My Harry: Affinities
Sun, Dec 10, 2023
11 am–5 pm
Harry Smith, Untitled stereopticon cards, c. 1949–50. Gelatin silver prints mounted on cardboard, 3 1/2 × 7 in. each (8.9 × 17.8 cm). Estate of Jordan Belson
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Floor 3, Theater
Affinities concludes a three-day gathering celebrating Harry Smith’s eclectic life and serpentine pursuits with talks, conversations, listening sessions, and screenings.
11 am
Listening Session: Harry Smith’s Field Recordings
12 pm
On Harry’s Trail: A Presentation by Dust-to-Digital
Lance and April Ledbetter of Dust-to-Digital describe their journey to archives and studios in an attempt to piece together the life of Harry Smith.
1 pm
Screening: A selection of films and videos featuring Harry Smith by the artist’s friends and associates
3 pm
Friendly Rivals: The Art of Jordan Belson: A Presentation by Raymond Foye
From 1948–1951 Harry Smith and Jordan Belson were close friends and artistic cohorts, first in Berkeley and later in San Francisco. They developed many of their ideas together and at the same time, in film and visual art. Raymond Foye, who knew and worked with both artists, presents a program of some of Belson’s lesser-known films that highlight the connection between the two artists.
4 pm
Changing the Frequency: A conversation with Anne Waldman and Steven Taylor
Anne Waldman and Steven Taylor were friends and colleagues of Harry Smith at Naropa University. To conclude My Harry, they pay tribute to Smith’s unique cultural force.
Contributors:
Dust-to-Digital is directed by the husband-and-wife team of Lance and April Ledbetter in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded by Lance in 1999, Dust-to-Digital began its mission of creating access to hard-to-find music by producing high-quality books, box sets, CDs, DVDs, and vinyl records. The company continues those efforts and has also evolved to the format standards of today, namely the computer and mobile phone.
Raymond Foye is a writer, curator, editor, and publisher. A consulting editor for The Brooklyn Rail and a regular contributor to Gagosian Quarterly, Foye received the American Book Award in 2020 for editing The Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman (City Lights). In 2001, he organized the first exhibition of Harry Smith’s visual art, and in 2023, he edited Harry Smith Cosmographies: The Naropa Lectures, 1989–1991.
Steven Taylor is a poet, musician, composer, and ethnomusicologist. He has toured and recorded with Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, Kenward Elmslie, and The Fugs. Taylor has published two books of poems and a musical ethnography, False Prophet: Field Notes from the Punk Underground. For many years, he was Chair of the Department of Writing and Poetics at Naropa University, where he was a friend and colleague of Harry Smith.
Anne Waldman is an internationally recognized and acclaimed poet. She is an active member of the “Outrider” experimental poetry community, a culture she has helped create and nurture for over four decades as a writer, editor, teacher, performer, magpie scholar, infra-structure curator, and cultural/political activist. She was a friend and colleague of Harry Smith.
This program is organized by Andrew Lampert, independent curator and co-author of Paper Airplanes: The Collections of Harry Smith Catalogue Raisonné, Volume I and String Figures: The Collections of Harry Smith Catalogue Raisonné, Volume II.
