Books by Toni Sant
Enrique Tabone: Catalogue Raisonné
Enriqué Tabone is a UK-based Maltese artist whose works are known for their emotional depth and ... more Enriqué Tabone is a UK-based Maltese artist whose works are known for their emotional depth and technical mastery. This catalogue raisonné provides a comprehensive overview of her career, showcasing her diverse body of work and highlighting the evolution of her artistic vision. Through a selection of her sculptures and mixed media works, this catalogue offers a glimpse into the mind of an artist whose unique perspective and skillful execution have earned her a reputation as a leading figure in the Maltese art scene. It also includes an introduction to her life and career, and texts that elaborate on the themes and motifs that have been recurrent in her work. This book serves as an important reference for collectors, curators, scholars and art enthusiasts alike, and provides a testament to the enduring legacy of Enrique Tabone’s contribution to the world of art.
Documenting Performance: The Context and Processes of Digital Curation and Archiving
A much-needed anthology of writings about the process of documenting performance, focusing on the... more A much-needed anthology of writings about the process of documenting performance, focusing on the professional approaches to recovering, preserving and disseminating knowledge of live performance.
Remembering Rediffusion in Malta: A History Without Future?
Remembering Rediffusion in Malta: A History Without Future?, 2016
Rediffusion started operating a cable radio relay service in Malta in 1935. Over the following de... more Rediffusion started operating a cable radio relay service in Malta in 1935. Over the following decades the company led the development of broadcasting in the country, introducing regular Maltese language programmes in the years immediately after World War II and television in the early 1960s. Operating a veritable monopoly for almost forty years, Rediffusion’s presence in Malta came to an end in 1975. The cable radio service they created lingered on until 1989 and Malta’s national public broadcasting services still operate from buildings originally erected by Rediffusion.
This is the first book in English exploring the history of broadcasting in Malta through the relics of Rediffusion memories. The perspective presented here offers an initial critical analysis of the unprocessed archival resources that have accidentally survived over the years. While it is relatively easy to recover a significant narrative to tell a history of the Rediffusion years in Malta from the primary sources that still exist, albeit rather limited and scattered, it is rather harder to delve much deeper into many of the specific aspects arising from any close study of these materials. It is therefore essential now, more than ever, to remember Rediffusion in Malta before the surviving memories perish or become odd ruins over which media archaeologists will ponder for many years to come.
This is the first book in English exploring the history of broadcasting in Malta through the relics of Rediffusion memories. The perspective presented here offers an initial critical analysis of the unprocessed archival resources that have accidentally survived over the years. While it is relatively easy to recover a significant narrative to tell a history of the Rediffusion years in Malta from the primary sources that still exist, albeit rather limited and scattered, it is rather harder to delve much deeper into many of the specific aspects arising from any close study of these materials. It is therefore essential now, more than ever, to remember Rediffusion in Malta before the surviving memories perish or become odd ruins over which media archaeologists will ponder for many years to come.
