We are oh-so-lucky to host the most lovely presence of thee queen of contemporary film-essay, LynneSachs! Returning to the site of her very earliest retrospective, Lynne blesses the first section of our semi-annual SisPix with an hour of her engaged oeuvre: Beginning with a brief reading from her Hand Book: A Manual on Performance, Process, and the Labor of Laundry–even another perfect-bound bundle of Lynne’s image-text brilliance–she proceeds with The Washing Society cine-excerpt that best complements that new release, then clothes-pins her abortion-rights-ritual short Contractions to our riveted line-of-sight, and closes her Artist’s Talk with a few choice chapters from her forthcoming feature, Every Contact Leavesa Trace. Tonight’s second set of women’s work is constituted by a quintet of feminist films that parlay personal insights into the public sphere: ShapeshifterKathleen Quillian‘s Wildflower Season considers her daughters’ comings-of-age, Virginia‘s Sasha Waters‘ Fragile picks up the thread, correlating a parallel trajectory into one’s middle-age, Sacramento State‘s Jenny Stark spatializes the metaphor with her Where Your Road Ends, Mine Begins, Caribbean-based Karla Betancourt‘s NewIndigo Wave extols the organic plant-based inks of Oaxaca, Mexico, and East Bay artisteKateDollemayer‘s 16mmCycladic Thermometer imagines female figurines from ancient Greece as possible agents for healing the wounds of the world. $12
do you read me?! is an internationally recognized presence in the world of printed matter. Founded by Mark Kiessling in 2008, the tiny but mighty independent bookstore is known for its inspiring curation and expert perspective on contemporary print and publishing. From its buzzing storefront in Berlin to global collaborations in Basel, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Tokyo, Sydney and many more, do you read me?! has established itself not only as a place to simply buy (fantastic) books and magazines, but as a dynamic cultural space fostering conversations across disciplines from art and architecture to photography, design, theory, food and fashion. Mark Kiessling (*1973) founded the design studio, Greige Büro für Design, in 2001. In 2008, he opened do you read me?!
On Saturday, October 25th, at 7pm, you are invited to The Film-Makers’ Cooperative for a screening of Lynne Sachs and Lizzie Olesker’s experimental documentary THE WASHING SOCIETY, followed by a performative conversation with Mark Street and book signing, by Sachs, of their new book HAND BOOK: A MANUAL ON PERFORMANCE, PROCESS, AND THE LABOR OF LAUNDRY.
This is not a play. It is something else.
Call it a blueprint, a map, a documentation
of something that has already happened
but could happen again —
a rendering in book form of a film and a performance.
Making a mark, words on a page instead of bodies in space.
A book that contains what’s remembered and what could be.
All of it written down and placed here, into this
Hand Book: A Manual.
“I’ve been creating with playwright Lizzie Olesker since 2014. Together, we’ve discovered a shared interest in making work that magnifies quotidian elements of life in NYC. In those early years, we couldn’t yet know that our first site-specific pieces would lead to a ten-year collaboration in which we produced Every Fold Matters, a live film performance, and The Washing Society, a hybrid film. Hand Book: A Manual on Performance, Process, and the Labor of Laundry marks our third iteration. For us, our book offers space for readers to think about the politics and history of service work, art-making, and aesthetic experimentation.”
You are the audience now,
reading a book instead of watching and listening,
turning the page,
moving from one discourse to another,
holding a container,
its contours informed by our thoughts,
and in turn,
shaping your experience.
The Washing Society (co-directed by Lizzie Olesker and Lynne Sachs, 45 min. film, 2018)
When you drop off a bag of dirty laundry, who’s doing the washing and folding? The Washing Society brings us into New York City laundromats and the experiences of the people who work there. Sachs and Olesker observe the disappearing public space of the neighborhood laundromat and the continual, intimate labor that happens there.
“The legacy of domestic work, the issues surrounding power, and the exchange of money for services are all potent themes which rise to the surface and bubble over in dramatic, thrilling escalations of the everyday.” – The Brooklyn Rail
“An exercise in high-concept cinema to which Olesker and Sachs devote three quarters of an hour of film stock and many more quarters in tips, revealing the stains (of racism and classicism) on an American Dream that seems to want to scrub away every last trace of its own identity.” – Otro Cines Europa, Punto de Vista International Film Festival)
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A performative reading and book signing from: Hand Book: A Manual on Performance, Process and the Labor of Laundry by Lizzie Olesker and Lynne Sachs. (punctum books, 2025).
