Riccardo Casentini interested in ritual music began a research in which he mixes soundscapes with body percussion and sounds created by body movements.
With the necessity to rediscover the importance between the humankind and the nature, he began a sonorous project called Herbalism in which he uses medicinal plants such as musical instruments. Herbalism is experimentation as well as an experiential process. It’s both therapeutic art and relational art at the same time. Multisensory and interaction with the audience becomes themain focuses of his interdisciplinary research.
Herbalism, interactive performance, TAPS, Ascoli Piceno, IT, 2018
The performer interacts with specific aromatic medicinal plants creating sound compositions and then get off the stage and invite users to live the multisensory experience in first person.
Herbalism, interactive performance, Botanic Garden Carmela Cortini, Camerino, IT, 2018
During 10 Heartz _ from the earth to the sound, users are invited to share a multisensory experience with some medicinal plants. The creation of impro sound duets it allows to experience the therapeutic potential granted by the relationship between the three beings.
Herbalism, performance, Malloni Trace, Porto Sant’ Elpidio, IT, 2016
A ritual that tries to get in touch with a world that we can call metaphysic, in which sound and rhythm allows man to weave their own existence with the universe. Herbalism convert an ancient recipe to fight the plague, metaphor of
our times, in to sound. The project’s necessity is torediscover the lost values, such as the importance between the humankind and the nature.
Blanca Session, performance improvisation, AADK Spain Centro Negra, Blanca, ES 2015
For a collaboration with the artists Jochen Arbeit (Einstürzende Neubauten) and Juliana Espana Keller (Sonic Electric), Casentini used various natural elements found on site as musical instruments.
Sufi Travel, performance, AADK Spain Centro Negra, Blanca, ES, 2015
Sufi Travel is a sound ritual that seeks purity in contamination, through the sound of the body and of an old three trunk. Two beings who over time have absorbed different history, culture and traditions like the Sufi or the Gypsies who have crossed and inhabited the territory of Blanca. Body and trunk become cultic instruments such as the drum, capable of reproducing the purest and most abstract form of vital rhythms, and mixed with soundscapes it evokes the ancient dream of bringing back to unity a world separated by contrasting forces.
