You’re Not the Boss of Me (2019)
harpsichord, bondage rope, soundtrack, leather sheet music, lasercut sheet music notation paddles, tuning fork, chair.
Composed and installed as an artist in residence at Mattress Factory Museum for “Factory Installed 2019”, opened Sept 26, 2019.
When you walk into this room, I wanted to evoke a feeling that you've just witnessed (or are witnessing) a very intimate experience. This work features a harpsichord suspended in bondage rope, a soundtrack for this instrument I composed and am playing, and other elements that blur the boundaries between classical music and kink. The soundtrack also includes the interior sounds of what the harpsichord might "hear" being bound.
The installation is about the tension between my being a classically-trained composer and queer artist, and where those facets of identity overlap. I use music to explore other fields like history, architecture, and sexuality, and usually the work is directed outward to learn about something else. It's in my most personal works that I look inward, when I have to be vulnerable to find empowerment, and overcome shame to reach for something beautiful.
"You're not the boss of me", by Alice Winn
In "You're not the boss of me", Nathan Hall is noting that any relationship involves reciprocity, a makeshift balancing act of give and take in differing degrees. As a musician and composer with the harpsichord as an instrument within his expertise, he is positioning it here as a stand-in for a character engaged in an intimate encounter. The set-up seems an analogy to the challenges of translating oneself to another that one is in a relationship with. There is a sense of attempting to traverse the distance between the products of one's mind and one's partner's sensibilities. Within that effort lies the hope for a meaningful connection between partners…
With the use of Shibari-knotted bondage ropes tying and suspending the harpsichord in mid-air, Nathan is also symbolically referencing the restraints we place on ourselves...this soundtrack becomes the residual echo of the implied intimate occurrence. The graceful appearance of the Japanese knot-work and the classical elegance of the music lend a quiet dignity to the proceedings, countering the stigma of shame often associated with kink as a lifestyle choice that Nathan embraces. As an expression of his queer identity, Nathan invests the work with personal reflections on oppression and marginalization while also reveling in an acknowledgment of uniqueness & resilience. Wooden paddles & leather straps imprinted with the musical score are devices to potentially mark the skin of those who might imagine having participated in the vanished act suggested here, and serve to further memorialize the experience.