In Oslo, a silent room holds what the present cannot yet give to the future: manuscripts sealed away for a century, written by artists who will not live to see them read. Laurie Anderson, whose life's work has always moved between the intimate and the infinite, has become the thirteenth contributor to the Future Library — a project rooted literally in a forest of spruce trees planted in 2014, whose paper will one day carry these words to readers in 2114. It is an act of radical trust, a letter written not to an address but to an era, and Anderson has said she hopes to write something useful ab
Laurie Anderson joins Future Library, sealing manuscript for 88 years
I'm hoping to write something useful about love for people in 2114
Mark
So the manuscript is already written and locked away? Or does she write it now and then it gets locked away?
Mimi
She's writing it now, as part of joining the project. Once it's submitted, it goes into that silent room in Oslo and stays there until 2114. No one reads it until then.
Luke
Do we know what form it takes? The article says it could be a text, a score, instructions, or something unnamed. That's a lot of uncertainty for a news story.
Mimi
Right—that's intentional. The Future Library Trust leaves it open. Anderson could submit a traditional manuscript or something entirely different. We won't know until it's published in 88 years.
Mark
Why would someone agree to write something that they themselves won't see published in their lifetime?
Mimi
Anderson said she loved the idea immediately. She's spent her whole career exploring how we tell stories across time, how we communicate with the future. This is an extension of that work.
Luke
But we're taking the Future Library Trust's word for why they selected her. We don't have her full reasoning beyond what she said in that statement.
Mimi
True. But she did talk about her childhood—the library, the trees, her mother hiding chocolate in an oak tree. That gives some texture to why this project resonates with her.
Mark
The trees were planted in 2014. That's twelve years ago. Will they actually be ready to harvest by 2114?
Luke
The article doesn't address that. It just says the trees will be harvested and turned into paper. Whether 1,000 spruce trees planted in 2014 will be mature enough to print an entire anthology in 88 years—that's a real question the reporting doesn't answer.
Mimi
Fair point. It's a long-term project with a lot of unknowns built in.
Mark
Who decides what gets printed first when 2114 arrives? Is it in order of submission?
Luke
The article doesn't say. We know there are 13 contributors now, but we don't know the selection process for the final anthology or the order of publication.
The Pulse
- A project that plants trees and locks away manuscripts is asking artists to surrender control entirely — no audience, no feedback, no reception for 88 years.
- Anderson joins a constellation of major literary voices including Margaret Atwood, Han Kang, and Ocean Vuong, raising the stakes of what this sealed archive might eventually mean.
- The Future Library Trust deliberately left the form of Anderson's submission open — it could be text, music, instructions, or something language cannot yet name, reflecting the project's refusal to be bound by the present.
- Oslo's City Council has legally secured the forest until 2114, anchoring an act of artistic faith in institutional and ecological permanence.
- Anderson has spoken of her mother hiding chocolate in an oak tree to lure children toward a library — a private mythology that now quietly inhabits one of literature's most public gestures toward the future.
In Oslo, a silent room holds what the present cannot yet give to the future: manuscripts sealed away for a century, written by artists who will not live to see them read. Laurie Anderson, whose life's work has always moved between the intimate and the infinite, has become the thirteenth contributor to the Future Library — a project rooted literally in a forest of spruce trees planted in 2014, whose paper will one day carry these words to readers in 2114. It is an act of radical trust, a letter written not to an address but to an era, and Anderson has said she hopes to write something useful about love for whoever opens the book.
Laurie Anderson has written a manuscript that no one alive today will read. As the thirteenth contributor to Oslo's Future Library, she has placed her work inside a specially designed silent room at Oslo's public library, where it will remain sealed until 2114 alongside submissions from Margaret Atwood, Han Kang, Ocean Vuong, David Mitchell, Elif Shafak, and Karl Ove Knausgård, among others.
The project was conceived in 2014 by artist Katie Paterson, who planted 1,000 spruce trees in Nordmarka, a forest north of Oslo. Those trees will eventually be harvested and turned into paper, and that paper will print an anthology of the sealed manuscripts — collapsing a century of time, forestry, and literature into a single act of collective faith. In June 2022, the City of Oslo signed an agreement ensuring the forest remains under the Future Library Trust's control for the project's full duration.
