Written by VITA HEWITT

“Echoes of Absence and Mythos: The Un-Archivists of Shitocracy” comes straight from the hands of artist Christopher Burch and opens on October 17 at Incline Gallery. Created in collaboration with the Internet Archive, D. Scott Miller, who wrote the Afro Surrealist Manifesto, and Incline Gallery, with funding from the San Francisco Arts Commission, this exhibition takes aim at the dual specters of societal erasure of Black experience and the often unmet need to amplify marginalized voices.

The Un-Archivists of Shitocracy, an imagined secret society comprised of those overlooked by history, takes these heavy subjects on through historical and contemporary contexts, mixed together with the hands of a trickster to challenge oppressive systems that seek to erase the narratives crucial to Black identity.

The trickster often appears in stories as the jester, the truth teller and as a being able to change the world with the absurdity of their wits. Often turning systems upside down, their disruption becomes a way of showing us medicine for healing or, in this case, what is broken and what has been left unseen. According to Burch’s research, Black folklore was often used in this way to create a spoken foothold for Black voices in America’s history.

Utilizing the resources of the Internet Archive, Burch was able to identify these suppressed and misrepresented narratives. Figures rendered from Burch’s skilled hands stare out from canvases. Their eyes hold the power of their knowledge. Feathers take the place of hair in one, moth wings in another. Uncanny, unapologetic and uncomfortable, the figures walk the line between human and myth, leading the viewer into a world where hard truths lie sharply under an enticing gossamer wrapping.

Immersive drawings,  sculptures and writings  create a library of Afro Surrealism that wields humor to defy and whispered spells to defend stories from erasure. Each piece is intentionally layered with symbolism, mirroring the layered narratives that they represent. Viewers cannot help but be drawn into questioning how and where Black narratives are represented in the currently changing landscape of American history as told by an oppressive overculture.

Burch’s work is at its most compelling when these layers begin to reveal themselves. They create an atmosphere in which history feels both present and unsettled. The result is a body of work that asks viewers to look again at the stories that have been preserved, the stories that have been suppressed and who has been given the authority to tell them.

“My role in this creative endeavor encompasses research, concept development, material experimentation, and narrative expansion. I envision and bring this multidimensional, absurdist world to life, crafting each piece as a vessel for cultural critique and rich storytelling. Through careful symbolism and layered narratives, I invite viewers to engage in the unarchiving process, reconsider histories, and uncover meaning in the strange yet significant struggle for cultural memory and justice,” says Burch on the exhibition.

“Echoes of Absence and Mythos: The Un-Archivists of Shitocracy” opens October 17th, 2026, at Incline Gallery.

About Christopher Burch

Based in San Francisco and St. Louis, Christopher Burch investigates the effect of intergenerational trauma and shared experience, and how they affect the shared Black cultural psyche. Intertwining this with social justice and spirituality, he challenges societal expectations, all within a world of his own imaginings.

“My practice engages with and reinterprets Black mythology and folklore. Through symbolic, linguistic, and gestural means, I create objects and ideas that give way to co emergence and slippage. By investigating my people’s myths, legends, and folkloric expressions, I expound on how cumulative intergenerational memories become embedded within the Black cultural psyche. I challenge the status quo through this engagement, breaching identity, spirituality, and social justice issues.”

The Internet Archive Artist in Residence program connects visual artists with the digital library’s massive collections. The program is organized and directed by Amir Saber Esfahani.

The U.S. Census has been in the headlines lately, as proposed changes to the 2030 count have sparked debate over who gets counted and what information should be recorded as part of that process. Few government records say more about a democracy than the census, the once-a-decade count that decides who is represented in Congress, which makes it a natural fit for Democracy’s Library, the Internet Archive’s effort to make government information freely available to everyone. Thanks to the Allen County Public Library, the Internet Archive holds the U.S. Census collection. This collection contains digitized microfilm of the United States federal population census, 1790 to 1930 (minus the lost 1890 Census), and including the Indian Census rolls of 1885 to 1940, which were compiled by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The evolution of the U.S. Census

The United States Census is one of the few institutional structures that was written into the Constitution, with Article I, Section 2 specifying that an “actual Enumeration” would be made every ten years in order to divide seats in the House of Representatives and direct taxes among the states. 

