Brief Encounters
Veronica Simpson witnesses a major landmark in artist Katie Paterson’s Future Library project
FEW CREATIVE ENDEAVOURS I have written up over 30 years as a journalist are as remarkable as Scottish artist Katie Paterson’s Future Library. Born of her love of books and trees, and trying to articulate the connection between the two, it entails 100 writers being asked, one a year, to submit an unread manuscript, which will be locked away in an Oslo library until 2114. Then the manuscripts will be liberated and the books printed on 1,000 trees that were planted in a forest to the north of Oslo at the start of the initiative in 2014. In this way, it is ‘constructing a bridge between today and tomorrow’, as Paterson says.
Of the many remarkable things about this project, the fact that it ever happened is the foremost of them. It crosses so many boundaries – including temporal – and yet that very unusual collision of visual and conceptual art, creative writing, architecture, tree husbandry and librarianship is what translates this alchemical mix into gold. The artist describes it as a ‘100 year prayer’ sent out in the hope that people, books, trees, writers and reading will survive into the next century.
The forests of Nordmarka where the trees that will provide the paper for the books to be printed on grow. Image Credit: JOLA JOSIE
Somehow, she found a fertile bed in which to germinate this unlikely idea in Norway, where she first encountered the cultural movers and shakers who have facilitated and funded the project 12 years ago. And then the power of the idea communicated itself around the world to a pretty impressive array of writers. Canada’s Margaret Attwood was the first in 2014, followed by the UK’s David Mitchell, then Icelandic poet and screenwriter Sjón. Turkish-born writer Elif Shafak followed in 2017, then Korean Man Booker-prize winner Han Kang, Norway’s own literary king of existential angst Karl Ove Knausgard (2019), the Vietnamese- American novelist and poet Ocean Vuong (2020) and Zimbabwe’s brilliant philosopher and writer Tsitsi Dangarembga (2021). The choice for 2022 had yet to be announced at the time of writing.
All seven of these have now submitted their unread manuscripts to be locked away in a brand new Silent Room, which was finally unveiled to the public in June 2022. And I was lucky enough to attend the three-day jamboree which celebrated this momentous landmark. There was a conference among the trees at the stunning 19th century farmhouse gallery Galleri F15 in Moss, an hour north of Oslo, where Paterson is currently enjoying her first solo show in Norway. Here, we had the pleasure of listening to Paterson, Mitchell and Sjón discussing their involvement in the project and their musings on its time-travelling, mind-expanding power. As Sjón said: ‘A work of art, a poem composed…is a gesture of hope, because it’s a gesture against destruction, against our deep, full knowledge that one day we will not be here.’
The New Deichmanske Library, where the Silent Room that will house the manuscripts is located. Image Credit: VERONICA SIMPSON
Then there was the ritual of a walk in the Nordmarka forest to the clearing where the Future Library trees were planted in 2014. This has become – or had, until the pandemic halted it for two years – an annual event, attended by all those who wish to join the half hour procession and manuscript handover, as well as livestreamed around the world to Future Library fans.
More than 200 people turned up this year, which also buoyed the mood in the forest, as Dangarembga and Knausgaard handed over their unread books to Paterson. There were music, speeches, even some Buddhist chanting (as requested by Vuong, who could not attend as he had contracted Covid-19 just as he was due to fly to Norway). This was followed by a conversation with the writers in the newly built (2020) Deichman Bjorvika library, and then Oslo’s mayor – who had earlier handed over a unique and long-awaited contract committing the city of Oslo to supporting and maintaining the project through its 100 year life cycle – cut the ribbon on the Silent Room, which is located on its fourth floor.
Paterson admits there was a huge amount of luck involved in Oslo having a new library scheduled, and a director very sympathetic to her idea. Together with the library architects Lundhagen and Atelier Oslo, Paterson evolved the Silent Room’s look and feel. She wanted a place of ‘simplicity, purity and quiet’. And having spent a few minutes there – with my shoes off, a must for all visitors – I can vouch that it already feels like a place pregnant with the workings of multiple imaginations, still smelling of freshly carved timber.
For its form and materials, the collaborators took inspiration from caves as well as temples, old and new. Its contours are formed from 16,000 wooden blocks – stacked in layers, like growth rings – all carved from the Nordmarka trees felled through that 2014 clearing. There are 100 hand-blown glass windows, which front the metal drawers where the manuscripts will be placed and locked, each glass strip bearing the artist’s name, the year, and the title (the only hint offered as to the manuscript’s contents). Thanks to their LED backlighting, they glimmer like liquid golden perforations in the textured wooden tiles that wrap around the whole space, suggesting a warm, enveloping, almost womb-like contouring, which hugs you close. A shimmer of natural daylight penetrates the room thanks to slim skylights.
The contours of the Silent Room are formed of 16,000 wooden blocks stacked in layers. Image Credit: EINAR ASLAKSEN
For the spirit of it, Paterson was particularly inspired by a 2017 visit to a Japanese Shinto temple. She told me: ‘It’s a shrine called Ise Jingu. They rebuild the temple there every 20 years, using new wood but building the temple in exactly the same form. They’ve been doing this for 2,000 years. It’s extraordinary. It’s this contemporary place that is so imbued with the past you can’t separate them at all. The trees they use come from a sacred mountain where they grow [them] specifically for the temples. That crept in for me when we designed the room: the trees, which have, for me, some kind of sacredness, become this room that will span time, and outlive us all.’
As I sit in this wooden cave – which will be open to all visitors during library hours – I am reminded of what Paterson said at the conference in the trees: ‘This project addresses basic human needs and desires: to connect with nature, to connect with time, both time past and time future.’ I conclude that, of all the works of art I have ever encountered, this is the one that might remind us to use that time wisely and use it well.
