Ian Curtis Wishlist

This video was originally put together in 2008, destroyed in a apartment fire later that year, and now resurrected and rebuilt in 2012. The first cut of this video was very different to this the newest incarnation, with a lot more of Ian Curtis on stage and even him singing a few notes. I really liked the idea of a concert video stripped of the actual concert (band playing songs), and being a longstanding Joy Division fan was drawn to the one concert VHS I owned (Here are the young men). 

Please feel free to check it out at your leisure. Link to the video and description from my vimeo page below.




James Fritzgerald Craig's Farewell Video To Ian Kevin Curtis
[2008-2012]
Video, 15:06, Colour

As the title states, this work is meant to be a tongue in cheek and meaningful look at the late Ian Curtis through a dissection of the medium of concert videos.

Utilizing concert footage from late 1979 and early 1980, endings and beginnings of songs Ian Curtis’s band Joy Division are preforming merge into this 15-minute inversed concert video. As the music swells and the n abruptly shutters to a close, Ian and company filter in and out of the inky blackness of the stage never being allowed to break in to a full song or escape the crowds screams for more. 

Happy Hallows' Eve

Paintings 2012 Part 1:

Louis Riel (after Chester Brown), oil on wood panel, 42x42 inches, 2012.

Untitled (Louis Riel), oil on wood panel, 28x30 inches, 2012.

16 November, 1885 (after Chester Brown's Louis Riel), oil on canvas, 28x30 inches, 2012.

Video Work from 2007.

Someone Else’s Girlfriend
[2007]
Video, 1:40, Colour

 “Someone Else’s Girlfriend” features heavily doctored and retouched found footage of an unknown person’s ex-girlfriend walking about on a beach.

Shawna Dempsey, from the 2008 Video Pool Catalogue:

"Using found and reprocessed old film footage, Craig creates a wistful portrait of an unknown woman walking into the water. The soundtrack is a remix of Beach Boys Mike Love and Brian Wilson talking in the studio while working on the album Pet Sounds.The title, the use of degraded Super 8 imagery and the unadorned vulnerability of the human voice combine to elicit memories of summers gone by. Memory revisited, memory revised, memory lost."




A Single Ray of Light on an otherwise cloudy day (A short reprise for Friedrich Nietzsche, who warned us of science, but for very good reasons)
[2007]
Video, 6:15, Colour

This work features digitized, recolored, and generally junked up footage of the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster. The doctored found footage which is shown in reverse is meant as an attempt to make it all better or at least draw attention to the issue of science for sciences sake alluded to in the title.