Mariachiara Troianiello, the Italian sound artist behind the moniker Katatonic Silentio, works at the crossroads of electronic music, performing arts and sound studies. Both as a live performer and an independent researcher, she seeks to bridge different spheres and approaches to sonic production.
Active as a DJ for more than 15 years, her sets adopt multiple forms, fluctuating between an analogue past and a technological, fast-paced future. At times, her sets focus on pure abstraction, consisting of ethereal soundscapes that seek to transcend the tangible through a mix of musique concrète, world, spoken word, ambient or dub. At others, they come across as concrete and club-oriented, crossing techno, broken beats or drum n bass.
Mariachiara views sound as a critical tool and has a genuine interest in exploring sonic possibilities and practices from both artistic and sociological perspectives. As an independent researcher, she is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of USMARADIO: Interdepartmental Research Centre for Radiophonic Studies at the University of San Marino.
In her undergraduate thesis in 2015, Mariachiara looked at the different notions of radio and broadcasting between underground and mainstream and the multiple performative possibilities of the medium itself – a topic she currently puts into practice through her project Expanded Radio Research Unit. As of now, she holds radio residencies on EOS and LYL.
Mariachiara also collaborates with Anonima/Luci, a light art collective with whom she develops installations that reconfigure architectural spaces by combining light and sound. Together with choreographer and dancer Olimpia Fortuni, she performs „X“, an ongoing compositional study that draws on sound, movement and space.

Currently her research, moving in the field of ethnomusicology, is oriented toward a more remote and mythological direction of sound, investigating the origin of sound itself and its spread from primitive to modern cultures with a focus on the Mediterranean area.