Trunk Rattle Sound Bath merges ongoing areas of Ben Hall’s research into polyrhythm (the simultaneous use of two or more contrasting rhythms), sonic immersion, and ancestral resonance through the lens of embodied listening. The title draws from the cultural experience of low-end frequencies booming from car trunks — windows shaking with no discernible rhythm, the body absorbing it all. “Vibrational frequencies are in everything,” Hall says. “Our bodies. We are observing by vibration even when we shut down. Our nervous system is still there, thrumming.”

With this new body of work, Hall focuses on not just what is played or heard, but what is felt, what is transferred through vibration, what buzzes and rattles in the body long after the source has passed.  The body is a resonant shell for the vibrations that occur all around us. “The 17th-century Dutch physicist Christian Huygens observed the entrainment of pendulums,” Hall explains. “He noted in 1655 that if two pendulum clocks were placed near each other, they would synchronize. They wanted to be in rhythm with each other — but it was, and is, not instant. That move toward synchronization, toward harmony… The experience of rhythm, of immersion in sound, of allowing your body to be an entire resonating chamber is to allow that process to begin each time — and allow for the vibration to be you.”

Inspired by the mbira, a traditional African thumb piano with metal tines and built-in buzzers used in spiritual ceremonies to connect with ancestors, Hall draws a throughline from West African sonic cosmologies to Midwestern street corners. “Those buzzes are supposed to be the actual frequencies that cut through to the ancestors,” he says. “The consequence of the sound is what communicates with another world.” In this way, the sound bath is not a cleansing ritual in the New Age sense, but a full-bodied immersion in histories.

Hall makes the connection between the mbiras of tradition and the trunk rattle of modernity. “When you are at the red light next to the Buick,” Hall says, “you’ll notice that the rattling and buzzing is not consistent with the rhythm created by the bass frequencies coming from the vehicle. Often, it will seem that the rattling of your windows — a different distance, a different material from the sound maker — is not even related at times to the rhythm, as though the frequencies you’re hearing in the passing vehicle are somehow coincidental to the vibration in your home.” 

Trunk Rattle Sound Bath invites visitors to consider rhythm not only as musical but as a way of knowing, of feeling, of remembering. “When a frequency, a sound (but also a rhythm, a repetition) occurs to us at a different frequency than the one we live in,” Hall says, “we are receiving energy. Frequency is just another way to say energy.” Whether through sound, image, or movement, Hall’s work opens a space for that energy to circulate — and for the body, buzzing like a loose antenna, to receive it.  “Vibrational frequencies are in everything,” Hall declares.

About the artist: Ben Hall is an artist and composer based in/from Detroit, Michigan. He was profiled in Fred Moten’s 2017 book, Black and Blur and frequently works as a critic and essayist with a research focus on the visionary American composers Milford Graves and Bill Dixon. He formerly served as a senior research fellow at the Center for the Advancement of Public Action at Bennington College from 2018-2022. He has presented prints, drawings, film, sculpture and works for sound in numerous exhibitions including the solos Jives & Gambles at Essex Flowers in NYC and Slow An Alarm Until It’s A Tone at MOCAD (Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit). He is currently compiling material for the forthcoming publication, A Black Liberation Music Guide.

Curator: Landon Caldwell

Live performance: June 8, 12pm by Hall’s ensemble, Oceanic Beloved.

This exhibition is made possible by the Indy Arts Council and the City of Indianapolis, the Indiana Arts Commission, Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Fund, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Efroymson Family Fund.