Photo Jaewon Kim.

Low, soft foam seats with erect tails gather as a small herd on the gallery floor, together forming the iconic spotted pattern on Bambi’s fur. Around them, conversations between different animal voices and a synthesiser play over speakers. 

The installation and sound piece is set within the narrative and music of Disney’s Bambi. In this arrangement, the orchestral music is replaced by electronic covers and the human dialogue originally spoken by woodland creatures is exchanged for sounds collected from the Animal Sound Archive of the Berlin Natural History Museum, setting the familiar, anthropomorphic representation of animals against their real and peculiar calls.

Without written or spoken human language, we rely instead on conversational rhythms, emotive musical interludes and the near speech of the synthesiser to mediate between the human and non-human. This absurd exchange emphasises both the impossibility of communication between animal protagonists and human visitors, and the undeniable connection that already exists.

Photo Jaewon Kim.