The Spazju Kreattiv Art Collection
Fondazzjoni Kreattività, Nov 19, 2020
This book captures the essence of the Spazju Kreattiv Art Collection as it stood on the twentieth... more This book captures the essence of the Spazju Kreattiv Art Collection as it stood on the twentieth anniversary of the establishment of the organization entrusted with the legal remit to operate Malta’s national centre for creativity since 2000. It is intended primarily as a point of reference for the organization’s permanent art collection, ensuring that the works contained within it remain as visible as possible even if, most of the time, most pieces are held in storage. The Spazju Kreattiv Art Collection contains a relatively large number of works of art gathered by Fondazzjoni Ċentru Għall-Kreattività since its inception as Malta’s millennium project. When the historical building known as St James Cavalier, which is part of the Valletta fortifications built by the Order of the Knights of St John in the late 17th century, was converted into the national centre for creativity was highly evident that one of its major functions was to host exhibitions of modern and contemporary art. Almost all of the works in the permanent collection have been acquired after they appeared in exhibitions hosted by the organization. This publication contains a presentation of the findings from a five-year research project led by Toni Sant, Spazju Kreattiv’s former artistic director. The general “art as archive” approach that drives this book is captured primarily in the written documents reproduced in the first part of this book. The second part of the book contains full-page images of works in the collection, along with curatorial notes and relevant contextual images from the organization’s archives. Most of the works acquired between 2000 and 2020 are presented here. Some exceptions include works on which archival discovery is still being made. The third part of the book provides a glimpse into the collection’s future care
Franklin Furnace & the Spirit of the Avant-Garde: A History of the Future
Franklin Furnace is a renowned New York–based arts organization whose mission is to preserve, doc... more Franklin Furnace is a renowned New York–based arts organization whose mission is to preserve, document, and present works of avant-garde art by emerging artists - particularly those whose works may be vulnerable due to institutional neglect or politically unpopular content. Over more than thirty years, Franklin Furnace has presented works by hundreds of avant-garde artists, some of whom - Laurie Anderson, Vito Acconci, Eric Bogosian, Jenny Holzer, Karen Finley, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Annie Sprinkle, and the Blue Man Group, to name a few - are now established names in contemporary art and entertainment.
Here, for the first time, is a comprehensive history of this remarkable organization from its conception to the present. Organized around the context of the major art genres that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century — artists’ books, live art, and digital performance — this book intersperses first-person narratives with empirical observations on issues critical to the organization's success as well as Franklin Furnace's many contributions to avant-garde art.
Here, for the first time, is a comprehensive history of this remarkable organization from its conception to the present. Organized around the context of the major art genres that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century — artists’ books, live art, and digital performance — this book intersperses first-person narratives with empirical observations on issues critical to the organization's success as well as Franklin Furnace's many contributions to avant-garde art.
Book Chapters by Toni Sant
How Can Wikipedia Save Us all?: Assuming Good Faith from all Points of View in the Age of Fake News and Post-truth
Media, Technology and Education in a Post-Truth Society, 2021
The world's most popular noncommercial website is built on five pillars, which include an ass... more The world's most popular noncommercial website is built on five pillars, which include an assumption of good faith and ensuring all points of view are included in every encyclopedia article. How does this pan out in the day-to-day reality of fake news and the ever-growing climate of post-truth? How apt are mechanisms established by Wikipedia over a decade ago in the face of unreliable news sources and beliefs based on gut feelings and emotions rather than verifiable evidence? Active editors of Wikipedia firmly believe that this open online encyclopedia and other wikis operating under the same value system are lifeboats for truth seekers in a post-truth society. The mechanisms established over many years for sharing open knowledge through this online platform are even more useful now than they may have been in previous times, even though this too is understandably debatable.
Documenting Performance: An Introduction
Documenting Performance: The Context and Processes of Digital Curation and Archiving, 2017
Preserving Popular Music Heritage: Do-it-Yourself, Do-it-Together, 2015
An overview of a project conducted through the Media and Memory Research Initiative at the Univer... more An overview of a project conducted through the Media and Memory Research Initiative at the University of Hull for the M3P Foundation, involving software development and explorations on a workflow model for creating a comprehensive archive of Maltese music on CD.
Perspectives on Cultural Participation in Malta, 2017
I discussed participation levels and types in digital culture within a Maltese context on two pre... more I discussed participation levels and types in digital culture within a Maltese context on two previous occasions; both were published in books. The first of these was a chapter I contributed to Exploring the Maltese Media Landscape (2009) edited by Joe Borg, Mary Ann Lauri, and Adrian Hillman, the first book-length work to discuss the broad media spectrum in Malta. The other was another chapter in a collection on radical social justice and education called Lorenzo Milani: Bejn il-Bieraħ u Llum (2010) edited by Carmel Borg. As there are no substantial critical perspectives that proceed my work from 2009-2010 in terms of digital cultural participation in Malta, my initial observations on this subject will be reconsidered against the statistical evidence provided by the 2016 Culture Participation Survey (CPS). Furthermore, as Malta's sole representative on the European Commission's 2013-2015 Open Method of Coordination (OMC) group work on the topic of Promoting Access to Culture Via Digital Means, I highlight aspects from the guidelines set for publication in 2017 in terms of audience development and audience engagement in the broad cultural sector via digital technology. The discussion and conclusion of this essay provide an analysis of the data in the CPS backed by the predictive stance I proposed in 2009-2010 against the case studies and recommendations of the OMC-authored EU guidelines on cultural participation through digital means.