What Anderson has submitted is unknown even in form. The Trust noted that her contribution could be text, a musical score, a set of instructions, or something for which no word yet exists — an openness that mirrors her own five-decade practice moving between performance, music, visual art, and writing. She has published ten books, exhibited internationally, and won a Grammy, receiving a lifetime achievement award in 2024.
Anderson has spoken of growing up beside a park of maples, elms, and oaks, with a fieldstone library nearby. Her mother, brilliant and restless, would hide chocolate bars in the fork of a red oak to coax her eight children toward books. That love of trees and stories and hidden things now lives inside a sealed room in Oslo.
She has said she hopes to write something useful about love for readers a century from now — to make her voice clear across time. The Future Library Trust selected her for what they called her singular ability to speak across generations, to imagine what has not yet arrived. In 2114, if all holds, someone will open a book grown from seeds planted before they were born, and find her there.
Laurie Anderson, the Grammy-winning artist whose work spans performance, music, visual art, and writing, has joined one of literature's most unusual projects: she has written a manuscript that will not be read for 88 years. Her contribution makes her the 13th person to submit work to the Future Library, a project housed in Oslo's public library that locks away manuscripts in a specially designed silent room until 2114, when they will finally be released to the world.
The Future Library began in 2014 when artist Katie Paterson planted 1,000 spruce trees in Nordmarka, a forest north of Oslo. The vision was audacious: those trees will eventually be harvested and turned into paper, and that paper will be used to print an anthology of manuscripts submitted by writers and artists over the course of a century. The project collapses time and nature into a single act of faith—that someone a century from now will care enough to read what these contributors have written today. Anderson joins a roster that includes Margaret Atwood, Han Kang, Ocean Vuong, David Mitchell, Elif Shafak, and Karl Ove Knausgård, among others.
What Anderson will contribute remains unknown, even to her. The Future Library Trust has said her submission could be a text, a musical score, a story, a set of instructions, or something for which language does not yet have a name. This openness reflects Anderson's own practice—she has spent five decades moving between disciplines, creating multimedia performances, publishing ten books, and exhibiting visual work at institutions from the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington to Moderna Museet in Stockholm. She was nominated for six Grammy Awards, won once, and received a lifetime achievement award in 2024.
Anderson's connection to the project runs deeper than professional accomplishment. She spoke about growing up next to a large park filled with maples, elms, and oaks, with a library nearby—a fieldstone building with comfortable pillows and thousands of books. Her mother, whom she described as brilliant and unhappy, would hide chocolate bars in the fork of a red oak tree, using the treasure as incentive for her eight children to visit the library. The mother loved books and magic and old trees, and she passed that love to her children. Anderson carries that inheritance into her contribution to the Future Library.
She has said she hopes to write something useful about love for the people who will read her work in 2114. She favors books in which she can hear the author's voice, and she intends to make herself clear to readers a century from now. The Future Library Trust selected her for what they called her "singular ability to speak across time, creating work that is profoundly human, radically imaginative and alive to futures we cannot yet foresee." Paterson, the project's creator, noted that Anderson has spent a lifetime sending signals into the unknown, exploring how we tell stories, how we remember, and how we imagine what has not yet arrived. Her work moves between language, music, visual art, technology, and performance—between the intimate and the planetary, love and loss, politics and poetry.
The project itself has been secured for the long term. In June 2022, the City of Oslo signed an agreement ensuring that the forest will remain under the control of the Future Library Trust for the duration of the project. This means the trees will grow undisturbed, the manuscripts will remain sealed, and in 2114, if all goes as planned, readers will open a book printed on paper grown from seeds planted more than a century before, and they will encounter Laurie Anderson's voice speaking to them across time.
Notable Quotes
I absolutely loved the idea of the Future Library as soon as I learned about it. I've always been in love with books, libraries and forests.— Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson has spent a lifetime sending signals into the unknown. For decades, she has explored how we tell stories, how we remember, and how we imagine what is yet to come.— Katie Paterson, creator of the Future Library project
Want the full story?
Read the original at The Guardian ↗
Culture & Arts