![\"PatersonFuture](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/89_DO04_Mickiewicz_PatersonFuture-Library-Handover-day3-scaled.jpg\")
Future Library, map of the forest<\/em>, 2015.
Photo : \u00a9 Katie Paterson, design by Fraser Muggeridge Studio
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![\"PatersonFuture](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/89_DO04_Mickiewicz_PatersonFuture-Library-Handover-day-scaled.jpg\")
Future Library Handover Day<\/em>, 2016.
Photo : \u00a9 Bj\u00f8rvika Utvikling by Kristin von Hirsch<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Berlin-based Scottish visual artist Katie Paterson seems to be asking both of these questions simultaneously. In 2014, in collaboration with Bjorvika Utvikling and the city of Oslo, she began an art project called Future Library<\/em>\u200a\u2014\u200aFramtidsbiblioteket<\/em>. Future Library<\/em> is an art project that is intended to span a hundred years. A forest of one thousand trees has been planted in Nordmarka, Norway, in order to supply the paper to print an anthology of books that will be read in one hundred years\u2019 time. \u201cBetween now and then, one writer every year will contribute a text, with the writings held in trust, unpublished, until 2114. Tending the forest and ensuring its preservation for the hundred-year duration of the artwork finds a conceptual counterpoint in the invitation extended to each writer: to conceive and produce a work in the hopes of finding a receptive reader in an unknown future.\u201d1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 1 <\/a> - \u201cAbout,\u201d Future Library\u200a\u2014\u200aFramtidsbiblioteket\u200a\u2014\u200aKatie Paterson, 2014, accessed October 24, 2016, http:\/\/futurelibrary.no.<\/span> Margaret Atwood is the inaugural writer for the project and has already submitted her manuscript, Scribbler\u2019s Moon<\/em>. In 2015, David Mitchell agreed to be Future Library\u2019s<\/em> second writer, and he handed in his manuscript in the spring of 2016. Icelandic poet, novelist, and lyricist Sj\u00f3n has been named as the third writer to contribute to Future Library<\/em>. He is slated to hand in his manuscript in June of 2017. Sj\u00f3n views the invitation to contribute a manuscript to Future Library<\/em> as a call to play a very particular game, one in which he needs to address his relationship and engagement with writing. This raises several complex questions for him: \u201cAm I a writer of my times? Who do I write for? How much does the response of the reader matter to me? What in a text makes it timeless? And for some of us it poses the hardest question of all: Will there be people in the future who understand the language I write in? It is a game I look forward to play [sic] with enthusiasm and earnestness.\u201d2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - \u201cPress Release,\u201d Future Library\u200a\u2014\u200aFramt\u00adidsbiblioteket\u200a\u2014\u200aKatie Paterson, 2016, accessed October 24, 2016, http:\/\/futurelibrary.no.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n The goal is to have the manuscripts displayed (only revealing the author\u2019s names and titles of their works) in the New Deichmanske Public Library in Bjorvika, Oslo, scheduled to open in 2019. The room they will be displayed in will be designed by Paterson and lined with wood from the Nordmarka forest. Although not initially conceived of as such by the artist, Future Library<\/em> is an example of a generative infrastructure in the making. A critical reflection and commentary on our old infrastructures of knowledge (will the book in paper format still exist in a hundred years? If it does, will there be anyone around to read it, or who can read it?), the project also poignantly highlights the relational qualities of knowledge infrastructures. It emphasizes not only the obvious complicated transfer of knowledge and ideas over one hundred years (a time span carefully chosen in relation to the longevity of human infrastructure) but also the complexities of having a fledgling forest growing within contemporary infrastructural frameworks. In other words, the forest\u2019s existence is subject to whatever happens to our environment over the span of the next hundred years. Whatever political or economic decisions are made, whatever natural disasters it might be subject to will have a bearing on whether and how our present ideas are circulated in the future. In a film about Future Library<\/em>, one of the project\u2019s participants says, \u201cThat\u2019s what forestry is about, and that\u2019s what city planning is about. We are making decisions today that are extremely important for two generations to come, not for us only, but the next generations.\u201d3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - \u201cWatch Film: Future Library,\u201d Future Lib\u00adrary\u200a\u2014\u200aFramtidsbiblioteket\u200a\u2014\u200aKatie Paterson, 2014, accessed October 24, 2016, http:\/\/futurelibrary.no.<\/span> Shannon Mattern argues that critical-creative practitioners\u200a\u2014\u200ain particular, \u201cartists, media-makers, designers, critical engineers, digital humanists, and their colleagues\u201d4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Shannon Mattern, \u201cScaffolding, Hard and Soft\u200a\u2014\u200aInfrastructures as Critical and Generative Structures,\u201d Spheres: Journal for Digital Cultures<\/em> (June 2016), accessed October 24, 2016, http:\/\/spheres-journal.org\/scaffolding-hard-and-soft-infrastructures-as-critical-and-generative-structures\/.<\/span>\u200a\u2014\u200ahave a particularly useful perspective to offer when it comes to promoting infrastructural literacy, in that artists and designers, those creative practitioners, have the \u201cpotential to go beyond the representation<\/em> of infrastructure to the design<\/em> of infrastructures themselves\u200a\u2014\u200amore efficient effective, accessible, intelligible, and just infrastructures.\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Ibid.