Art, Performance, and Social Media
The Social Media Handbook, 2014
Citing specific examples from the 1970s to the present, this chapter focuses on the nature of per... more Citing specific examples from the 1970s to the present, this chapter focuses on the nature of performativity as it applies to playing with online identities, performing in virtual worlds, participatory art, and fan art. At least one outcome of increased artistic production in social media venues has been the increasing democratization of notions of art itself.
Performance In Second Life: Some Possibilities for Learning and Teaching
Learning and Teaching in the Virtual World of Second …, 2009
Second Life holds interesting potential for performing drama, music, and live art events. Unlike ... more Second Life holds interesting potential for performing drama, music, and live art events. Unlike other virtual worlds created as games with set rules and stock characters, most of what goes on in SL is created by its users. This makes it an ideal playground for creative people. A growing number of musician, theatre-makers, and other performers are exploring SL as an alternative stage for their ideas. Furthermore, like other similarly massive multiplayer online role-playing worlds, SL is used by a large number of people for creative virtual self-presentation. These activities indicate various possibilities for learning and teaching with performance in SL.
Journal Articles by Toni Sant
Mimesis, 2024
Digital Curation Lab Director Toni Sant and the artist Enrique Tabone started collaborating on a ... more Digital Curation Lab Director Toni Sant and the artist Enrique Tabone started collaborating on a research project exploring the visualization of specific datasets from Wikidata for artistic practice in 2019. The research was initiated by Tabone through a Wikidata exploration of gender representation in the University of Salford’s Art Collection. Eventually, she developed an inquiring model for application on other art or museum collections. During the period 2021–2023, datasets on which this approach has been applied include about a hundred university art collections across the United Kingdom, as well as Heritage Malta’s collection of prehistoric female figurines, held at two museums in Malta and Gozo. For DRHA 2023, the project brought together the research work conducted over the previous years toward a coherent conclusion. This was demonstrated through a sound art installation accompanied by physical objects, both created by Tabone.
International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 2023
In 2019, Digital Curation Lab Director Toni Sant and the artist Enrique Tabone started collaborat... more In 2019, Digital Curation Lab Director Toni Sant and the artist Enrique Tabone started collaborating on a research project exploring the visualization of specific data sets through Wikidata for artistic practice. An art installation called Naked Data was developed from this collaboration and exhibited at the Stanley Picker Gallery in Kingson, London, during the DRHA 2022 conference. Through data analysis, employing Wikidata tools, this creative work employs a data set depicting prehistoric female figurines held by Heritage Malta. The artistic research aims to develop a creative workflow model for processing essential information about art collections, museum policies, and ways to engage with cultural heritage through data. This article outlines the key elements involved in this practice-based research work and shares the artistic process involving the visualizing of the scientific data with special attention to the aesthetic qualities afforded by this technological engagement.
Nudity in Digital Performance: Reappraising the Early Online Works of Annie Sprinkle and Frank Moore
Revue française d’études américaines, 2022
FR
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Les premières œuvres numériques de, respectivement, Annie Sprinkle et Frank Moore sont fo... more FR
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Les premières œuvres numériques de, respectivement, Annie Sprinkle et Frank Moore sont fortement inspirées de leur propre pratique au plateau du point de vue à la fois de la méthode et du contenu : les deux artistes américains conservent la même approche de l’érotisme. Tout au long des années 1990, Sprinkle et Moore ont brouillé les frontières entre l’art et l’érotisme pour faire évoluer leurs performances en incorporant le net comme élément majeur. Leur travail s’inspire de concepts diffusés dans le monde de l’art à travers ce que l’on nomme les « cahiers d’artistes », qui sont apparus près d’un siècle avant l’essor de la technologie numérique.
