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.

Video Work From 2005 to 2006:

What Defines Greatness
[2005]
Video, 7:15, Colour

Working from a statement by Friedrich Nietzsche that to be great you must be willing to inflict great pain and suffering, and rifting on the idea of the Übermensch; this video presents a heavily altered looping 1930’s cartoon of Superman being pummeled by a laser beam. Sound by Krisjanis Kaktins-Gorsline.








Sort of like a distilled and hushed version of all the landscape painting Gerhard Richter has done to date….
[2006]
Video, 3:16, Colour

As the title dictates this work is an ironic and meaningful approximation of Gerhard Richter’s landscape works. This work plays off found footage of a small stereotyped German town surrounded by forests. As music swells and the camera moves over the land the image gets progressively blurrier.

Video Work From 2003 to 2004:

     I have recently started a Vimeo account to make available to view some of my video and film work. Here are a sampling of works I made between 2003 and 2004. Others will be posted soon. Enjoy.  




Man/Machine 
[2003]
Video, 5:14, Colour


Using the German electronic band Kraftwerk’s song with the same title as a conceptual starting point this work presents the viewer with close up shots of moving parts of a bike in motion gliding in and out of street lamps during the night on the city of Winnipeg’s residential streets. This video is the first video work I consider part of my artistic practice (mature ?).





City of the Future
[2004]
Video, 6:20, Colour

This single channel video is an attempt at showing an abstraction of urban space. Utilizing atmospheric shots in and around the city of Winnipeg this work aspires to an ideal set by Jack Chambers in his 1970 film “The Hart of London”. Soundtrack is provided by Winnipeg based electronic artist 3x3is9.




It’s Terrible to be a Painter
[2004]
Video, 4:55, Colour

Showing the playback of a rewinding episode of a Bob Ross painting programme this video attempts at a dissection of the medium of video, and takes a melancholic view of the act of painting. Shot in one take.

Paintings 2011 Part 2:

It is enough for me to be truly wretched to have a right to your kindness (The Plow that broke the Plains), oil on wood panel, 48 x 60 inches, 2011

Giles Corey, oil on canvas, 28 x 30 inches, 2011

A Condemned Man's Neck, oil on wood panel, 28 x 30 inches, 2011

Plantation (second version), oil on wood panel, 42 x 42 inches, 2011.

Masala Mixer 2012

I have donated a recent paintng to the Masala Mixer's silent art auction, which is a fundraiser in honour of the Victoria General Hospital's Buhler Cancer Centre. The Masala Mixer is a yearly event sponsored by the East India Company restaurants. They have raised over $60,000 to date and donate 100% of their proceeds to charities across Manitoba, past charities have been the Alzheimer's society of Manitoba and currently the Victoria General Foundation.

If you are interested in owning this (see below) painting and helping a worthy charity, please go to the Masala Mixer's main page and look into purchasing tickets for this coming friday (March 2nd, 2012). At the close of this post I will include the where and when.
   

The Girl from an Old Photograph,  oil on canvas ,20x24 inches.

Event Details:

Masala Mixer VI - Soiree Through the Spice Route
349 York Ave
8:30 PM March 2nd 2012
$30 per ticket
100% proceeds to Victoria General foundation

I Fell Silent

Dear fellow art and film enthusiasts,
   
     Today I put some of my money where my mouth is and pledged to support the film I Fell Silent on Kickstarter. Carson Lund is a film critic and filmmaker who writes a wonderful blog (arethehillsgoingtomarchoff) of film critisim I read and enjoy weekly, who along with his life long friend and co-directer Michael Basta are planning to make said film this coming spring.

       All I ask of any reader is to look at their pitch on Kickstarter and think if you would like to see this project realized. What follows is some information from the directors on the film and examples of other work. The Kickstarter page is set up and scheduled with a funding deadline of February 24th 2012. If the funding goal is not reached by then, the film will not be produced. I would like to thank you for your time and consideration.

"I Fell Silent, is a dreamy horror/coming-of-age film in the stylistic vein of Claire Denis, Pedro Costa, Carlos Saura, Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Ingmar Bergman. The film will focus on the quotidian life of a young boy who dwells in a large mansion with his mother and grandmother, a home that has been passed down through family history. Part of the idea is to take some of the conventions of the horror genre and approach them from a strange angle, to render the "horror" - which is relatively mundane and universal to childhood - somewhat peripheral to the expression of a child gradually grasping at the broader world around him."

   A few of Carson Lund's and Michael Basta's collaborations can be found online, please feel encouraged to check them out:

Wind Through the Cradle

Remedy in Phrases 

Bardo