Still from Throwing Stones at the Sun (2002)
The films of Aaron Valdez possess an admirable faculty for concision. All that really needs to be understood of Throwing Stones at the Sun (2002) is to be found on the billboard above, one of a number Valdez filmed around the state of Iowa. Their combined effect ('GOD BLESS AMERICA - BOX SALE BOX SALE BOX SALE', 'BAR-B-Q - EVIL WILL FAIL GOOD WILL PREVAIL', GOD BLESS AMERICA DAILY $34 & UP') is to create a continuous, concreted over, plastic world of constant market propaganda. Through compressing so many examples of the God-Mammon trade off into a single 'narrative', Valdez's American suburb becomes a rendered rather than a recorded reality. Throwing Stones at the Sun begins as a slice of life in the raw neon light of consumer capitalist, but ends almost as a CGI rendering of what capitalism would look like to a utopian, collectivist future.
The message - that recording life is in a continuum with rendering it - is simple and clear, but never interferes with the simple poetry of the forms Valdez captures. Valdez is enjoying a growing critical reputation, mostly in the US but now gradually extending across the Atlantic, with Dissolve (2003) featuring in the Black Box sidebar of the 2005 Edinburgh International Film Festival. His work is increasingly ambitious - he recently completed the extensive video work The Life and Times of Robert Kennedy Starring Gary Cooper, in which he overlays the primal structures of the Western narrative - another form enhanced by its simple, direct iconography - with the martyred American politician.
Born in Texas, and now living in Iowa, Valdez's work contends with the material reality of film, its physical qualities and vulnerabilities - one could say its status as a document or record. He is also a video blogger and media activist, through the satirical website Valdezatron industries and various sketch-like shorts posted on his eponymous vlog. Valdez's films have been defined as 'experimental documentary', though on balance, it seems an overly narrow definition.
Central to his practice is the recycling and re-using of old prints, off-cuts and forgotten footage. One sees in his work the notion of the 'living archive', interrogating its purpose and 'functionality' in an age of instant information, and the increasingly smudged line between public record and personal recollection. These themes come together most powerfully in the Ur-piece Serendipity, 1967 (2005). A cine-record of an ordinary family holiday, the film was discovered to be a double exposure as a result of accidentally running the spool twice.
Such double exposure relates to more than just the physical condition of the film; in narrative terms two different family events overlay each other; scenes very distant in space and time are compressed on top of one another - or cencrastically intertwined. In the re-presentation of such a film, Valdez seems to lament the dependency of film narrative on cinema's physical materials and processes, each persona or story point melting unexpectedly into another. Cock-ups can be profound, accidents poetic, even wise.
With Serendipity, 1967, Valdez has discovered a film poem in much the same way an ethnologist retrieves a lost ballad. We tend to reference film purely as an industry, forgetting it is also a tradition, a practice, the stuff of our common experience. Valdez is an enthusiast of dusty shelves and discarded cans of film, a culture of filmmaking that is personal, introspective and frequently very beautiful.
Valdez is also a film grammarian, interested in making the illusory effects and devices of filmmaking conscious and obvious. Serendipity, 1967 is a palimpsest of different moments in time. With Dissolve, he takes the theme further and asks when a transition between a place, or time or moment becomes a transformation; whether there is any difference between the two. Composed entirely from the dissolves from hundreds of public information films, Dissolve makes an event of a transitional device usually used to smooth over an editor's cuts, placing them one after the other and establishing an almost hypnotic rhythm of constant change. In Valdez's hands, the 'dissolve' goes from invisible technique to something overt, exotic, even sinister.
Valdez naturally invites comparison with other found footage artists such as Bill Morrison whose poetic interests in decay, change and the passage of time have produced Decasia (2001) and The Highwater Trilogy (2006). In Decasia, Morrison's great bugbear was the melting of the image into oblivion. Valdez on the other hand, seems to wonder whether perpetuity is even worse. Where they truly diverge is in their political engagement; Morrison's films are philosophically resonant but curiously detached, whereas Valdez is also a 'Media-jammer. Media or culture jammers are activist/pranksters who re-edit, 'improve' and distort mainstream media to reveal its true or covery meaning. In State of the Union, 2003 Valdez manipulates speeches by Presidents Bush and Clinton, stripping their respective styles to the absolute basics - forlorn gurning and empty charm.
