Screening of Harry E. Smith’s Heaven and Earth Magic on 16 mm with live musical accompaniment and slideshow lecture with Rani Singh

Screening of Harry E. Smith’s Heaven and Earth Magic on 16 mm with live musical accompaniment and slideshow lecture with Rani Singh
Saturday, October 27th, 6pm-8pm
$10 for nonmembers, FREE for members
Limited to 50 attendees. Purchase your tickets online HERE

This special evening celebrates the life of Harry E. Smith—musicologist, experimental filmmaker, folklorist, painter, linguist, anthropologist, and magician. The event starts with a slideshow presentation by Rani Singh, Director of the Harry Smith Archives since 1992 and Harry’s assistant at the time of his death. Following the discussion, MOCA Tucson will screen Smith’s iconic Heaven and Earth Magic on 16mm, with live musical accompaniment by Tucson-based artists Adam Cooper-Terán and Karima Walker. This unique presentation will take place on the 3^rd Floor of MOCA Tucson, and is co-sponsored by Exploded View, Tucson’s own experimental micro-cinema.

Please note, the third floor of MOCA is not fully-accessible. If you have questions about access, please contact Marica at 520.624.5019 or email marica@moca-tucson.org.

ABOUT THE FILM

Heaven and Earth Magic (also called Number 12, The Magic Feature, or Heaven and Earth Magic Feature) is an American avant-garde feature film made by Harry Everett Smith. Originally released in 1957, it was re-edited several times and the final version was released in 1962. The film primarily uses cut-out-animated photographs created by Smith. Smith explains of Heaven and Earth Magic: “The first part depicts the heroine’s toothache consequent to the loss of a very valuable watermelon, her dentistry and transportation to heaven. Next follows an elaborate exposition of the heavenly land, in terms of Israel and Montreal. The second part depicts the return to Earth from being eaten by Max Müller on the day Edward VII dedicated the Great Sewer of London.”

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS

Rani Singh is Director of Special Projects at Gagosian Gallery Beverly Hills. Her work focuses on strategic planning and legacy management for artists, exhibition development, museum outreach, and long-term conservation practices. For over seventeen years, she worked in Modern & Contemporary Collections at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. Singh joined the GRI in 2000 as a scholar based on her work on experimental filmmaker and artist Harry Smith. At the Getty, Singh was responsible for the planning and execution of Pacific Standard Time: Modern Art in Los Angeles and she organized the Art on Screen initiative which focused on the hybridity between moving image media and the fine arts. In 2016 she was co-curated of the Beat Generation exhibition at the Centre Pompidou. Singh has engaged extensively with archival preservation, avant-garde film, and contemporary art in a broad range of contexts. Since 1992 she has been the Director of the Harry Smith Archives.

Adam Cooper-Terán is a native son of Tucson, having garnered praise for his multidisplinary art and music practice from the MAP Fund, NEA, National Hispanic Cultural Center, and International Sonoran Desert Alliance. A self-described psychonaut, Adam’s majik becomes a strange mutation of technology and organics, through the scanning of bodily fluids, bones, and other ephemera collected from the Sonoran Desert.

Karima Walker is an experimental musician and videographer from Tucson, Arizona. Interweaving drone, field recordings, tape loops, and traditional song structures, she creates large, paced arrangements that provide a horizon for her minimal, ambient songwriting. She regularly collaborates with visual artists, choreographers, and musicians across genres, and has recently shown her work at The Loft Cinema, Artifact Dance Project, Exploded View, and the Tucson Noise Symposium. She actively tours nationally and internationally, and her work has been reviewed and featured in Pitchform, MOJO Magazine, GoldFlakePaint, and the MTV Documentary Transformation.