Hand Book guides us through the making of a hybrid performance and film focused on laundromat workers – those who are paid to wash and fold for others. This illuminating dialogue between cinema, theater, and labor invites us to think about the intimacy of touching other people’s clothes. Turning a page becomes an interactive, quasi-cinematic encounter, calling to mind the intimacy of touching other people’s clothes, almost like a second skin, the textural care for things kept close to the body.
“This generously kaleidoscopic offering invites readers to think through the labor of laundry via an impressive array of modes in an interactive collage of perspectives, histories and bodies” –Christopher Harris
“The best of art manifests an ordinary devotion to experiences that become extraordinary given enough care and attention, or an extraordinary devotion to conveying the genuine depth of what passes for the ordinary. Here it is, both at once.” –Paul Chan
Lynne Sachs – The Washing Society + Hand Book: A Manual on Performance, Process, and the Labor of Laundry 7pmTuesday, November 11, 2025 Shapeshifters Cinema, Oakland
Along with a screening of The Washing Society, Lynne will present a performative reading, with Shapeshifters Programming Director Kathleen Quillian, of excerpts from Hand Book as well as engage in a discussion about the book, film, and process with Canyon Cinema Executive Director Brett Kashmere.
Copies of the book will be available for purchase and can be signed by the artist after the event.
SHAPESHIFTERS CINEMA provides a venue and support for contemporary artists working with experimental and artist-made film, video, sound, music and other types of mediated performance. We host screenings and performances by local and visiting artists in our intimate 40-seat theatre and offer workshops on a variety of experimental and DIY moving image and sound production. Our storefront shop specializes in print publications, DVDs, sound recordings and other kinds of media made by artists who have screened or performed in our venue.
SHAPESHIFTERS BREWERY makes a variety of small-batch, seasonal, hand-crafted beers, brewed on-site in a space right behind the cinema. These are served (to 21+) at all our events as well as some off-site events. Find out more at shapeshiftersbrewery.com
SHAPESHIFTERS CAFÉ, is right next door to our cinema! We offer freshly-made salads, sandwiches, coffee, tea, pastries and more. Open Monday-Friday 6am-2pm and every Saturday 10am-2pm. Find out more at shapeshifterscafe.com
Allied/LPV has a double presence at the fair this year with Table T17 & a site specific installation, -INTERSECTIONS- for PM’s new project, The Reading Room.
Book Launches / Signings @ Allied Booth T17
Thursday September 11 7pm: Peter Cramer & Jack Waters 8pm: Ministry, Reverend Joyce McDonald
Friday September 12 3pm: Lucia Maria Minervini, Not Selfies, Portraits
Saturday September 13 Noon – 2pm: Lizzie Olesker and Lynne Sachs – Hand Book: A Manual on Performance, Process, and the Labor of Laundry 4pm: Ethan Shoshan, Self-Help Psychic Reading
Sunday September 14 2pm: Lucia Maria Minervini, Not Selfies, Portraits
Among the book artists at our Table T17 we will present:
Joyce McDonald – Ministry: Reverend Joyce McDonald – Catalogue published in conjunction with Visual AIDS and Bronx Museum for her upcoming exhibition at Bronx Museum – 2025. The first book dedicated to the sculptural practice of Reverend Joyce McDonald, published on the occasion of her solo exhibition at The Bronx Museum. Through sculpture, Reverend Joyce McDonald crafts moving testimonies to themes that have shaped her life: hope, grace, and serenity, but also hardship, loss, and devotion. Her work often depicts figures in repose or embrace, embodying the strength, support, and unconditional love that has sustained her life.McDonald began working with clay in 1997 through an art therapy program, shortly after her diagnosis with HIV. She quickly recognized the medium’s potential for healing and transformation. Working intuitively, she allows figures to emerge from the clay, giving form to memories and emotion while processing experiences of addiction, domestic violence, and illness.The fully-illustrated catalogue features essays by Kyle Croft and Dr. Jareh Das, alongside a conversation between McDonald and fellow artist Rafael Sánchez.
Lucia Maria Minervini – Not Selfies, Portraits – 2025 “Not Selfies, Portraits” began in 2012 as a reaction to the rise of the very popular and still invasive mania of taking selfies. The great respect for the long history of Portraiture inspired this digital project in response to selfies, which appeared to the author as a degradation of the historical genre of portraiture. For Lucia Minervini as a follower of Jungian psychology, these portraits trace her path of individuation through some of Jung’s great ideas: the collective unconscious, archetypes, the anima/animus and the shadow.