But it is in the landscapes he captures or recovers that Valdez is perhaps at his most effective, finding genuine political and artistic insight in the back of a late sixties camper van or the plastic surfaces of a freeway concession. A better comparison might be with Jem Cohen, who also assembles his works from a 'living archive' of footage and is similarly fascinated by the ugly-beautiful of shopping malls, car parks and hotel atria. Valdez's shorts and Cohen's feature-length Chain (2003) eulogise (and satirise) an unlovely, ahistorical American panorama usually 'framed out' of mainstream film culture,
Valdez's humour, gifts as a photographer and inventive approach to film syntax provoke many irresponsible speculations on the part of the critic. As the interview below demonstrates, his own claims for his conceptual info-art are laudably modest and unassuming. Says Valdez: 'My work is based on a reaction to the source material. It's about understanding it. Finding the perfect form. I always liked John Coltrane's search for "the essential."...' In and of themselves, Dissolve and Serendipity, 1967 function as beautiful and compelling pieces of film art with no need to bring Debord or McLuhan into the mix (though if you want to...). Throwing Stones at the Sun and State of the Union are founded on the commonsensical pattern-recognition of the joke. But there is substance beneath 'the essential' form, and our laughter gives us pause.
Mitchell Miller
Still from Serendipity, 1967
AARON VALDEZ TALKS TO MITCHELL MILLER
MITCHELL MILLER: How did you come across the footage behind Serendipity 1967?
AARON VALDEZ: About five years ago I got a job at a small video production and duplication company in Austin, Texas. I was in charge of making lo-fi film-to-videotransfers. We did a fair amount of business especially around Christmas time. The accidental multiple exposure in Serendipity, 1967 is something you see often in 8mm home movies. With 8mm film in comes on small 25'rolls that are 16mm wide. The camera exposes half of the surface area of the film in the first 25' run and then the user has to manually flip over the reel and rethread it for the second 25' run in which the other half of the 16mm wide film is exposed. When the film is processed the lab slits I film down the middle resulting in your 50' of 8mm home movies.
It's a process that results in a lot of interesting moments. You get flaring at the beginning, middle and end. You see a fat splice mark in the middle of the film where the two pieces are joined together. I've also noticed a lot of shots of sideways bedside tables or car interiors where the user is threading the camera on their lap. Another result of this process is people forgetting how many times they had flipped and rethreaded their film, which results in the multiple exposure. This film was the only one I ever came across where both sides of the film were exposed twice.
This one reel labelled "Double-Exposure 1967" had been laying around for a year on a shelf in the office. When I watched it I thought it was pretty amazing. From an experimental film point-of-view it looks like a carefully executed optically printed film.
Unintentional art appeals to me. I loved the idea of this discarded mistake occupying the same space as art films. It's all the same to me. Serendipity, 1967 is similar to Ken Jacobs' Perfect Film and Hollis Frampton's Work and Days, which is one of my favourite films. I had a friend, Jamal River, do the music but other than that the film is unaltered. There's no motivation behind this film other than I wanted to share it. I don't consider it my film. It's just a really special found artefact to me.
Do you see what you're doing as a form of archiving?
When I initially started working in film I had so little money about the only thing I could afford was to buy 16mm slug (which is usually portions of educational film). A few friends would give me random strips on film they found in film department wastebaskets or TV station dumpsters. So the first work was very much cut-up based.
I've always had a good understanding of editing and timing, not just in film. Knowing when to let something develop, let it do it's own thing. The BigAnswer is... My work is based on a reaction to the source material. It's about understanding it. Finding the perfect form. I always liked John Coltrane's search for "the essential."
Something like Serendipity, 1967 I could have optically printed, edited out certain parts, made sections connect more obviously, but the essence of that film is that single uncut reel.
The things that interested me early on with found film were the in-between moments. These come in the form of transitions like dissolves and fades and also during camera movements (found heavily in educational films from the 60s & 70s) like zooms and pans. I was obsessed with these things for a few years. I made Dissolve and compiled a few other reels of pans, zooms, heads/tails, and fades that I have laying around somewhere in my basement. I could have devoted my life as an artist to this specific form, but I think I would have gone mad. Of course if I happen to come across a couple hundred 16mm films that someone is trying to unload I might return to this type of work.
