HPR exclusive: Jude Montague interview

By Jacinta Macheel Zens

Jude Cowan Montague is a London-based artist with a mind-boggling amount of creative endeavors and a list of accomplishments and degrees to make the staunchest of academics take note. She is a multimedia visual and musical artist, worked as an archivist for the Reuters Television Archive, has a PhD in Film Studies, an MA in printmaking, is a published poet, and has a radio show on London’s Art and Music independent arts radio station, Resonance FM.

HPR was able to connect with her in an attempt to understand how one person could do all that she does, and to hopefully better understand a creative powerhouse like Montague.

High Plains Reader: Your bio states that you are “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.” Can you please explain how all of these interests play out in your life? How do you balance all of these passions both personally and professionally?

Jude Cowan Montague: Yes, it's a very diverse list of interests. And not only interest but practice. But I find it's an exciting, active way to live, to have multiple practices and interests. They feed each other. They come together. At times they break apart. Sometimes one interest dominates, then another. I find the most difficult times of my life to maintain a challenging multiple practice have been when my own life events, for example health or family, have demanded more attention. When my daughter was young I had less time for my interests, although I still pursued some with support.

At different times I have had to put aside one compelling interest while pursuing another. Perhaps that could be seen as detrimental to my career overall, but it has also been beneficial. An absence from a direct attack on an area of practice can help to transform the mode of creativity. For example I deliberately stopped songwriting, which I used to do compulsively each day, at all the down moments in my life, while I did my PhD, as I wanted my creativity to pour into my PhD.

I'm not sure how useful this was for my PhD, but it certainly helped my songwriting. When I returned, I felt liberated to approach it in a different way and I began to create what I feel is a much more original music. The time out allowed that to happen. My mind had time to regroup and be influenced by new life adventures and when I came back to it I could make a resolution to work in a bolder, different way. Now I know the kind of music I write and make, for better or worse, is more original and stands out strongly from the dominant practice around me.

HPR: You have a new book of poetry coming out soon. Can you tell us a bit about that?

JCM: I am very excited about this book. It has been a long time coming. From a writer's perspective it has had some terrible luck with being placed with two small presses and then not going through for reasons that were nothing to do with the book. Wisdom's Bottom press uses a co-operative model and I'm pleased to be on there with two amazing poets privileged to have the first three collections out on the new press, Peter J. King, also a philosopher lecturer at Oxford University, and Daniel Lehan, an avant-garde artist who also works in multiple disciplines, and who I have previously collaborated on improvised, street poetry and music.

My book, 'The Wires, 2012' follows up my first collection, 'For the Messengers' about Reuters news stories in 2008. It is an extended sequence of responses to news agency stories from notes I made through the year when working as an archivist for Reuters. Unlike 'For the Messengers,' I have removed the anchor of the country of origin of the news stories and run the imagery and lines together. This removal of the usual defining context, that helps reinforce our prejudice even before we see a story, makes the book a surreal read. I intend it to reinforce the concept that we are all part of one world – we live in an international, a linked world. We cannot operate in isolation, splendid or otherwise.

HPR: Do you have any visual art that you are currently working on?

JCM:I am currently working with Chandra Selvam and Matt Armstrong on a series of light work, taking visual inspiration from a recent artist residency in Goa, India. This was a unique residency put together by Rekha Sameer for both Indian and international artists to exchange ideas and stories. We learned much from each other and this is one outcome.

HPR: You have a show on Resonance FM, The News Agents, where you combine news, performance, vocal work, and music.

JCM: Yes, since January 2014. We're now into the third year of the programme, which is weekly.

HPR: How did you get involved with Resonance FM?

JCM: I have been an experimental musician for some time and have created shows for Soundart Radio in Totnes, but it is much preferable to work in the Resonance studio and with the Resonance team. They are pioneering so many areas of sound art and music and are vital to the London arts scene. They have been incredibly supportive of the intellectual and creative instincts of my work.

HPR: How did your show come into being?

JCM: I fought for it. I had a vision. I saw how artists were criticizing all journalism because of their disenchantment with the right wing press, which is seen as so influential in the UK by the left wing. There is great distrust of the media here among left-wing artists who are my community. As someone who had worked in film history contexts and in international news agency gathering I felt I wanted to bring the world of the concerned artist and the concerned journalist together, do something to foster a more constructive relationship in which thinkers and artists and writers would appreciate the work of each other more deeply. The hostility to journalism as a group is intensifying in the artist community, so the reason I began the show is becoming even more pressing.

HPR: How did you decide on radio as a medium for you?

JCM: I wanted to talk. I wanted to use conversation. I wanted to have the space to be with people on air. And I wanted to use my improvised music skills and develop them. I wanted to be continually stretched. Also with performance, when the event is over the magic is vanished. Videos of live performance are a record. They do not capture the magic of the live performance. With radio, the recorded output is the live performance. As an archivist I appreciate this beautiful, economic synthesis.

HPR: Your show incorporates an element of improvisation. How much of your show is scripted and how much of your show is improvisation?

JCM: Hardly any is scripted. I love to improvise.

HPR: Why do you feel that improvisation is important to your show?

JCM: For the first time last show, I decided to write more of a script for myself. It was fine. But I had to do some improvising and input. And I believe if I had not had the improvised experience, that reading out work would have been much worse. It is too easy to be set when one is reading out something. It becomes boring, static … and preaching … too easily. I want to be with the audience, to be in conversation with them. Even if they can't reply I want something of this relationship to be there, especially when I don't have a guest.

YOU SHOULD KNOW:

For more information about Jude Cowan Montague:

www.judecowanmontague.com

For more information about London’s independent arts radio station, Resonance FM, www.resonancefm.com