Interview with Toni Sant
by Matthew Vella
for Malta Today's TRUE Magazine

1. You have just moved to Scarborough - what's your first impression of the UK?
 
I first came to the UK in 1988 with my very good friend Immanuel Mifsud. We were two 20-year-olds in search of a personal identity. The few days we spent in London back then marked us for the rest of our lives, in different ways.  I returned to London that year to embark on an intensive training programme with the BBC. A desire to live in this country was instilled in me during the time I spent at the BBC.
 
The reasons that originally moved me to want to live in the UK have changed since then. Scarborough is a very beautiful seaside town, out in the Yorkshire countryside. I can see beautiful cliffs, an impressive sandy beach, and rolling meadows of green just outside my bedroom window. It’s not like London at all. It’s also very different from New York City where I’ve been living since 1996.
 

2. Moving from New York is a big step... what will you miss from the Big Apple?
 
Right now I miss my wife and my cat because they’re both still living in New York. I miss watching Sunday Morning on CBS. And I miss easy access to art events from performances to exhibitions. Other than that I don’t think there’s much I really miss.
 
When I decided to move to Scarborough, one of the main driving forces was the need for a different environment than New York. The city is no longer as attractive as it was when I first moved there. In some areas it is a worse police-state than I remember Belfast being in 1988, when I interned at BBC Ulster while living on Queen’s University campus. And much worse than Malta before the 1987 general election.
 
New York City is a beast. In the last 3 years the beast has shown its underbelly in a way that’s very different from the dark side of New York that most people used to complain about: crime, violence, etc. New York is now a prime battle ground for the so-called war on terrorism and every day new target signs are painted on different parts of it by those who have waged what I believe to be a very misguided assault on terrorism.
 
 
3. When did you move to NYC? And what prompted the move? Could you describe your life's milestones, both personally and academically, whilst there?
 
Before moving to NYC I had been in the USA for about 2 years on and off. I originally left Malta in 1994 to work in a circus in Germany. I had had enough of Malta and was going though a rough time in my private life. While in Germany I became obsessed with collaborative experimentation and formed my own performance group called Platonium, which remained active under various forms until 1997. Working with Platonium I realized that I could never return to Malta and still be happy. Away from Malta I believed I could reinvent myself. Eventually I think I did.
 
I first went to America as an exchange student in August 1994. It was there that I met Christine, who later became my wife. It soon became evident that I should further my education in the arts and by 1996 I had enrolled in a Master’s degree in Performance Studies at New York University. I went there thinking I would work with Richard Schechner on yoga and actor-training. The previous year I had spent 3 months living in a yoga ashram with a genuine Indian guru called Swami Satchidananda, training teenagers in theatre techniques through integral yoga. However, after a couple of months in New York I was urged to read a book that changed my life in a very significant way. The book is called The Electronic Disturbance by the Critical Art Ensemble. The whole thing is available online at www.critical-art.net and I think you’ll find it quite unusual.
 
With The Electronic Disturbance, and a few other things that were happening around me in New York and elsewhere at that time I came to believe that I should dedicate all my professional and creative energies to the Internet. I instantly redirected the topic of my MA thesis to focus on the Internet as a means to alter one’s level of consciousness, an enhanced sense of awareness, if you will, in ways not too different from what I was trying to do with yoga and actors.
 
Eventually I continued exploring the Internet as a venue for performance in my doctoral work. In 2003 I successfully defended my PhD, which involved work with Franklin Furnace, a New York-based arts organization established in 1976 that ceased to present artists’ works in physical spaces in 1996 to present mostly what they call “live art on the Internet”. I subsequently have developed my research and work with Franklin Furnace into a book-length project, which I hope to see published within the next year or two.
 

4. Moving away from Malta could be rather hard – was settling down in NYC troublesome?
 
Not at all! Leaving Malta was the best thing I ever did for my mental and emotional health. Thanks to the love and support I have received (and continue to receive) from Christine nothing is too hard to deal with. She not only supported my decision to move to Scarborough, but I dare say she was the one who urged me to leave New York.
 
Leaving New York was harder than leaving Malta, partly because this time I was leaving a happy household. It’s very true that I no longer felt as good about New York as I did before September 2001, and it’s also true that the main reason I left was to take up a very attractive job in the Department of Performance and Creative Technologies at the University of Hull’s Scarborough Campus. Still, leaving New York is never easy. People have emigrated from Malta for many many years, but have you ever heard of anyone who emigrated from New York except for returned migrants who go back to wherever they came from?
 