<\/span> Although at first glance Paterson\u2019s art project is a reflection of what the library as an institution and the transfer of knowledge in general might look like in a hundred years, it is also an alternative way of reflecting on what the library is representative of and what role it plays in contemporary society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Concern about the future of the book has sometimes served as a proxy for concern about the future of the library, on the assumption that what the library is primarily for is the housing and borrowing of books. But what are books for? If we consider the possibility that the traditional library\u2019s storage of books has itself always been a proxy for the (arguably more primary) function of providing time and space for reading, our assessment of changes under\u00adway at the library might be more encouraging. The death of reading has been as pervasive a fear as the death of the book, and yet perhaps reading is not so much dying, but rather being resituated, just as books are. Projects such as the Underground New York Public Library<\/em>,6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - About,\u201d Underground New York Public Library, 2016, accessed October 24, 2016, http:\/\/undergroundnewyorkpubliclibrary.com.<\/span> an online photo series of \u201cReading-Riders\u201d within the New York City subway system and a visual library in itself that aims to share what others are reading, point to the multiplicity of alternative spaces of reading. Reading has never been more easily available to us, particularly while in transit. Consequently, the library is no longer the sole producer of contemporary reading practices. Its reimagination and redesign as a space of reading\u200a\u2014\u200aregardless of the technology being used to access words and images\u200a\u2014\u200amight be less of a loss than a partial recovery of a function that has always been central to the library\u2019s purpose. That said, it is undeniable that the contemporary library is becoming something other, and something more, than either a preserver and disseminator of cultural heritage and knowledge or a renovated space for reading. The role of libraries in the production of human subjects was once confined to providing access to great cultural and literary works that would cultivate the intellect. Today\u2019s public library is still charged with contributing to the cultivation of human subjects, but it has moved from stimulating intellects to caring for citizens in ways that are both more pragmatic and more comprehensive. Libraries have become spaces where people might have the opportunity to get back on their feet, to meet other people, to come together in protest, to be alone but with others. What the library today wants to improve is not only individuals\u2019 intellectual capacity but also their quality of life by providing them with the skills necessary to survive in a digital economy and culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Under the auspices of new technologies, the discourse around libraries has shifted from a modern preoccupation with collections, pedagogy, and authoritative knowledge toward a postmodern emphasis on interfacing, empowerment, democratization, communitarianism, and lifelong learning.7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - Martin Hand, Making Digital Cultures: Access, Interactivity, and Authenticity<\/em> (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2008), 10.<\/span> It is commonly argued that libraries have continued to thrive in the face of digitization and the supposed decline of books because they have embraced the technologies that were threatening their existence, becoming spaces of free access to wireless networks that work to bridge the digital divide. However, libraries have continued to thrive, not only because they have embraced these technologies (libraries have always done so) but, primarily, because they have become new social and educational institutions for the twenty-first century. A tension lies within this transformation as libraries struggle to hold on to an older version of themselves while simultaneously coming under pressure to fill in the gaps often left by other cultural and educational institutions. The transformation of the library is not a new phenomenon; the library has been continuously reinvented and adapted to new cultural environments. The contemporary challenge that libraries face, to become more like something else <\/em>or to step in where other institutions might be struggling or failing, is a new kind of challenge, one that is specific to the library finding itself within a new digital cultural reality. Libraries are undertaking an anthropocentric turn\u200a\u2014\u200abecoming assemblages of media technologies, architectural designs, immaterial and material labour, and people\u200a\u2014\u200aand in the process are becoming evolving, living institutions that reflect the concerns of twenty-first-century urban social environments. The question posed by Paterson is whether these same processes of social mediation and urban need will have any bearing on her library in 2114.<\/p>\n![\"Paterson-Deichmanske](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/89_DO04_Mickiewicz_Paterson-Deichmanske-Bibliotek-scaled.jpg\")
Photo : \u00a9 Atelier Oslo & Lund Hagem<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"PatersonFuture](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/89_DO04_Mickiewicz_PatersonFuture-Library-Handover-day2-scaled.jpg\")
Photo : \u00a9 Bj\u00f8rvika Utvikling by
Kristin von Hirsch<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"PatersonFuture](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/89_DO04_Mickiewicz_PatersonFuture-Library-Certificates-scaled.jpg\")
Future Library Certificates<\/em>, 2014-2114.
Photo : \u00a9 John McKenzie<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"UndergroundPublicLibrary\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/89_DO04_Mickiewicz_UndergroundPublicLibrary.jpg\")
February 2013 Highlights from the Underground New York Public Library<\/em>, screenshot, 2016.
Photo : project\u2019s website<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n