Onåbara (Unreachable)

Aleksander Motturi's reading points to on the insatiable need of our time for disasters and victim stories in literature, arts and media, as well as the inability to embrace the essence of a life in one single story.

Aleksander Motturi is a Swedish writer and artistic director of Clandestino Institute where independent critical, educational and artistic programs such as Victims & Martyrs (curated for Göteborgs Konsthall), Creative Writing for Newcomers (led by Hassan Blasim in Arabic), The Right to Narrate (in relation to the Swedish writer's boycott of Gothenburg Book Faire 2017), The Fire Next Time (a multidisciplinary program inspired by James Baldwin's legendary essay) have been presented. After finishing a doctoral thesis in philosophy on Ludwig Wittgenstein's remarks on James G Frazer (Filosofi vid mörkrets hjärta – om Wittgenstein, Frazer och vildarna) he has written several novels (Diabetikern, Svindlarprästen, Broder, Onåbara), essays ("Etnotism") and plays ("Förvaret", "Pappersgudar"). He has also directed Thaumazein, an essay film based on an interview with the Ugandan-Sudanese refugee Peter Ekwiri who he first met in James Fort Prison in Accra, Ghana, 2003.

Video recorded at Gothenburg City Library, 21 May 2019 as part of Who writes the future?, organised by L'Internationale Online and Valand Art Academy. Video editor: Camilla Topuntoli.