While working on Dissolve I came across a few films that I couldn't use because they were just so good intact. I'm definitely skirting the line of archivist and artist. When you watch hours and hours of educational films you do realize that there were some amazing artists making some of these films. You catch these glimpses of the filmmaker doing something completely mind-blowing in the middle of a film about nutrition. I've got a lot of respect for those filmmakers and educational films in general.
My most recent video The Life and Times of Robert Kennedy Starring Gary Cooper superimposes High Noon and newsreel footage of Robert Kennedy to create this space where the viewer can think about connections between the two, and weave in and out of narratives. This work initially developed when I took a Super 8 version of Hign Noon (which was a condensed 12 min. reel) that was missing the final rescue/showdown and projected it with a 8mm highlight reel of RFK's life.
It worked so well as a live performance because it was obvious that these were two separate films merging to create chance meaning. When I decided to translate it to a single channel video I had a chance to strengthen connections and make the images cleaner by using DVD's of all of the footage, but the form is essentially the same. There's still no ending to the High Noon section. As Kennedy is assassinated Gary Cooper's character goes from playing Kennedy to becoming a mourner as the RFK footage shifts to images of the people watching the train carrying his body pass.
Critics like their labels - your work has been described as 'Experimental Documentary', though it seems too narrow a term for your work. Your films treat the film as an object - or document - in itself. It is the subject, as it were.
I've always had a tough time finding the right descriptive phrase for what I'm doing. 'Experimental documentary' fits some of my work (like Throwing Stones at the Sun) but excludes most of the work dealing with appropriated images. I think at one point I was going to concentrate on films more in the documentary realm of James Benning, Nathaniel Dorsky, Peter Hutton, Rudy Buckhardt but I was sidetracked by a complete change in my environment by moving from Austin and Houston, Texas to rural Iowa in the Midwest. Instead of making these reactionary and exploratory films about urban sprawl and commercial landscapes I found myself surrounded by cornfields. So my work for the past few years has shifted more towards found work that is about the subject of the object.
In a way, though, I always think about even my original films as found objects. I think about somebody finding this artifact, a single reel, a videotape with a barely legible label. I think about myself as more of a Found Object Artist. I'm out finding things as they exist in the world and documenting them, I'm altering found films/videos themselves.
You mention getting your start in Texas. What is your background, and how did you first get into filmmaking?
I was interested in photography as a kid. I wasn't exposed to a lot of art and was really more interested in becoming a pro basketball player than an artist but I always had a strong connection to images. I spent a lot of time just looking at things. I had a teacher in high school who helped me develop a voice through creative writing. I was also involved in music. In college I decided to take film courses because I wanted to make stuff. I turned out to have a good sense of composition and timing and ideas. It was pretty much second nature. I think the creative writing /music background made me think of film more as compositions than as narratives.
I ended up not taking many classes because I wasn't interested in going into debt shooting narrative scripts with people I didn't trust. I was exposed to more non-narrative films and classic a-g films. Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger both came to town for screenings and their work was deeply influential. I was really into both of their more "documentary" films like Brakhage's Thot-Fal-N and Anger's Kustom Kar Kommandos. After seeing these films I realized the potential of personal filmmaking and I embraced the simplicity to which it could be done. All around me people were trying to figure out how to get money for their film, equipment like dollies, cranes, 35mm, actors. For $20 for Super 8 or 16mm slug I could make a film.
So I made super8 films and 16mm found films for a while, always projecting the original. I got into doing 16mm installations and live performances using found footage loops. Eventually I got enough cred to secure a small grant to shoot Throwing Stones at the Sun. That turned into doing some video installation work in Texas. I got another grant to make Dissolve and then I moved from Texas to Iowa with my wife so she could go to school.
My surroundings and growing up in Houston has had the biggest influence on me: the sprawling suburbs, endless billboard landscapes, strip malls, fast food chains, liquor stores, pawn shops, refineries burning in the night.
