Daniela Cascella

Daniela Cascella is a writer and editor.

Her work is concerned with forms and transformations of critical writing that inhabit, echo and are haunted by their subjects: literature, voices, concealments of the self.

Writing in English as a second language, writing as a stranger in a language, she is drawn toward unstable and uncomfortable forms of writing-as-sounding, and toward the transmissions and interferences of knowledge across cultures.

She is the author of five books in English that articulate various tensions and points of contact between the literary and the sonic, and that propose a range of approaches to creative-critical writing through experiments with form, voice, and ways of reading: Chimeras: A Deranged Essay, An Imaginary Conversation, A Transcelation (Sublunary Editions, 2022), Nothing As We Need It (Punctum Books / Risking Education, 2022), Singed. Muted Voice-Transmissions, After The Fire (Equus Press, 2017), F.M.R.L. Footnotes, Mirages, Refrains and Leftovers of Writing Sound (Zer0 Books, 2015) and En Abîme: Listening, Reading, Writing. An Archival Fiction (Zer0 Books, 2012).

Daniela's writing has been published in anthologies and exhibition catalogues internationally, on Koenig Books, Errant Bodies Press, Cura Books, raster-noton among the others; and in art, music and literary journals such as Gorse, 3:AM Magazine, Music & Literature, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Scofield, Numéro Cinq, The Wire, Organised Sound, MusicWorks, The Journal of Sonic Studies.

Between 2021 and 2022 she was a Commissioning Editor at MAP magazine, where she developed a series of new commissions and editorials entitled A Year of Carte Blanche and Other Chimeras. As an editor fluent in English and Italian, Daniela joins the commitment to reading that lies at the heart of her writing practice, with her specialist knowledge in European literature, sound studies, and history of art; her experience in MA dissertation supervision, with an established profile in carrying out editorial projects for art institutions and independent publishers, and in offering editorial input on manuscripts to peers and colleagues.

She is a Programme Tutor in the MLitt Art Writing at the Glasgow School of Art. Between 2014 and 2023 she was an Associate Lecturer in the MA Sound Arts at UAL London College of Communication, where she led a series of seminars on languages, voice, reading and translations. Between 2013 and 2018 she was Assistant Professor in Writing in the MA Fine Art at the University of Bergen, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, where she supervised projects by students at the intersections between writing and art, and developed teaching skills to work with students who write in English as a second language. She was a Research Fellow in the School of Arts at Oxford Brookes University (2013-2015) and has taught a workshop on Sound, Listening and Language in the MFA Fine Art, Goldsmiths University of London (2014-2016). She has spoken at conferences and has been a visiting lecturer internationally, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Piet Zwart Institute Rotterdam, the Royal College of Art London, University of Oxford, University of Copenhagen, University of Cambridge, Royal Conservatoire The Hague, Tate Britain, Arnolfini among others.

She holds a Ph.D. in Fine Art and Design from Sheffield Hallam University (2022), where she was awarded a full-time scholarship to undertake research around chimeric writing across Fine Art, Critical Writing, and Creative Writing. She has an MFA in Art Writing from Goldsmiths University of London (2011).

Her work and research often expand beyond the book format into performances, audio pieces, curatorial projects and collaborations with artists, writers, and musicians. Details on these can be found here.

Prior to her move to London in 2009 Daniela worked in Rome, Italy as an art / music critic and curator, often producing Italian premières by sound artists in projects for museums and public institutions such as the National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome and the British School at Rome.

Between 1999 and 2008 she was contributing editor of Italy's leading music magazine Blow Up, for which she wrote a monthly column on sound and the arts as well as articles and reviews on experimental music. (2024)

Publications

Books

• Scultori di Suono [Sculptors of Sound], Camucia: Tuttle Edizioni, 2005. (Italian) [1]
• The Edge Of The World, Rome: Arcana Edizioni, 2008. (Italian)
• En Abîme: Listening, Reading, Writing. An Archival Fiction, Zer0 Books, 2012.
• editor, with Paolo Inverni, What Matters Now? (What Can't You Hear?), Noch Publishing, 2013. [2]
• F.M.R.L. Footnotes, Mirages, Refrains and Leftovers of Writing Sound, Zer0 Books, 2015.
• Singed. Muted Voice-Transmissions, After The Fire, Equus Press, 2017.
• Nothing As We Need It, Punctum Books / Risking Education, 2022.
• Chimeras: A Deranged Essay, An Imaginary Conversation, A Transcelation, Sublunary Editions, 2022.

Interviews

• Mark Peter Wright, En abîme: an interview, Ear Room, 2012.
• Elena Biserna, "En Abîme. A Journey across Listening, Reading and Writing with Daniela Cascella", interview, Digicult, 2013.

Links

• Website
• Blog on Writing Sound
• Twitter
• Daniela Cascella at Zero Books
• Ora: Voyages into Listening and Writing, by Daniela Cascella and Salomé Voegelin on Resonance 104.4fm