EN
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Any thorough discussion of nudity in digital performance needs to start by declaring a definition of digital performance. This is particularly essential because in the decades since creative work that can easily be labeled as such, digital performance has developed substantially to take on technological developments. It is also necessary to differentiate between works made possible through digital technology and performances where the digital element is only involved in the dissemination of the work. In taking a historical perspective of this subject matter, this article takes a closer look at the first examples of live art on the internet, presented by artists who have used the internet in a way that goes beyond the mere broadcast of live performances or video art. The goal is to provide an art historical context for the more recent developments both in terms of the use of digital technology as well as the types of nudity presented in digital performance.
Most significantly, the early online works of Annie Sprinkle (b. 1954) and Frank Moore (1946–2013), presented separately, draw heavily on their own art practice in terms of method, beyond the specific erotic content they produced, which was not too different from their offline work. Throughout the 1990s, Sprinkle and Moore blurred the boundaries between art and erotica to expand their own work to include the internet as an essential component of their performances. Sprinkle and Moore elaborated on the use of concepts popularized in the art world through artist books for close to a century before the rise of digital technology. Although nudity was always a draw for a substantial part of their audience, there was an even larger part of their audience that understood that they were producing work that did not have the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. It is very evident that this type of nudity in digital performance is rather different from pornography, as broadly defined as that may be, even if both artists had their fair share of raised eyebrows from those seeking to apply and broaden obscenity laws to include the type of nudity they presented through their digital performances.
The use of the digital technology as employed to present this type of nudity in performance has arguably made it easier for erotic art to be presented as a distinctive from pornography. The normalization of nudity in broadcast media into the twenty-first century, and the greater acceptance of less restrictive legislation regulating nudity in performance have both contributed to the penetration of erotic art into the public sphere. In making the case for this argument, a comparative study of nudity in digital performance between the time Sprinkle and Moore first appeared online in the 1990s and the way things stand more than twenty years later provides an art historic perspective for a better appreciation of the groundbreaking nature of their initial forays into live art on the internet.
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Les premières œuvres numériques de, respectivement, Annie Sprinkle et Frank Moore sont fortement inspirées de leur propre pratique au plateau du point de vue à la fois de la méthode et du contenu : les deux artistes américains conservent la même approche de l’érotisme. Tout au long des années 1990, Sprinkle et Moore ont brouillé les frontières entre l’art et l’érotisme pour faire évoluer leurs performances en incorporant le net comme élément majeur. Leur travail s’inspire de concepts diffusés dans le monde de l’art à travers ce que l’on nomme les « cahiers d’artistes », qui sont apparus près d’un siècle avant l’essor de la technologie numérique.
EN
==
Any thorough discussion of nudity in digital performance needs to start by declaring a definition of digital performance. This is particularly essential because in the decades since creative work that can easily be labeled as such, digital performance has developed substantially to take on technological developments. It is also necessary to differentiate between works made possible through digital technology and performances where the digital element is only involved in the dissemination of the work. In taking a historical perspective of this subject matter, this article takes a closer look at the first examples of live art on the internet, presented by artists who have used the internet in a way that goes beyond the mere broadcast of live performances or video art. The goal is to provide an art historical context for the more recent developments both in terms of the use of digital technology as well as the types of nudity presented in digital performance.
Most significantly, the early online works of Annie Sprinkle (b. 1954) and Frank Moore (1946–2013), presented separately, draw heavily on their own art practice in terms of method, beyond the specific erotic content they produced, which was not too different from their offline work. Throughout the 1990s, Sprinkle and Moore blurred the boundaries between art and erotica to expand their own work to include the internet as an essential component of their performances. Sprinkle and Moore elaborated on the use of concepts popularized in the art world through artist books for close to a century before the rise of digital technology. Although nudity was always a draw for a substantial part of their audience, there was an even larger part of their audience that understood that they were producing work that did not have the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. It is very evident that this type of nudity in digital performance is rather different from pornography, as broadly defined as that may be, even if both artists had their fair share of raised eyebrows from those seeking to apply and broaden obscenity laws to include the type of nudity they presented through their digital performances.