I had an awakening of sorts when I was 20 and spent several months on my own working and living in Yellowstone Park. To experience on my own the juxtaposition of hiking backtrails in desolation/natural beauty and some of the area's tourist hells (Kodak picture signs, corporate logos, and rampant merchandising) put things in perspective for me. I became more interested in how media is constructed and how images can be manipulated. Artistically I was very much into blues/jazz music and applying repetition and variation to my work. I've also always been borderline obsessive compulsive especially with visual arrangement and that's definitely carried over to my work. Structure and form are very important in my work with improvisation working within. Dabbling in hallucinogens and meditation probably had something to do with creating work that allows viewers to get inside and bring their own thinking into.
Many of your films - Throwing Stones at the Sun, or more obviously, States of the Union - seem to incorporate or are structured as jokes.
I don't know if I would call it a joke, but I definitely set the stage for a response. There is sarcasm, satire and a dry wit to my films. Things that attract me are commercial landscapes gone awry, the collision of free enterprise and natural world, the manifestations of the make believe world of advertising and popular culture with the everyday. These things create juxtapositions that on the surface are funny. Underneath it all it's a very disgusting world. A Coke sign framing a natural wonder, or a sunrise over an industrial park, or an old man slowly walking over a freeway overpass. Laughter is a great access point for delving deeper into the image.
You have a fairly strong net presence, and are one of an increasing number of film artists involved in Videoblogging, as well as the satirical site Valdezatron industries. Could you tell us a bit more about these projects?
I found out about videoblogging a little over a year ago. I started my own videoblog to share some of my work especially many of the smaller films I made years ago. What I like about videoblogging is that I can share work that doesn't have to meet the expectations of the film festival or art world. I'll make the generalization and say the art world likes people who make the same work over and over again and festivals like work that is easily programmable.
The bottom line is that I like to make media, lots of it and in differing forms. There's much more to me than festival films and I think videoblogs let people establish a more personal relationship with me and my work. I always go back to how I got started, showing super 8 films in living rooms. The ability to add text to accompany the work and provide backstory and commenting to discuss the work makes the videoblogging format is the closest thing to the old personal sharing of a film at a friend's house.
The Valdezatron Industries site came about because I was having an internal struggle trying to separate these personas of the video/film artist and the culture jamming prankster. Big Screen Version became a viral video after someone put it on iFilm and I started to feel very uncomfortable about what kind of credibility I'd have as a serious artist when my work appears next to a video of a rapping jelly donut. (Of course it was also programmed next to Peter Kubelka and Ken Jacobs at a festival so what does that say?)
I created Valdezatron Industries (my friends call me Valdez, and then Valdezatron after a night of inspired robot dancing) specifically for mash-ups, culture jamming, and riffing on TV. Initially it was supposed to be anonymous but I was found out rather quickly. It's provided me a peaceful separation between my modes of work.
Those modes could be crudely defined as your more poetic video work and your media activist/culture-jamming pieces. What is your politics, and how does it impact on your work?
You know I'm not someone who engages in political discussions. I don't have any specific views on current political topics. Words have always failed me to explain how I feel about the American society. It's easier for me to hold up a mirror to the world, perhaps a funhouse mirror to show what I see. As I've gotten older I've realized increasingly how fucked the USA is. There's no attempt by our government to do anything for the good of our society. There's little attempt by individuals or corporations to do anything good. In the end you end up with The Gap in Sedona Valley, Arizona looking like it was carved out the red rocks themselves. I feel compelled to capture these true landscapes that exist just outside of the frame of postcards. There is also an inclination to find beauty and abstraction in these failed environments as well, empty parking lots, oil stains, peeling walls, blank billboards.
Travelling in the west in my early twenties I realized some of the most amazing places (not to mention art) in the US came out of programs from the New Deal seventy years ago. We showed the type of positive change we were capable of making and then lost it. I think America's potential died when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Those working for good today are few and far between, usually poor and under-funded, silenced or crushed. America is better than a lot of alternatives but in terms of our potential it's angering and depressing. I vote but I honestly do not feel like it makes any difference. This country is run by corporations, lobbyists and corrupt politicians.
The fact that people are so oblivious to the deception of politics, marketing, advertising, and media motivates all of my work. I don't know. How do people navigate the outside world or sit in front of their TV without thinking about these things and how they came to be?
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