The Haunting of Epson

I contributed a ghost story for artist Olga Micińska’s new publication, Amanda. Organized by The Building Institute and published with Maria Editions, the publication features Olga’s portraits of her apprentices and other builders associated with her wood workshop, an organization that funds artistic practice in exchange for labor.

For my contribution, I researched the history of sheet catchers — laborers, most often women, hired by printing houses in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to catch sheets as they dropped from the mouths of printing presses. Today, we can find their technical traces inside the everyday printers around our homes. In my story, mysterious fingerprints begin to appear on pages from an Epson printer, spurring an investigation into histories of thwarted labor strikes and technological obsolesce.

In October 2022, we’ll be launching the publication with an event at Slavs and Tarters’ Pickle Bar in Berlin.