Delay
Seal it with a date; nobody looks before it.
Buried in 1938, to be opened in 6939.
Seen in Katie Paterson, Future Library, Oslo, 2014–2114
Try it on your work
Take twelve photographs and do not look at them: film left undeveloped, or files moved straight into a folder you do not open. Write a date three months away on the folder. Stop there; look on the date and not before.
Write a review of a piece of your own work, seal it, and write a date six months away on the envelope. Stop there; read it on the date.
Each member of a group writes one line about what the group will be like in a year. The lines go into one envelope, dated a year away and handed to someone outside the group. Stop there.
How it has been used
Put a fixed wait between finishing a thing and anyone receiving it: the letter dated to be opened in ten years, the manuscript sealed for a century, the film developed only next summer. The move forbids an early look, by the receiver or by the maker.
Where it leads
Grouped under Take something out of view for now