Ari Gautier
Ari Gautier is a French novelist from Pondicherry of Indo-Malagasy origin, based in Oslo. He writes historical fiction about Pondicherry’s place in the world, and works at Melahuset, Norway, an institution promoting art and culture from the Global South.
In May 2020, he co-founded the multi-lingual online cultural platform, le thinnai kreyol, together with Ananya Jahanara Kabir. The platform promotes their shared vision for a plural and creolised India. Ari and Ananya research the historical basis for this vision in the transoceanic relationships that emerged through the mercantile and colonising ventures of Europeans and the mutual impact of these and anterior commercial and transcultural circulations, particularly in the Indian Ocean world. Taking inspiration from creolisation itself, they devise collaborative methodologies for the non-hierarchical dissemination of knowledge within and beyond academic audiences. Their project has been written about in print and online media, and they have been invited to present it to academic and popular audiences worldwide.
He is a speaker and organiser of a series of events for Atelier KITLV, a collaboration between Framer Framed and the Royal Netherlands Institute for Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV).
