Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1514108
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 7 JANUARY 2024 7 INTERVIEW The following are excerpts from the interview. The full interview can be found on maltatoday.com.mt as well as our Facebook and Spotify pages. Sajf was an instant literary hit. How satisfying has it been for someone whose career in art precedes this literary work? I would be lying if I said I'm not chuffed... the book reached people far and wide, the reception was pos- itive, and Sajf is certainly not the most conventional of reads, for it can be quite blunt in what it says – nothing unique in these days when it comes to work that 'shocks' – but that was the kind of response I wished it to elicit. What was the seed that gave birth to Sajf, given your storied career in the world of art, where you also exhibit outside of Malta, in Berlin? I had been writing for quite some time – since 2011, 2012. But it was some- thing that came in bursts and sprouts. Then in 2018, I started putting togeth- er this loose manuscript on the Mal- tese summer phenomenon, stitching it together gradually, and as I dis- covered the substance that gelled it, I spoke to Glen Calleja who was then just setting up Kotba Calleja. Sajf gives us a fresh look on a particular, let's call it new, Maltese generation, one to whom you belong to as narrator... shall we say it is bit of a 'smartphone' generation? Glued to the screen, angling for likes and shares, sexually fluid and adventurous... maybe it sounds old to point it out, but I'd like to charac- terise it as clear difference between one generation and an older X-ennial gen- eration that came of age to- wards the end of the 1990s. It is a testimony for millennials, which I feel was sorely needed. But I wouldn't place them squarely as post-2000 kids... these are the L-Aqwa Zmien generation, kids from the 2010s. That comes across in a very subtle tone. You cer- tainly don't need to use overt characterisations to place the reader in this post-2013 Labour era... Yeah, it's present with the problems of high rents, of flowing cash, a kind of pre-pandemic excess... a generation of kids born in the 1980s, maybe 90s, who remember pre-internet days, no smartphone, a kind of frontier world of sorts. But then we're not the gener- ation of Tik-Tok either. So many more sjuf are yet to be written about that generation. As Sajf's narrator, you re- flect a kind of welcome or- dinariness. There's no 'an- ti-hero' narrative, you're not really imparting upon the reader some hidden truth... you're more of a di- arist, chronicling a summer chasing thrills or female companionship, working on that car – an actual passion of yours... how important is this 'ordinariness' to you? It would not have been in my interest to create some Samuraj type of an- ti-hero, a sort of emarginated messiah ignored by the rest of society. Sajf is all doubt – from beginning to end. The narrator doesn't know what he wants, and the day after he is second-guess- ing what he gets and wants, some- thing I feel is synonymous with the age we are living in. And I did want the book to document this day-to-day existence from one month to the oth- er. I did not want it to revolve around some event or fill it up with 'action'... there is no dialogue either: it is essen- tially a long monologue. And Sajf never tries to detract or knock down what is easily derided as Maltese 'provincialism'. That kind of Malta-bashing has be- come so tired... Yes, it's easy to mock someone whose car is all souped up and garish, to deride 'Hamallagni', or to ham up the 'only in Malta' complaint. A horse being carried inside a car? It really doesn't happen only in Malta... we are a small place, we have our press, our social media, and our online gossip, but these are aspects of any provin- cial town elsewhere. It is what it is, with all its quirks: Malta can give you so much fun, and it can drive you up the wall. And perhaps, we think we are special because we are an island, whose insularity easily can become a complex that truly informs the way we grow up. You know that a Book Coun- cil member's anonymous 'literary review' was taken down after Maltese writers and PEN Malta created a big fuss out of comments made by a person whose role as manager impinges upon their access to funds or awards… do you find simi- lar situations in the world of art? You're calling it 'big' – it really is not. It just made a lot of noise. In this case, and I say this knowing that it bothers me, the reality is that when you hail from an institution, your hands are tied by that employment, or 'profes- sionalism' for want of a better word. Having said that, what was said or criticised, did not shock me… in the world of art, criticism tends to be whispered in a few ears but never committed to publication through a critical voice. And right now, there is a big thirst for criticism, because it is a world which can simply churn out anything it wants, with press releases copied and pasted onto the press. Now the question is, are we ready for the hard knocks of the critic, and is the critic's skin tough enough for the job? Critics must be critics: they cannot be curators, writers or edi- tors. They must be able to command some neutrality in this small world of ours. Their own experience and knowledge must inform their status and respectability and that means, not every Tom, Dick and Harry can really do that job. You must have re- ally proven your worth in becoming a critic. Anonymity certainly does not give weight to that status. But then, an 'anonymous' critic with ties to an institution? That leaves a bitter after- taste that can never go away. PHOTOS: JAMES BIANCHI / MALTA TODAY