River of Souls – ANIMALISM – Sound Installation for Roger Ballen

River of Souls – ANIMALISM

Sound Installation for Roger Ballen
27 May – 27 July 2025

Curated by: Alessandro Dandini de Sylva
In collaboration with: Marguerite Rossouw
Sound installation: Cobi van Tonder

Exhibition promoted by the Department of Culture of Rome Capitale and the Palaexpo Special Company.
Organized by the Palaexpo Special Company in collaboration with ISTMO.

Composer’s note

For River of Souls, I focused on the more subtle close-up sounds of animals. The 30-minute loop starts with the sounds of hundreds of animal feet walking from the entrance to the back of the Mattatoio — recordings of their feet and breath panned across the space to create the feeling of bodies flowing quietly, passing like a river of souls. These sounds are mixed with heartbeats. After they pass, doves and other birds fly through the space, combined with abstract sounds and deep bass drone tones. The piece then slowly transforms through various natural soundscapes, one of which is a surround recording made in a forest — the creaking of tree bark, wind, droplets, birds, insects, and animals both small and large.

When it comes to the idea of darkness, I have always been deeply attracted to it. People often say my sounds are “scary,” but to me they express beautiful depth — the abyss, the vastness of existence, the place of dreams, the space of the soul. Dark matter turns out to be the larger part of our universe: a matter not yet understood by science, but something that, for me, can be expressed through sound — through drones, beating patterns, and bass tones with massive wavelengths.

I try to create space by contrasting extremely close “surface” sounds — like a bee flying past the microphone, hyper-realistic bird wings moving through the space in three-dimensional realism, sounds of touch, interior sounds of blood and heart — with bass and vast reverberant spaces. These are created by feeding sounds into virtual acoustics such as the Taj Mahal or large cathedrals, producing environments that feel airy and watery.

Because of the existing reverberation in the Mattatoio, I had to be minimal with the drone elements. Creating such super close-up contrasts is a challenge in this context, because every sound inevitably mixes with the Mattatoio’s own acoustics.

This was the second sound installation created in conversation with — and in parallel to — a Roger Ballen exhibition.

Roger Ballen (born in New York in 1950, resident in South Africa for over forty years) is one of the most influential contemporary photographers. With Animalism, a research project he has pursued for over two decades, Ballen explores the profound and often disturbing relationship between humans and animals.

The images on display blur the boundaries between human and animal behaviour, questioning the very nature of this distinction. Designed for the exhibition space of the Mattatoio di Roma — a former slaughterhouse where animals were once killed for human consumption — the exhibition unfolds as a single installation: a distinctly ballenesque theatre in which primal instincts and absurdity dominate. The Mattatoio itself, a site marked by historical violence and human domination over animals, becomes part of the work, reimagined as a space for reflection.

Through surreal compositions and dark absurdity, Animalism reveals the animal as both an external presence and an intrinsic element of the human psyche, exposing deep connections between civilisation and wild nature.

Further information

• Mattatoio di Roma – Roger Ballen: ANIMALISM
  https://www.mattatoioroma.it/mostra/roger-ballen-animalism