Tony Albert

Artist, Trustee of Art Gallery of NSW. First Indigenous Trustee of the Art Gallery of NSW.

“I feel fortunate to live in a multi-generational home, so my answer to this is ‘family'. Given my home circumstances and living as an out of home cultural carer is rewarding but also difficult. I have multiple children's literature about diverse families and alternate ways of living and being. As an adult I am so grateful for the amount of incredible literature available that extends beyond the idea of a nuclear family dynamic. Reading these books to the children in my family gives me so much joy and hope for their futures.”

Tony fosters a little boy. Tony’s sister and brother in-law also foster a little girl.

Books :

• Life Doesn't Frighten Me by Maya Angelou, Paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat,
• We are Family by Patricia Hegarty
• All are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold and Suzanne Kaufman

https://sunilbadami.com/

Sunil Badami
bon vivant, raconteur and flâneur, writer, performer, broadcaster, academic and storyteller.

What content do you engage with that brings a smile to you face or peace in your hearts and minds after a challenging day?

As a writer, I cannot listen to words with music. Often, as I work, I’ll listen to the same hard driving dance music that I listen to when I’m exercising. It overcomes much of the drudgery of writing — the switching between screens and sources, the cutting and pasting, the typing and editing — so that my mind is relatively free to keep thinking that one sentence, or paragraph, or chapter ahead. 

But when I finish work, and I am still — even though my mind and heart are still racing in that discombobulating inertia between speed and stop — I listen to the great mystical musician Turiyasangitananda, the artist formerly known as Alice Coltrane. Fusing bebop jazz and sacred Hindu music, her songs, as critic Jenn Pelly observes, "make you feel connected to yourself and the world with preternatural clarity. They make you believe things you otherwise wouldn’t; they may even facilitate the process of temporarily suspending fear.” Her music fills my soul as it calms my restless mind and my skittering heart.

Do you have a sentence or two as to why it resonates with you?

Perhaps it’s because as I’ve gotten older, and perhaps a little wiser, and I am starting to understand how my mother felt when in my thoughtless, callow youth, I disregarded her Indian heritage and its culture as the past, something best forgotten, as I disavowed our Indianness as I sought to assert and prove my Australianness, as I try to share some of that ancient beauty with my children, who are just as dismissive and more attracted to the shiny, noisy superficiality of the internet. 

Listening to Turiya’s calm, powerful voice and the shimmering melodies of her music, in which you cannot predict where it will go, and must just sit with it, and in the moment, is a profound reminder that now, especially now, when the fallacy of certainty has been swept aside by the pandemic, that the past — and the moment — are far more important then ever before. 

1. P. Sherburne, ‘The 16 Best Ambient Albums of 2020’, Pitchfork, 23 December 2020, https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-ambient-music-2020/.

1. K. Chayka, ‘“Emily in Pars” and the rise of ambient TV’,  The New Yorker, 16 November 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/emily-in-paris-and-the-rise-of-ambient-tv.

1. V. L. F., Szabo, ‘Ambient Music as Popular Genre: Historiography, Interpretation, Critique, B.a. diss.,  Cleveland, Ohio, 2015, pp. iii. 

1. K. Chayka, ‘“Emily in Pars” and the rise of ambient TV’,  The New Yorker, 16 November 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/emily-in-paris-and-the-rise-of-ambient-tv.

1. ibid.

Popular and contentious Netflix show Emily in Paris has just been nominated for an Emmy for ‘Outstanding Comedy Series’, which isn’t its first prestigious award nomination. I first heard of the show sometime last year when I overheard my boss (a gallery director) confessing to watching the first season in its entirety, despite claiming it to be void of any substance. They described it as ‘ambient television’.  
 
In my realm of cultural engagement, 'ambient’ had been a word linked exclusively to ambient music, a genre I have a deep affection for. I gravitate to ambient music in anxious times or during long periods of studying. It’s my soundtrack for 9pm stretching, 5am homecoming teas and 10am commuting. My ever-growing love for this genre is shared by some, but confusing to many. ‘Boring’ is the descriptor I hear most from those who are adverse. My partner once confessed to me, "I feel like I’m just waiting for it to go somewhere and it just never does”. I see this disillusionment as a response to a disconnect with the familiar. Common to many listening practices is a certain pace, melodic presence and compositional flow. None of which are consistent in the ambient genre. Why is it then that some of us gravitate to ambience?
 
In Pitchfork’s list for best ambient music of 2020 writer Philip Sherburne introduction reads: ‘More than any other genre, ambient frequently offers a kind of emotional blank slate, and its very featurelessness suits listeners in search of wildly divergent things: solace, transport, or even simple numbness’. (1) What one finds ‘boring’ another finds expansive, autonomous, inspiring - finding comfort in this sonic ‘featurelessness’. As musician Brian Eno claims, who coined the term ‘ambient music’, the genre is ‘as ignorable as it is interesting’. (2) Ambient makes no attempts to dictate, control or force a state of mind, but rather gives space to whatever must emerge.

If a feeling of presence is innate to ambient music, then why is ambient television predicated on escapism? Its generic vacancy does little to teleport viewers into alternate worlds, but instead lands us in a more meaningless world than our own. In a scathing discussion in the New Yorker about Emily in Paris and ambient television, Kyle Chayka writes the show’s purpose ‘is to provide a sympathetic background for staring at your phone’, further describing the show as pure placidity. (4) ‘Emily in Paris’ is so vanilla and predictable that if you disengage with the plot, there is simply no risk of confusion. Chayka states the genre ‘aims to erase thought entirely, smoothing any disruptive texture or dissonance’. (5) Emily in Paris, and ambient television more widely, is so completely unchallenging and boring that it permits and even encourages your withdrawal.
 
I’m confronted by the use of ambient in such paradoxical capacities with disparate outcomes. Engagement with ambient music is seen as intimidating to some - high-brow, too artistic, alienating, more akin to Arthouse cinema than Hollywood. Conversely, ambient television is so un-ruffling that it is perceived as nothing more than a useless time eater. We watch ambient television to switch off, to be unchallenged, to justify dual screen use. We listen to ambient music to empty our minds and create space for what needs to pour in. Is ambience about escapism or emergence?

Perhaps being numbed by dissonance or being relaxed into an open-minded state of presence, are just better and worse ways of achieving some form of relaxation. Switching off by erasing thoughts or creating a peaceful state to embrace thoughts (if they choose to appear), can both counter discomfort, anxiety or fatigue. 
 
Despite the potential value of consuming ambient television, I will, however, encourage you to listen to some William Basinski or Brian Eno or Fia Fiell when you’re next craving narrative emptiness. Take the time to sink into your surroundings rather than cloud them. Allow yourself to unwind with that naturally occurring autonomy of thought. However, full disclosure, I watched season one of ‘Emily in Paris’ too… I guess it’s healthy to run away occasionally?