MSA Performing Arts Programme 2025: Sustain-Delay

What is Sustain-Delay?

Exploration, interaction and sound.

Artistic Director: Kurt Buttigieg
Marketing Manager: Kris Polidano
Site Manager: Francesca Zammit
Graphic Designer: Samwel Mallia

Kurt Buttigieg – Artistic Director’s Biography

Kurt Buttigieg is an “occasional artist and unwavering tinkerer”, with a perpetual organisational streak.

He read for a Master’s degree in Sound Art from the University of Barcelona and previously worked at the museum of the European Parliament in Brussels as curator for temporary and permanent exhibitions, and also planned spin-off museums in other EU capitals.

He organised numerous concerts, workshops and exhibitions in Malta and Belgium, as well as founding a small label called Complex Holiday documenting “inside-out ambient and sound art tomfoolery”. He is also a writer for several specialised magazines, including The Wire and New Noise.

As an artist and musician he released several works over that past twenty years, under his and other names, and created Malta’s first dedicated sound art installation in 1999.

A strong believer in community, Kurt is a committee member of the Banda Immakulata Kunċizzjoni (Ħamrun), Ħsus, Arsha Our and is active in other social, cultural and environmental projects.

Kris Polidano – Marketing Manager’s Biography

Kris Polidano (b.1999) teeters between the administrative side, creative and communal sides of the cultural sphere. Having graduated with a B.A. (Hons.) in English with a Maltese minor from the University of Malta in 2020, she primarily focuses on the way language impacts the way we perceive and communicate as multilingual persons. Her interests range from audio-visual archiving as the Communications and Community Manager and a researcher for the Magna Żmien Archive (2020–) to project managing and promoting experimental electronic music alongside her closest friends with the Malta Society of Arts’ Sustain-Delay Programme (2024-).

Kris also works with Festivals Malta’s marketing team where she manages the communications of multiple festivals, including Ritmu Roots Festival, a festival which celebrates musical traditions.

She is also president of the newly established Kooperattiva Strati, a cooperative focused on the arts, its social function and wellbeing. In the past Kris has also published some of her writing in Maltese in the Għaqda tal-Malti’s Leħen il-Malti (2019) , Maltese literary journal Aphroconfuso (2024). She has recently also been commissioned to write a cycle of poetry for prominent Maltese sculptor Paul Scerri for his latest exhibition The Sound of You Dreaming (Jan-Feb, 2025).

Photo credit: Leo Chircop

14 distinct events unfolding over four dynamic seasons:
Winter (February), Spring (April), Summer (July) and Autumn (November)

(Details to follow)

Malta Society of Arts,
Palazzo de La Salle,
219, Republic Street,
Valletta

+ others…