Secret library

When we’re anywhere near a sunlit garden, chats with my son and sister become a losing battle for their attention. Rather than talking to me, they’d far rather be wandering among the plants, sniffing the blossoms or surreptitiously stuffing purloined seeds into their bulging pockets.

They’re both keen gardeners. And hardened seed bandits.

So as my son’s eyes stray towards the herbaceous borders surrounding the outdoor café tables at Edinburgh’s Modern 1, I struggle to pull his mind back to all the art we’ve been looking at, and the Katie Paterson piece that so impressed him, in particular.

'When you were doing your degree at Glasgow School of Art, you told me you'd made a breakthrough in your own understanding,' I remind him. 'You'd realised that art was about the process as much as the product.'

‘Maybe more so,’ he says. ‘I still believe that. It’s why I really liked the Paterson artwork. There’s a lot going on there.’

We had stumbled upon this seemingly innocuous piece on the wall of a small room on the second floor, and had been fortunate enough to have our puzzled pondering overheard by gallery attendant Jackie Lindsay, who asked if we would like to hear the full story.

We would.

‘This is a certificate made to look like tree rings,’ Jackie had explained. ‘In the centre it’s 2014 while the outer ring is 2114. That’s the year that a thousand Norway spruce trees will be harvested, which the artist has planted in a forest just north of Oslo.’

The wood from those trees will make the paper for a print-run of a newly published book. Each owner of one of the certificates will then be entitled to a copy of that book.

‘And what’s inside the book?’ my son asks.

‘Nobody knows,’ Jackie smiles. ‘Only the authors. Each year, beginning in 2014 with Margaret Atwood, an internationally celebrated writer is being invited to contribute a written piece.’

That story or poem is then locked away in the Silent Room of Oslo’s public library which, with its crafted layers of wood panelling and a glass drawer for each manuscript, etched with its author’s name, is in itself an artistic creation.

Other contributors so far to the slowly-growing book include David Mitchell, Elif Shafak, Han Kang and Tsitsi Dangarembga, Jackie tells us. ‘No one has read any of their stories, except the author. Not even Katie Paterson. And until 2114, no one will.

‘It’s a lovely idea isn’t it?’ She says, looking around our well-worn, fascinated faces, and smiling again.

‘But I don’t think any of us will get to read the stories.’

Future library