Volcanoes and Utopias: an audio performance by artists Kate Liston and Tess Denman-Cleaver Kate Liston and Tess Denman-Cleaver's podcast is a poetic performance on volcanoes, parliamentary architecture, Norse mythology, Quaker design, pease pudding, the current lack of gossip, and the function of utopias. Volcanoes and Utopias is a collection of work-in-progress extracts from Town Hall Meeting of the Air, which will be presented at Baltic 39 in January 2021. Town Hall Meeting of the Air considers the poetics of civic gathering and invites reimaginings of public political discourse. The work is framed here within a fictionalised account of the artists' attempt to design and plan for future public gatherings whilst in lockdown. Kate Liston works with moving image, installation, and writing that is sometimes performed. Notable projects include Oh-Link Zone, Black Tower Projects, London (2018); Feel After the New See, The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle (2018); The Scientific Method, The Tetley Gallery, Leeds (2016); Feminism and the Body in Performance, MART Gallery, Dublin (2015); They Used to Call it the Moon, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2014). She is a lecturer in Fine Art at Northumbria University. Tess Denman-Cleaver’s work spans performance, writing, installation and workshops. She has recently shown work at Tate Britain, Hatton Gallery, Turner Contemporary, Tate St Ives, M_HKA Gallery Antwerp, Paul Mellon Centre, Audiograft Festival and Wilkinson Gallery. Tess was Artist in Residence at the Sonic Arts Research Unit (Oxford) between 2017-19 and is Producer, Artists' Moving Image at Tyneside Cinema. Image: Jerome F. Hamlin, Seasons of Fire: Iceland's Pompeii (still) 1974. Accessed via YouTube
