tate Britain, Kunsthalle Wien, MCA Sydney, Guggenheim Museum, and The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. She was winner of the Visual Arts category of the South Bank Awards, and is an Honorary Fellow of Edinburgh University.
Katie Paterson is represented by Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, and James Cohan Gallery, New York.
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