Pastevent

Future Library
— at Losæter

Date 02 Jul 26
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Posted by Food Studio
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Every year, the Future Library seals a manuscript. A text that will not be read for a hundred years. The work is complete, given, gone. A book, a scroll, words held inside their wrapping, out of reach. This year, two authors crossed that threshold at once Tommy Orange and Amitav Ghosh at an evening conceived by artist Katie Paterson and hosted by Anne Beate Hovin who have shaped the Future Library in partnership since 2014.

“We designed the experiential performative meal around temaki. Another rolled form. Ingredients wrapped in the hand, eaten right away. Made once. Gone. Nothing pre-plated, nothing decided for the guest each roll a story only that guest, on that evening, could write. It felt like the most honest concept to offer two writers on the edge of that act: handing something over, sealing it, letting it go. Two days later, their manuscripts were sealed in the Silent Room at Deichman Bjørvika, unread until 2114. They ate with their hands first. The wrapping is always the concept. What it contains is still becoming.”

– So Takahashi

Art performance
An edible landscape and an echo connected to the Future Forest. The table was set through a performance to the sound of guitar. Layer by layer, elements were presented and placed into the landscape. Each layer speaks as a different time and carries a connection to the Future Forest. A floating installation of freshly picked wild forest herbs came to rest over a gnarled hundred-year-old tree root, which lay on top of a pine serving board. A selection of stones formed more than a couple of million years ago took their place around stoneware tableware. Handmade ceramic clay sculptures shaped from the forest’s residual materials carried the fresh scent of the Future Forest and were placed throughout the landscape as a sensory invitation, later leaving with the guests as keepsakes.

Thank you for our amazing collaborating partners providing wine from Moestue, high quality soy sauce from Maru Norway, coffee from Tim Wendelboe.

The experience was put together with a team of interdisciplinary contributors from a very broad spectrum of backgrounds.  Designer and chef So Takahashi, artist Hélène Arja, artist Tone Bjordam, music by @eivind.stordal & @kofff, dessert by pastry chef @valeria.pastry & @likecremebrulee  herbs and foraged wilds from architect Jan Svartsunds garden. Copilot and SoMe @christelroshol.

Photo by Monica Løvdahl

About Future Library

Scottish artist Katie Paterson has developed a one hundred year artwork Future Library “Fremtidsbiblioteket” for the city of Oslo in Norway. One thousand threes has been planted in Nordmarka, a forest just outside Oslo, witch will supply paper for a special anthology of books to be printed in one hundred year time. Between now and then, one writer every year will contribute with a text, with the writings held in trust, unpublished, until the year 2114. Tending the forest and ensuring its preservation for one 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 hope of finding a receptive reader in an unknown future.

“Future library has nature, the environment at its core, and involves ecology, the interconnectedness of things, those living now and still to come. It question the present tendency to think in short burst of time, making decisions for us living now. The timescale is one hundred years, not vast in cosmic terms. However, in many ways the human timescale of one hundred years is more confronting. It is beyond many of our current lifespans, but close enough to come face to face with it, to comprehend and to relativise”. – Katie Paterson