VacBook Process (I) (Patreon)

Hello my strange and wonderful fellow life forms!

I've been busy here in Vancouver pretending to be a badass on a TV show that'll allegedly be airing in March 2021 (woop woop). It's been a bit of a stressful transition, but I've finally gotten my head enough above water to return some of my attention to the projects I started telling all of you about a few weeks ago -- like the VacBook!

In between tricking everyone into thinking that I can act, and revisiting wushu training with an epicly amazing coach (he was the gweilo/gwailou bad guy in all sorts of Hong Kong kung fu films in the 1990s, worked with Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung ...!!! Eeeeeee), I've been slowly starting to get this giant discombobulated-feeling machine into motion.

To refresh your memories, the "VacBook" (just a cute placeholder title) is a large-format coffee-table style art book that I'm cooking up. It'll be around 100-125 pages: inside, it'll be filled with several new essays around the foundational questions and concepts that the VACUUM project was created to explore as well as a revisit of some of the creation process that I shared with all of you here on Patreon, as well as multiple photo-essays from 3 very talented local Toronto photographers that I contracted to work on the project with me. Each of them brought their unique vision, aesthetic, and interpretation of the VACUUM project to the collaboration, and in juxtaposing these shiny, new, beautiful, exclusive images with the written materials of the project, there's new meaning-making happening, new layers being excavated to the piece. I'm in art-nerd heaven.

Here's what I've been up to so far: 

• I've received proofs back from all three photographers that I contacted to work with me on the project ... !!! You'll get to see some of these soon; including a low-res teaser at the bottom of this message for you today ;)
  
  There are going to be some VOTES / POLLS coming up on here so that you clever people can help me choose between images when there are just sliiiiight differences in between and I can't decide (there's a few of those haha)
  
• I've been researching printers, downloaded design software and have begun marking out the page layouts and photo-essay orders in the book,  
  
• The drafts of the written content in the project are underway,
  
• I'm in contact with a few different printers getting quotes out on different paper and printing-quality options for price. One of the challenges with this project is going to be striking the right balance between selecting materials that I feel are high enough quality to do the artistic material justice, without going so far overboard that the final product is unaffordable. Most coffee table art books sit around the $80 mark; if I can pull that off I'll be in good shape. It's a bit nerve-wracking setting out to create a higher-ticket item when my  baseline has been creating $12 zines that I photocopy and hand-staple in my living room, but I'm up for the challenge. It's going to be a stunning piece of art that we'll all want to touch and hold and look at and leave open in our homes when it's said and done.
  
  ... I'm going to go into detail about material options in an upcoming post and ask you all for your thoughts and/or advice on said material selection options.
  
• Despite the gut-churning anxiety induced by discussing the project publicly, I've also ripped off the band-aid of secrecy and mentioned the project on my IG story for the first time yesterday as well. I'm attempting to strike a fine balance between just putting my head down and doing the work, and starting to *talk* about the project far enough in advance that it can be successful.  
  
  The way that this project will eventually move into the printing stage will be through a pre-sale -– that's really the only way to create a high-quality photo book through these self-publishing means. So talking to people about the project and the process is going to be a necessary part of raising awareness about it :)
  
  (I save every dollar of Patreon support from you folks and have set it aside for self-publishing my circus adventure stories – which are still there, waiting in the wings, by the way! But the up-front printing costs associated with a book that is, say, 6" x 9" and all text, with a softcover, is very different than the up-front printing costs associated with a book that is 12" x 12" with vivid, rich image quality for the photos, mixed in with writing, high quality paper, and a hard cover. So – pre-sale is what's going to make sure that I'm not bankrupting myself printing these coffee table books [or printing too many!]  Sometimes a new idea just pokes its head up and forcefully demands to cut in line, and who am I to deny the muses...)
  
  PHEW.
  
  Alright.
  
  As promised, here's a teaser image --
  
  This one is from the talented Irem Harnak; I met her during my modelling career and loved working with her. She went on to work in Manhattan and do a photo series & documentary on transmasculine youth that was stunning. Given our work history, and being able to see the nuance and care with which she approached her subjects for doc Made This Way: Redefining Masculiniity, she was at the front of my mind for a project like the VacBook, which (in part) digs a bit deeper into the constructions of gender that so deeply affect the way that we consume and enjoy some art forms.
  
  Thank you all for hanging in there with me, for giving me the space and time to let good ideas percolate, for trusting the process with me.
  
  It's gonna be a good one.
  
  XO - Keep it strange, wonderful, healthy, and safe. 

ess