Sound Threshold

Lucia Farinati (Italy/UK) is an independent curator and researcher based in London. She studied on the Curatorial Programme at Goldsmiths College (2004), London, Public Art and European Cultural Planning at De Montfort University, Leicester (2000) and History of Art and Aesthetics at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Trento (Italy) (1997). Her practice is informed by an interdisciplinary approach to working and collaborating with artists and by a production-oriented mode to framing contemporary art and curatorial practices. Her research is focused on the relationship between contemporary art and the public sphere, and listening at the intersection between sonic art and activism.

Current projects include Come una possibilità di incontro, a series of collective readings of the book Autoritratto by art historian and feminist Carla Lonzi, produced for bip bop, a project by Rita Correddu and Elena Biserna, for Radio Fujiko (June 2013) and Ascoltando Camminando, a sound walk based workshop in collaboration with Brave New Alps for the Festival Futuro Presente, Rovereto, (June 2013).

In 2012 she curated Nuovi Paesaggi - Sound Stories from Tuscany, five works conceived and produced for radio that narrate a territory and its cultural geography by Viv Corringham, Mikhail Karikis, Laura Malacart, Davide Tidoni & Allen S. Weiss, produced by Radio Papesse and Villa Romana, Florence, Summer 2012

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 (cocurator) (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 the support of Arts Council England she initiated and co-produced two long term crossdisciplinary projects that investigated the social and urban regeneration of East London: We Sell Boxes, We Buy Gold (2007) a series of urban walks and field recordings made in collaboration with Jude Rosen, Alberto Duman, Louise Garrett and Richard Crow, London, which was recently presented as part of Sound Proof 5, London (August 2012); and Found Wanting (2003), a night bus tour in collaboration with the collective e-Xplo (Rene Gabri, Heimo Lattner, Erin McGonigle).

She has been collaborating with the artist William Furlong since 2005, initially as an interviewer for Audio Arts magazine (interviews with artists Tino Sehgal, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, Carl von Hausswolff and Leif Elggren, and Manuela Ribadeneira, 2005-2007) and subsequently as a curator. Through a series of site-specific exhibitions she investigated Audio Arts as an active archive. The exhibitions include: Speaking to Others: Who Speaks to Who, Villa Romana, Florence, 2013; Not Speaking the Language, Flat Time House, London, 2010; Hearing Me Hearing You, Plymouth Arts Centre, Plymouth, 2007; Extraction/ Construction/Abstraction, Sound Art Museum/Radio Arte Mobile, Rome 2006. In 2006 she organized and chaired the Symposium Active Archive at the British School at Rome, with William Furlong, the art critic Mel Gooding, music journalist Daniela Cascella, and curator Lorenzo Benedetti. The outcome of this research was recently presented at the symposium Off the Record: The history and legacy of Audio Arts Magazine on contemporary art, Tate Britain, 13 October 2012.

Lucia is currently Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design and also leads seminars on public art, curatorial practice, and cultural activism, with specific focus on sound, immaterial labour, and feminist practice. These have included lectures at Glasgow School of Art, London College of Fashion, Royal College of Art, London College of Communications, Wimbledon College of Art, Bergamo Fine Arts Academy - Accademia Carrara; Milan University Il Politecnico, and Tate Britain among others.

In 2010 she co-edited with writer Daniela Cascella, Transmission, a book commissioned by the Cut & Splice Festival in London and produced by Sound and Music and BBC Radio 3.

She is currently working on a new publication, The Force of Listening, a publication that looks at the role of listening in contemporary conjunctions between art and activism, in collaboration with Claudia Firth, which will be published as part of the Doormats series by Errant Bodies Press; and also collaborating with Sharon Kivland on her fourth publication in the ongoing series Freud on Holiday, titled Freud IV. A Cavernous Defile – Part1, published by Cube Art Editions.

Biography