The use of the digital technology as employed to present this type of nudity in performance has arguably made it easier for erotic art to be presented as a distinctive from pornography. The normalization of nudity in broadcast media into the twenty-first century, and the greater acceptance of less restrictive legislation regulating nudity in performance have both contributed to the penetration of erotic art into the public sphere. In making the case for this argument, a comparative study of nudity in digital performance between the time Sprinkle and Moore first appeared online in the 1990s and the way things stand more than twenty years later provides an art historic perspective for a better appreciation of the groundbreaking nature of their initial forays into live art on the internet.
Covid-19: theatre goes digital – provocations
International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 2022
Editorial by Maria Chatzichristodoulou, Kevin Brown, Nick Hunt, Peter Kuling & Toni Sant.
Strategies on audience development have become central to cultural debates in Malta. Such interes... more Strategies on audience development have become central to cultural debates in Malta. Such interest stems partly from Malta's current low rate of participation in cultural events. While there has been a rising interest in analysing cultural consumption and audiences quantitatively, the modes of agency of cultural participants, who reflexively make sense of events differently, have received inadequate attention. This article tackles this gap by presenting empirical results of a recent qualitative study on audiences' reflexivity for the National Centre for Creativity in Valletta, Malta. The contribution of this article lies in the fact that it provides an epistemological understanding of the meanings and feelings of audiences for engagement, or lack of it, in cultural participation at the National Centre for Creativity in Malta. Results presented in this article were used as guiding frame in the process of rebranding this national Centre as a creative space in the capital city of Malta.
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Documenting Performance
This is the editorial for a special issue of the International Journal of Performance Arts and Di... more This is the editorial for a special issue of the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media on the theme of interdisciplinary approaches to documenting performance.
Theatrical performance on the Internet: How far have we come since Hamnet?
This article aims to contribute reflective insight towards a clearer historical narrative for the... more This article aims to contribute reflective insight towards a clearer historical narrative for the beginning of theatrical performance on the Internet. This approach involves reassessing the significance of a specific production that is widely considered to be the first of its kind, in the broader context of related works that have appeared over a period of twenty years. The first example of this type of work is Hamnet: Shakespeare’s Play Adapted for IRC (1993), an appropriation of Hamlet. This work goes beyond the act of interpreting dramatic literature through new technologies; however, some subsequent works do not seem to have built on the unique performance qualities that this work discovered in online environments, and have arguably become less innovative renditions of more conventional theatrical productions. While there is plenty of room for creativity and scope for innovation in online virtual worlds, they can also be used as a tool for simulation.
Two years after the publication of the author's preliminary plans to build a collaborative multim... more Two years after the publication of the author's preliminary plans to build a collaborative multimedia database of Maltese music and associated arts, this paper provides an assessment of what happened in the initial attempts to implement the plans in the original outline. The focus is primarily on the inaugural reach out activities around the Malta Music Memory Project (M3P), including an evolving series of oral history interviews. A number of significant research areas have became evidently the core points of interest, stemming from the broad critical issues identified in the original proposal for the project. These areas of research are gathered under two main keywords – memory and collaboration – each with its own related keywords. The paper indicates that M3P needs to develop a more systematic set of policies related to the recovery, preservation and dissemination of mediated memories.
Journal of Music, Technology and Education, Jan 1, 2009
This is a position paper addressing the author's plan to build a collaborative multimedia databas... more This is a position paper addressing the author's plan to build a collaborative multimedia database of Maltese music. The proposed collaborative project will use wiki technology to capture a living archive of past, present and future works of interest in connection to music from and in Malta. Such a project raises various critical issues related to intellectual property rights, preservation policies and techniques, technical infrastructure strategies, and other similar topics. Research on these issues is directed through specially developed postgraduate research studentships, which will ensure the project's longevity.