My name is Aaron Valdez, I grew up in Texas and now live in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I make videos about the internet and television for Wreck & Salvage. I like old film, worn out VHS, digital glitches, Precious Moments statues, Tootsie Roll Pops, warm bus rides, long sleeve shirts, and pull-ups. All of my work is available here.
Aaron Valdez
February 6, 2010

Dig These Freeways (via Aaron Valdez on Vimeo)

Playing around with animating postcards. Right click the play button to turn looping on. Original pic flickr.com/photos/wreck/2803597490

February 2, 2010
Hard Stars on Tumblr

Hard Stars on Tumblr

January 30, 2010

Folk Singer (via Vimeo)

Heroes. Commercials. Reality. Selling Out. Buying In. Owning Up. Pawning Off. Who gives a shit. It’s all there for the wrecking.

Transition (via Vimeo)

Change to a new position.

FBI Warning (via resetcounter)

I have utterly failed at making a long-form mixtape out of the 100+ celebrity workout videos I have acquired on VHS over the last three years. It’s just too big of a job to condense into one video. So I’ll be posting the best clips and edited sequences to this YouTube account over the next few months. Enjoy.

January 23, 2010

Proof of Progress 005 - Moments from the funeral of my grandmother Cruz Valdez. Shot by my mother. Edited by me.

January 18, 2010
wreckandsalvage:


We’ve been swamped.  Plug this number on the quick dial; 
Only the initiated find and keep our number.  You game?  Not much time to waste.  Call now, don’t be fucked.

wreckandsalvage:

We’ve been swamped.  Plug this number on the quick dial;

Only the initiated find and keep our number.  You game?  Not much time to waste.  Call now, don’t be fucked.

January 14, 2010
mr. portabella will crush you (via Wreck and Salvage)

mr. portabella will crush you (via Wreck and Salvage)

January 11, 2010
January project. In NYC with the Wreck & Salvage boys hammering out a series of 3-d animated mushroom videos.

January project. In NYC with the Wreck & Salvage boys hammering out a series of 3-d animated mushroom videos.

December 29, 2009
Another screening update. My 2003 film Dissolve playing in the UK. Delicate Matter: experiments with flesh and the analogue. A programme of experimental film curated by Richard Tuohy. It’s the flesh, the touching physicality and tiny inconsistencies in approximation and decay that give the analogue its vitality. The film in this selection, sourced from around the globe, all demonstrate a fascination with the analogue physicality of cine film, with its fragility and its presence, with the vitality of its fleshiness.

Another screening update. My 2003 film Dissolve playing in the UK. Delicate Matter: experiments with flesh and the analogue. A programme of experimental film curated by Richard Tuohy. It’s the flesh, the touching physicality and tiny inconsistencies in approximation and decay that give the analogue its vitality. The film in this selection, sourced from around the globe, all demonstrate a fascination with the analogue physicality of cine film, with its fragility and its presence, with the vitality of its fleshiness.

December 25, 2009
I’ll have some of my Wreck & Salvage work featured in this exhibition @ UC Irvine.
VIDEO DADA An exhibition and project by Martha Gever Opening Reception Thursday, January 7, 6-9 pm | UAG January 7- February 6, 2010
VIDEO DADA: No repeat of history, not neo-Dada, but still wreaking havoc with conventional parameters of art.  Nowadays inventive, intelligent, and aesthetically sophisticated videos can be seen far afield, outside traditional art venues like museums and galleries.  And artists circulate their videos on a much wider scale than that achieved by any television network.  VIDEO DADA asks how these changes complicate the conceptual and aesthetic contours of art.  The exhibition features 300 plus videos — playing on eight screens — by individual artists and art collectives that circulate in the hurly-burly multiverse of the internet.  Some serious, some humorous, and some both at once, these works exercise manifold strategies: absurd drama, wry animation, politically astute collage, wild performance, and uncategorizable others.  Some play with music; some incorporate extraordinary written or spoken texts; some prefer silence and all the noise that offers.  In sum, VIDEO DADA surveys the internet’s amalgamation of popular culture and art, calling into question the difference between the two.  And, yes, there may be echoes of Dada: “Dadaism was no ideological movement but an organic product that came into existence as a reaction against the cloud- cuckoo -land tendencies of so-called sacred art…. while military leaders painted in blood.” — George Grosz, 1924 .

I’ll have some of my Wreck & Salvage work featured in this exhibition @ UC Irvine.

VIDEO DADA
An exhibition and project by Martha Gever
Opening Reception Thursday, January 7, 6-9 pm | UAG
January 7- February 6, 2010

VIDEO DADA: No repeat of history, not neo-Dada, but still wreaking havoc with conventional parameters of art.  Nowadays inventive, intelligent, and aesthetically sophisticated videos can be seen far afield, outside traditional art venues like museums and galleries.  And artists circulate their videos on a much wider scale than that achieved by any television network.  VIDEO DADA asks how these changes complicate the conceptual and aesthetic contours of art.  The exhibition features 300 plus videos — playing on eight screens — by individual artists and art collectives that circulate in the hurly-burly multiverse of the internet.  Some serious, some humorous, and some both at once, these works exercise manifold strategies: absurd drama, wry animation, politically astute collage, wild performance, and uncategorizable others.  Some play with music; some incorporate extraordinary written or spoken texts; some prefer silence and all the noise that offers.  In sum, VIDEO DADA surveys the internet’s amalgamation of popular culture and art, calling into question the difference between the two.

And, yes, there may be echoes of Dada: “Dadaism was no ideological movement but an organic product that came into existence as a reaction against the cloud- cuckoo -land tendencies of so-called sacred art…. while military leaders painted in blood.” — George Grosz, 1924 .