Building on my previous blog post, here I would like to use the artist book titled Long Night Stands with Lonely, Lonely Boys by Augustine Paredes as a case study that participates in the double queering: this time it is a double queering not just of the artist book form, but also of remembrance to the effect of creating queer futurity.
One of the final spreads in Long Night Stands with Lonely, Lonely Boys by Augustine Paredes.
The content of this book as well as the subtle diversions from the typical book structure are what make this book queer. But, even moreso, Long Night Stands with Lonely, Lonely Boys embodies the melancholic act of remembrance canon to much of queer experience. The subject matter of the book presents the viewer with an everyday look at queer experiences. Paredes invites us to join his search for home and belonging, but that search cannot be separated from the struggle to fit between societal categories and expectations. It is through the sharing of those experiences that we ensure it does not slip between the cracks. This artist book perpetuates queer futurity in the act of remembering in two ways: because the reader is able to provide the connections that the book spends its entirety looking for, and because this book is also a democratic multiple made to be taken home by the audience and re-experienced at will.
The work is a smyth-sewn codex with offset-printed pages and fits comfortably in the reader’s hand, creating an intimate but familiar reading experience. Already, the audience is given clues about the expectation for this work’s responsibility as it aligns with other artist books. John Chaich explains, “responding to the book as bibliObject is a queering of the book’s role in material culture just as employing the book as a material or medium queers the embedded or intended meaning of the book.”[1]
First spread of Long Night Stands with Lonely, Lonely Boys by Augustine Paredes.
Opening the detached front cover (Swiss binding), the reader can see the exposed stitching on the spine of the book—a vulnerability foreshadowing the narrative contents of the work. The first full spread (Figure 2) fills the air with a kind of love characterized by stillness, longing, reflection, and melancholy. The work feels nostalgic for moments that never quite happened the way they could have. These feelings are echoed in the foreword of the book where Carlos Quijon, Jr. situates this book among Paredes’s larger body of work as a queer exploration of connection and loneliness. Paredes’s connection to longing is directly impacted by his queerness, and his expression of those experiences epitomize a queering of autobiographical narrative. Furthermore, the inclusion of a foreword, as well as the preface, which was written by Paredes, acts to position the work in the space between artist’s book, photobook, and more commercially published monograph: the space between being the embodiment of queer experience.
The book builds intimacy reminiscent of a personal diary or love letter through the continuous use of handwritten text paired with collaged compositions, scanned objects, and photographic snapshots. As the reader begins to navigate through the pages, they may find themselves in a slight panic, wondering if they have destroyed the book’s binding by handling the work so roughly that a page was released. It is only later in the book that they will encounter the three additional loose pages, inevitably realizing that these moments were intentional and not the result of any damage done on their part. By breaking the expected form of the codex with the inclusion of these loose pages, Paredes is once again queering the work.
“Dubai, Sept. 2016” spread and first loose page.
When I first encountered the work, the first loose page was nested into the spread of the book with the journal entry for “Dubai, Sept. 2016.” The journal entry allows the reader a direct peek into the artist’s past and provides important context for the photographic essay within the book: the artist’s father’s passing has influenced him to leave his home country, the Philippines, and immigrate to Dubai. The artist was met with struggle and loneliness, but presents the reader with the saying “if the means are short, learn to slouch.” The loose page, written by Anna Bernice, contains a poem reminiscent of a recipe, but instead of learning to make food, the reader is taught to make a home in a stranger’s bed. Through the first person perspective in the poem, we are made to feel the tension of searching for comfort in an unfamiliar space where we do not quite fit—we are wanted (at least temporarily) in a space we do not feel any ownership over, but the wanting is not necessarily personal. There is no home for us in the space.
While this is the place within the book that I first found this poem, a key aspect of this work is that the loose pages do not demand to be returned to their original location. Without page numbers, the loose pages are effectively outside of time. It is up to the reader to determine if the page will stay where they initially discovered it or if it will also immigrate to another moment within the book, changing the context of each new spread it is nested into. In this way, the inclusion of the loose pages acts to queer the book arts object through its relationship to time. The theorist Jack Halberstam coined the term “queer time” to examine the way time is experienced differently by queer people. Halberstam explains, “Queer uses of time and space develop, at least in part, in opposition to the institutions of family, heterosexuality, and reproduction.”[2] He then goes on to explain that queer time is a nonnormative way of experiencing temporality in response to compression and destruction, but also freedom. Paredes’s use of nonlinear and collaborative remembrance manifested through the loose pages embodies the relationship to time Halberstam discusses.
[1] John Chaich, Queering the BibliObject, (New York: The Center for Book Arts, 2016), 10.
[2] Jack Halberstam, In a Queer Time & Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 1.
Copyright Note: The photographs included in this post were taken by Beth Sheehan of the copy of Long Night Stands with Lonely, Lonely Boys held in the Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection in Chicago, IL. All rights to the artist book and images within the book remain with the artist.
Beth Sheehan is an artist currently living in Chicago, IL. She teaches paper, print, and book workshops around the US and virtually. She co-authored the book Bookforms. Sheehan has also worked as a professional printer at Durham Press and Harland and Weaver and was the Bindery Manager at Small Editions.
