Lucia Farinati is an independent curator and researcher based in London. She is the Director of Sound Threshold, a research project she co-founded in 2007 with writer Daniela Cascella.
She studied on the Curatorial Programme at Goldsmiths College, London, and Public Art and Cultural Planning at De Montfort University, Leicester (UK). Her research is focused on the social and spatial production of sound and on the relationship between art and the public sphere.
Recent projects include a series of video interviews commissioned by artist Mikhail Karikis, exploring the issue of freedom of speech, as part of the forthcoming exhibition at the Danish Pavilion of the 54th Venice Biennale; and Transmission, a book that she co-edited with Daniela Cascella, commissioned by the Cut & Splice Festival in London and produced by Sound and Music and BBC Radio 3.
Between 2002 and 2007 she curated many exhibitions in museums and art spaces in Italy and in the UK, including Framing Devices (Paola di Bello, Margherita Morgantin, Camila Sposati), The Agency, London; Tales of The City (co-curator) (Abigail Reynolds, Carey Young, Nils Norman, Zineb Sedira et al.), Arte Fiera, Bologna; Beating About the Bush (co-curator) (Peter Coffin, Gabriel Kuri, Hannah Rickard, William Speakman, Mark Aerial Waller et al.), South London Gallery; Rip it up and start again (Dan Davis, Richard T. Walker, William Hunt), Villa delle Rose, Bologna; Ursula Mayer, Monitor, Rome; Institution of Rot (curator of events by 16 Beaver and the Bohman Brothers among others).
With support by the Arts Council England she also produced two long term cross-disciplinary projects that investigated the social and urban regeneration of East London: We sell boxes we buy gold (2007) with curatorial platform 1:1projects, London, and Found Wanting (2003), in collaboration with the collective e-Xplo (Rene Gabri, Heimo Lattner, Erin McGonigle).
Since 2005 she has been collaborating with artist William Furlong, curating and promoting Audio Arts projects through two retrospective exhibitions and a symposium: Extraction/Construction/Abstraction, Sound Art Museum, Rome, and Hearing Me Hearing You, Plymouth Arts Centre (2006); Active Archive, The British School at Rome (2006).
Between 2005 and 2007 she was a contributor to the magazine Audio Arts for which she conducted recorded interviews with artists Tino Sehgal, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, CM von Hausswolff and Leif Elggren (The Kingdoms of Elgaland Vargaland) and Manuela Ribadeneira.
Lucia also leads seminar on public art and gives lectures on curating sound. These have included, most recently, Space as a Practised Place at Bergamo Fine Arts Academy - Accademia Carrara and at Milan University Il Politecnico.
Daniela Cascella is a writer and curator based in London. She co-founded Sound Threshold in 2007, and co-directed it until December 2010. Her research is focused on sound, and on the way it seeps into other forms, most of all text. She is currently writing her third book – a narrative across listening moments, reading and landscape.
Recent projects include You Have Said It, a performed text commissioned by Chiara Guidi / Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio for the Màntica Festival in Italy, and Transmission, a book that she co-edited with Lucia Farinati, commissioned by the Cut & Splice Festival in London and produced by Sound and Music and BBC Radio 3.
Daniela also leads workshops on writing sound and critical writing, and gives lectures and talks on writing sound and curating sound. These have included, most recently, Stimmen, Stimmen, a series of Lectures at Rome University La Sapienza, and The Sound and the Tempo of a Text, a writing workshop within Màntica Festival.
Between 2000 and 2008 she was contributing editor of Blow Up music magazine in Italy, writing reviews and articles on her main area of research as well as a monthly column entitled Eyes Wide Shut.
She has been Rome editor of Contemporary (2004-2008), and has published many essays in exhibition catalogues, and articles and reviews in magazines such as Organised Sound, MusicWorks, The Wire, Alias/Il Manifesto, frieze.com.
She has published two books to date, in Italian, Scultori di Suono (Sculptors of Sound), Tuttle Edizioni, 2005, and The Edge Of The World, Arcana Edizioni, 2008.
As a curator, she has produced and commissioned a number of projects such as Inaudito (a series of site-specific commissions to musicians and artists, National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome, 2008. With Gavin Bryars, Philip Jeck, Micol Assaël, Mika Vainio, 3/4HadBeenEliminated); Sound Threshold. Music and Sound Through the Landscape (site-specific interventions and CD, a parallel event to Manifesta 7, 2008. Co-curator Lucia Farinati. With Chris Watson, Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Leif Elggren, Fovea Hex); Tracks (a series of concerts, talks and lectures, The British School at Rome, 2004-2008. With Chris Watson, Cosey Fanni-Tutti, Keith Rowe, Mike Cooper, Current93, Little Annie, Marina Rosenfeld); News from Nowhere (a series of four podcasts exploring voice in experimental music, blowupmagazine.com, 2008); Eco e Narciso (site-specific installations in indoors and outdoors locations around Turin, 2006. With Steve Roden, John Duncan & Valerio Tricoli, Stephan Mathieu, Jacob Kirkegaard); Orbita (solo show by Grönlund/Nisunen, Prato, Galleria NicolaFornello, 2005); Stun Shelter (exhibition by John Duncan and Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Prato, 2003).
www.danielacascella.com