Lizzie Olesker and Lynne Sachs – Hand Book: A Manual on Performance , Process, and the Labor of Laundry – 2025 Hand Book is a collection of writings and images that came out of a hybrid documentary performance and film made by Sachs and Olesker that was set within a neighborhood laundromat, a microcosm of service work within our city. With a focus on the people who wash and fold “drop-off” loads, Hand Book explores the convergence of dirt, stains, money, identity, and desire.
Sur Rodney Sur – Ribald Jack Waters – Pestilence #8 GRRRR – Various unique art books Ethan Shoshan – Various titles and objects Peter Cramer – Acqua Dotte / Covid TImes / B&W Study-The Zine.
And other unique publications from our archives including Diseased Pariah News, HYPE, Leilah Babirye monograph, RED TAPE Magazines.
Allied Productions/Le Petit Versailles presents INTERSECTIONS,a multi media installation for The Reading Room at Printed Matter NY Art Book Fair 2025. This project will encompass archival materials from various projects initiated by Peter Cramer and Jack Waters that highlight decades of art, activism and advocacy. Subjects include LGBTQ identity & AIDS politics, gentrification and preservation of NYC gardens, and will feature cable access videos as represented by HoMoVISIONES, a Latino caucus of ACT UP.
The Reading Room is a new incarnation of Friendly Fire, a program initiated in 2011 to highlight activist and grassroots-focused Fair exhibitors. The Reading Room highlights Fair exhibitors engaged in activism and grassroots struggles related to a particular theme. The NYABF 2025 Reading Room is produced in dialogue with Archivos Desviados, an ongoing exhibition at Printed Matter’s bookstore in Chelsea, and explores the relationship between publishing and queer and trans liberation, third world solidarity, and revolutionary action. In contrast to the rapid speed at which visitors move through the Fair, this program offers an alternative space to engage in close reading, critique, and reflection.
We are oh-so-lucky to host the most lovely presence of thee queen of contemporary film-essay, Lynne Sachs! Returning to the site of her very earliest retrospective, Lynne blesses the first section of our semi-annual SisPix with an hour of her engaged oeuvre: Beginning with a brief reading from her Hand Book: A Manual on Performance, Process, and the Labor of Laundry, and Lizzie Olesker‘s Handbook: Labor of Laundry–even another perfect-bound bundle of Lynne’s image-text brilliance–she proceeds with The Washing Society cine-excerpt that best complements that new release, then clothes-pins her abortion-rights-ritual short Contractions to our riveted line-of-sight, and closes her Artist’s Talk with a few choice chapters from her forthcoming feature, Every Contact Leaves a Trace. Tonight’s second set of women’s work is constituted by a quintet of feminist films that parlay personal insights into the public sphere: Shapeshifter Kathleen Quillian‘s Wildflower Season considers her daughters’ comings-of-age, Virginia‘s Sasha Waters‘ Fragile picks up the thread, correlating a parallel trajectory into one’s middle-age, Sacramento State‘s Jenny Stark spatializes the metaphor with her Where Your Road Ends, Mine Begins, Caribbean-based Karla Betancourt‘s NewIndigo Wave extols the organic plant-based inks of Oaxaca, Mexico, and East Bay artiste Kate Dollemeyer‘s 16mm Cycladic Thermometer imagines female figurines from ancient Greece as possible agents for healing the wounds of the world. $12
We will be having our first bookstore event for Hand Book: A Manual on Performance, Process, and the Labor of Laundry at the wonderful UNNAMEABLE BOOKS in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn on Monday, September 8 at 7PM.
September 8th, 7 – 8:30 PM
Unnameable Books
Reading and performance with special guests Silvia Federici and Veraalba Santa
615 Vanderbilt Ave. Brooklyn
Please join us in the bookstore’s inimitable outdoor space for our reading. We’ve invited feminist historian Silvia Federici, who wrote our foreword, and dancer Veraalba Santa who collaborated with us on our performance Every Fold Matters and film The Washing Society to join us on this special evening. You may remember Vera dancing on top of the laundromat’s machines!
Hand Book: A Manual is a collection of writings and images derived from our film and performance project which looked at the neighborhood laundromat as a microcosm of service work within our city. With a focus on the people who are paid to wash and fold, Hand Book: A Manual explores the convergence of dirt, stains, money, identity, and desire.