5. Of all the myths about American society, which would you say is totally wrong?
 
That’s an easy question to answer. It is totally wrong to believe that all Americans are like George W. Bush. Or a less political version of that would be: it is totally wrong to believe that the America/ns you see in Hollywood movies and TV programs are an accurate depiction of the America/ns you experience if you live in the country even for just a couple of weeks, as long as you visit other places that Disneyland and similar tourist bubbles.
 
 
6. You had an extensive career in Maltese media - how did you start off?
 
My first mentor in broadcasting was John Suda. He was also my drama teacher in 6th Form but we soon became good friends outside of school. He was not the over-commercialized extra-popular broadcaster we have now come to know now. Back then he was a very respected actor with huge international potential. I still prefer to think of him that way. In 1985 he introduced me to the Media Education Centre, which was run by Charles Xuereb at the time. This was a full 10 years before Channel 22. John was presenting a television programme for the MEC, which was directed by Zep Camilleri who suggested I should always call myself Toni rather than Tony. I learned a lot from John and Zep at that time and decided that I should make broadcasting my profession.
 
In 1987 I joined Xandir Malta, where I worked full time in radio, television and on the editorial board of the Gwida magazine until the end of 1991 when I was invited to be Head of Programmes for Malta’s first talk radio station: Radio One Live. I worked there for a little over a year, and left before it moved away from the original format the Grima brothers and I had introduced to the Maltese islands.
 
During the year or so before I left Malta I had become completely disenchanted by the local broadcasting scene, especially because of the way the major political parties had taken over the airwaves in such a disgustingly partisan way. I wrote a Sunday column called ‘Fil-Vina’ in one of the Maltese language newspapers and often voiced my disapproval of the declining standards in broadcasting and other aspects of popular culture. That spirit has recently returned to life in my blog on the Internet. See www.tonisant.com.
 
 
7. Now that you have been away from the island for all this time, how often do you visit Malta?
 
When I first left in 1994 I didn’t return until a full year had passed. Following 1996 I had been working with Radio Calypso as a consultant and so I returned every 4 to 6 months for extended management meetings and other such related work. Then in 1998 Ray Bajada and I created MaltaMedia, so I kept up the same pace until about 2000 when I only came back to Malta just once in 2001. I haven’t been to Malta in the last three and a half years, but now that I’m living in Europe again I’ll probably visit my parents this Christmas.
 
8. Have you kept yourself updated with the goings-on in Malta?
 
The first couple of years after I originally left Malta I’d say that I had next to no idea what was going on other than what my father or my friend Immanuel told me in their frequent letters. Then came email and things changed radically! After we created MaltaMedia there was no escaping the goings-on in Malta. Not only was I kept updated via MaltaMedia.com but I was (and remain) very active within the production team that brings you all the websites on the MaltaMedia Online Network including aboutmalta.com and MaltaWeather.com, beside MaltaMedia.com and others.
 

9. Do you miss the island?
 
No. Not at all. I’m still very close with my parents via the wonders of VoIP and the Internet. Other than them, there’s nothing that really interests me in a way that I’d miss it simply because I’m not close to it. This may come as a surprise to you, but I write most of my emails to Maltese people in Maltese, and I write quite a few every day. I’m also very proud to be Maltese. I always have been. I still insist to be called Toni and not Tony. It may be a silly detail to some, but to me it’s my personal cultural identity as a Maltese person. There’s no “y” in the Maltese alphabet so explaining that has given me many opportunities of conversations about Maltese culture and heritage with people who either know very little about Malta or in some cases had never even heard of it before.
 
Now that Malta is a full member of the EU I believe that it is an important first step towards no longer believing that Malta is at the centre of the universe. It is that sense of insularity we Maltese all know so well that I miss least of all.
 
For a while I used to miss the beauty of some of the underdeveloped areas of Gozo, but since I’ve moved to Scarborough I think I’ve found a new beautiful side of my Gozo. Once Christine and Dina join me here I’ll be in heaven.

 

Original interview text for "Where are they now?" article published in TRUE Magazine on Sunday 24 October 2004.