The Future Library

If somebody asks you, what is a future library? You have to tell a story. And there are many ways to tell the story. It's not about who we are. It's about what we are doing. It's about being there. It's about the forest. And it's about a moment we share. A moment we create. A moment of meaning. Thank you. Ten years. Three thousand sunsets. The moment it all began. Planting a thousand baby spruce trees. Tree rings as chapters and words becoming trees. A simple earthbound ritual. A secular act of faith. seeking to preserve what is so alive. The transmission of words through time. People listening. Really listening. Taking off our shoes together. A golden harp in the forest. And Iceland's oldest lullaby. Thank you so much for inviting us to MAD, you beautiful mind-blowing community of people. I'm the artist behind Future Library, and Anna-Beate produces the artwork in Norway. So, after spending time at Anna-Beate's old summer farm, deep in the Norwegian woods, I proposed an artwork, a library of the future. Future Library is a forest, a room, a hundred authors, and a hundred years. It started in 2014. In the outskirts of Oslo, we planted a thousand spruce trees. When they're fully grown, they're going to be cut and made into paper. Every year, for a hundred years, a different author is invited to write something new. The manuscripts have to be stored with the utmost care. They're going to be held here in Oslo's new library, the silent room, for the next hundred years, which I designed with Atelier Oslo and Lundhagen. The room is made of 40,000 pieces of wood that we stored from the Future Library forest. It's a slow space, allowing visitors to feel time to be silent and still. You take off your shoes, you step inside, and organic shapes like tree rings surround you. A hundred layers each contain a glass drawer, which holds a manuscript. And authors' names are etched on the handmade cast glass, and their manuscripts can be glimpsed through the light. Our first author, Margaret Atwood, sums it up. In the forest, there is a city, and in the city, there is a library. The Future Library. The Future Library is an artwork that is going to unfold over a hundred years, where each year, from 2014, a writer is commissioned to write any piece, non-fiction, fiction, poetry, in any number of words, and it will not be read until 2114, when the books are printed from the pulp of the trees being grown in the forest. These trees, that in time will be used to print these a hundred texts. What a wild idea you had here, Katie Patterson. When you plant trees, you're aware that it's something that's going to outlive you. And this art piece is really about an unborn generation and trying to make a place for them. Besides Margaret Atwood, for the past ten years, you and many other international and celebrated writers agreed to participate in my wild idea. Why did you want to do this, Margaret, as the first writer of this art project? This is a letter to the future. We assume that people will still be around, that they will be able to read, that they will still be interested in reading, that there will still be a library. We don't know how the world will be with the climate and humankind, so this is a project that is immersed in hope and a cosmic sense of time. Think of this as cultural storage for the future. That books are trees and libraries are forests. And that this future could be beautiful. Every spring... Thank you. Every spring, we take a pilgrimage to the forest and walk in the footsteps of authors past and to come. We sit quietly and listen to the woods. Authors hand over their manuscript and announce its title, A simple earthbound ritual. Okay, the reception to Future Library has been extraordinary, both nationally and internationally. A mark that travels around the world. I just want to mention, we don't have a communication budget, strategy, or staff. It's actually the two of us most of the time. But it resonates with people across religions, countries, ethnicities, genders, and generations. So why is that? What does Future Library bring to the table? I think Future Library is about basic human needs that we share and that we are in need of now. It's something deeply human. It's something deeply human. A relationship with time, trust, and the unknown, and each other. So Future Library is built to last. I never thought it would happen, honestly, when I started negotiating a 100-year contract with the municipality of Oslo. But you can see the hand over the contract here from the municipality to me. I tell you, you don't see my face because I'm crying, I'm crying heavily, to be honest. And the politicians in Oslo have never done such a thing. It's the first time in history. And it's unusual and proving that it is actually possible that politicians could commit beyond the next election budget and political parties and preferences. So Future Library is also built to last because it resists the logic of now, short-termism, It sacrifices the future, the forest, the climate, the culture, the dreams for immediate gain. It narrows our