The Future Library in Oslo is a 100-year art project that stores manuscripts that haven’t been published or made public yet. Since 2014, the Scottish artist Katie Paterson, her Norwegian counterpart Anne Beate Hovind and a group of trustees annually invite a prominent writer to submit a manuscript. The commissioning is set to go on till 2113.
Then 100 year later in 2114, the 100 submissions will be taken out and published. And guess what? They will be turned into paper provided by a tiny forest planted near the museum, whose plants are just 3 metres tall now but 100 years later, will be sprawling trees. These trees will be converted into paper to publish the collection.
Margaret Atwood, who wrote a story called Scribbler Moon, was the first submission. Works by English novelist David Mitchell, the Icelandic poet Sjón, Turkey’s Elif Shafak, Han Kang from South Korea, and Vietnamese-American poet Ocean Vuong are all part of the collection.
According to the CNN, this year, Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga and the Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard came to the forest to hand over their stories (along with returning authors Mitchell and Sjón). Forbidden from revealing the content of their work, they could only share the titles: Dangarembga named hers Narini and Her Donkey – Narini derives from a Zimbabwean word for “infinity” – while Knausgaard submitted a more enigmatic title, simply: Blind Book.
The manuscripts will be stored for a century in glass drawers in a hidden corner of Oslo’s main public library. They will be hidden within a small, wooden safe-deposit room or repository called the Silent Room until time for publishing in 2114.
