Jude Cowan Montague is an artist, writer and composer with a multi-media practice that crosses disciplines. She is active in new printmaking, installation, poetry, prose fiction, film history, vocal work and performance. She is known for her innovative work with international news agency output. This practice developed while working as an archivist for the Reuters Television Archive. Her first collection For the Messengers (Donut Press 2011) re-formed edits from the Reuters output during 2008 as individual poems. Her album The Leidenfrost Effect (Folkwit Records 2015) was co-composed with Dutch producer Wim Oudijk and reimagines quirky stories from the Reuters Life! feed. She is a broadcaster and curates and hosts The News Agents, a weekly hybrid news-arts show on Resonance 104.4 FM.

Riitta Hakkarainen is a Scenographer experienced in the designing, planning and making of sets and animation for theatre and multimedia performance. She is skilled at painting and drawing in all artistic media, scale model making, basic knowledge of working with video, animation, technical drawing, experience in puppet and props making. She is also specialized in resin manufacturing, casting and working with fiberglass, silicon and acrylic. Her animation and puppet theatre works have been featured in theatre festivals including High Fest, Armenia (2004) and Sibiu International Theatre Festival, Romania (2005)

During their residency at iii Jude Cowan Montague and Riitta Hakkarainen, together as The Twin Stranger, will develop ‘Mefite Goddess of the Volcano’. An original, new site based theatre piece on the theme of volcanology and volcano lore, this project incorporates multiple live coders working with various data streams, including live Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) information sets from the Napolitan caldera.

“The oral stories and mythology around volcanoes provide a means of imagining that which cannot be seen, the activity underground of the movement of magma, the pressures and chambers in the rock.

Mefite is the volcano goddess of pre-Roman Italy and was one of the gods of Pompeii. She is a symbol of female strength whose image goes beyond the narrow confines of femininity as she is the goddess of noxious gasses, emitting sulphuric fumes from her stomach. “

The production will be presented as an immersive experience or promenade theatre and distant audiences will be able to access a video documentary and live streams of the event.

The Twin Stranger will develop this project at iii workspace from February 7 to February 20 2022 and will present their live-coded performance on February 20th.

It is part of On The Fly, a project by Hangar, ZKM, Ljudmilla & CCU funded by Creative Europe, Creative Industry Fund NL & the Performing Arts Fund NL.

iii’s residency program is made possible through the support of Creative Industries Fund NL and the Creative Europe program of the European Union.