vision to instant results, making it almost impossible to build anything lasting, anything meaningful. And it's built to trust. It not only trusts that the city of Oslo, through its 100-year contract, will protect both the forest and the silent room. It trusts that trees planted today will be cared for over the next century, across generations. It trusts that writers will contribute words meant to be read only a century from now. It trusts that manuscripts created now will be protected and eventually made public by future generations. It trusts that those who come after us will complete what we started. I know this young man. But the trust is mutual. Future generations must also trust us that we are willing to invest time, resources, and care into projects whose benefits we will never personally see. Future Library is a commitment across time, a shared responsibility, and a shared responsibility between those who build today and those who will inherit tomorrow. And it's built on hope. This is our fifth author, Han Kong. She received the Nobel Prize in Literature last October. Without a word, she dragged a white cloth through the forest, silently wrapping her manuscript in it. The world changes faster, stranger, and is more uncertain than ever. And as The Guardian says, Future Library is hope in practice. This is what art brings to the table. Oh, I'm sorry. As Margaret Atwood says, the planet is changing. We need creativity, ambition, and some powerful new stories to understand how we can change with it. This is also what we call future's literacy. The ability to dream, to foresee, to reshape how we think about the future. It's our shield against fear and our tool for survival. Imagination is not an escape. It's a strategy. The future is not given. It's made. The stories we plant today will be the forest of tomorrow. Art brings to the table what no policy or market ever can. The capacity to imagine better worlds. My baby daughter will be 93 years old in the year 2114. Should I write will be or would be 93 years old? My eldest daughter could be 105. It's difficult math to pronounce out loud. A difficult horizon to imagine. I'm certain there will be mountains, vast deserts, entangled rainforests, winds and rainstorms. There will be mycelium. The oceans will be there, swelling and retreating as they have been doing for so long. I'm pretty sure that apps and QR codes will have become as obsolete as fax machines and beepers have become now. And that is a good thing to imagine. Maybe there will be no national borders, no CEOs and no cancer. And that is also such a good thing to imagine. I'm sure there will be curiosity and people that fall fiercely in love and long conversations. And that is not so hard to imagine. I accepted this invitation to form part of the future library because I hope, with all my strength and longing and capacity to imagine, that in the year 2114, there will be an abundance of musical scores, wild horses, acappella choirs, oil paintings, baobabs, astrological predictions, huntback whales, old and new languages, blooming saguaros, hands that write, and eyes that read. I'm a farmer girl. I grew up on a farm that is 1000 years old. I grew up in long-term thinking. And I believe in long-term thinking. And I also believe in visions as leading solutions. as leading stars. But because of all the uncertainties in the world, we have heard of everything from salmon farming to wars and climate change. Margaret Atwood has inspired me to be much more concerned about practical utopias. Because practical utopias are enabling us to dream and implement tomorrow. And I make it happen, actually, our dreams. And I think young people today need both to feel that they are enabled to make changes. And then we have to kind of shorten the long-term thinking, but into making dreams come through. Honestly, being here for two days, three days with you, for me, MAD, mad people, MAD is a very perfect, practical utopia. And I have, yeah. And I have, yeah. And I honestly mean it. I've never experienced something out of the box like this. And how, such a committed audience. And I just want to come with, give you an invitation because doing this work has its ups and downs. From, she's proposed this idea and I had to make it happen. I promise you, we haven't told you anything about that. All the tears, all the worries, all the concern. I still sleep not so good. Thinking about what can happen to the trees. Is it too dry out there? Will there be a fire? And you know, if you think about that and start thinking risk assessment, you will die because you get so concerned. So that will be for the next time. But future library, and I've been in doubt, but future library is really about vulnerability. And it needs us. It needs you. It needs us all to take it on, to do the ritual every year. So the ritual every year ritual with the next author is an open, free, for public. You can also participate online. And we would like to invite all of you for the next handover. Or if you missed that out, remember there are 89 more handovers to go. Thank you. Thank you.