Since the first census which took place in 1790, the modes and methods of the decennial enumeration have evolved over time. The first census recorded only six things: the name of the head of household, and for that household the number of free white males 16 and older, free white males under 16, free white females, all other free persons, and enslaved people. Over time other changes were made, including expanded age brackets (1800), questions about occupation, counting foreign residents who had not naturalized (1820), and a failed experiment recording the status of  “insane and idiotic” people (1840). 

The 1850 census is considered the first professional census and was the first time every free person was listed by name, rather than just the head of household. It recorded each person’s age, sex, color, birthplace, and occupation. In 1850 and 1860 enslaved people were recorded on a separate schedule without names, only by age, sex, and color, under their enslaver’s name. Other racial categories were added over time: mulatto (1850), Chinese (1870), and Mexican (added in 1930, dropped in 1940). In 1970 the census shifted from from door-to-door interviews to mailed forms that people filled out themselves. In the interview era, enumerators usually recorded race based on their own observation, whereas with mail-in forms, people identified themselves.  The ethnicity (rather than race) “Hispanic” first appeared on the 1970 sample form and moved to every household in 1980. For the 2030 census there have been plans to combine race and Hispanic origin into one question and add a Middle Eastern or North African category.

Before 1880, the census was run by U.S. marshals and their assistants – after that point the Census Office, as it was known, became more professionalized with “enumerators” recording data. As questions and data became more elaborate, processing time also increased. The results from the 1880 results took most of the decade to tabulate. In 1890 the census adopted an electric punch-card tabulating machine, which cut processing time dramatically. Sadly, most of the 1890 population schedules were destroyed in a 1921 fire. For its first century, the census was a temporary office staffed up every ten years and then disbanded. That changed in 1902, when Congress made the Census Office permanent. Over the years, the agency has moved from the Department of State to the Department of the Interior and now rests within the Department of Commerce. 

During World War II, the agency gave the government data to help locate Japanese Americans for forced removal and incarceration. Title 13 of the U.S. Code now makes individual responses confidential, and a separate rule keeps records sealed for 72 years.

The Census has been much in the news recently, largely due to proposed changes to the 2030 Census, including removing questions on race and ethnicity (including those that have been recently proposed) and leaving noncitizens on temporary or other non-permanent status.out of the census enumeration exercise. The Bureau would also use tax records to help determine where people usually live, which could mean people who don’t file taxes would not be counted regardless of citizenship status. The proposed exclusion would impact the count used to apportion seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. 

The U.S. Census on the Internet Archive

Looking at the material in this collection is fascinating – you can see the shift in questions asked, the expansion of states and territories covered by the census as the nation grew, and every individual listed by name from 1850 on.  Because of the interest in these materials, and the challenges in searching handwritten historical documents, we have included a search tips page for this collection. We invite you to explore this collection – it may help you answer a question about your family, your community, or simply satisfy your curiosity about how the U.S. Census has evolved over time.

The Internet Archive is joining other area nonprofits for the Uniqlo Street Festival on Friday, October 9, 2026, alongside the opening of Uniqlo’s new flagship store on Market Street. We’ll be set up with fellow San Francisco nonprofits Gray Area and the Exploratorium to help bring people and energy back to a part of the city that has sorely missed shoppers and foot traffic. We’ll be demoing the Wayback Machine, handing out stickers, and talking with attendees about digital preservation.

“Libraries have always found interesting ways to get in front of new audiences. More people than ever need to know about the valuable service of the Wayback Machine and why our digital culture should be preserved. People may be aware of the Internet Archive, but may not realize that we are also a San Francisco organization. This gives us an opportunity to meet with people in our community during this event,” said Merrilee Proffitt, director of Democracy’s Library US at the Internet Archive, who will be at the booth on Friday. “Plus, to be honest, I think many of us have a Uniqlo hoodie or two in our closets.”

This isn’t an entirely new kind of partnership for libraries: earlier this year, the New York Public Library began a year-long partnership with Uniqlo supporting free cultural and youth programming, alongside the opening of Uniqlo’s Bryant Park store, as well as a planned series of literary events around San Francisco hosted by the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.

If you’d like to invite the Internet Archive to participate in your community street fair, reach out to our events coordinator at info@archive.org.

Democracy’s Library exists as a project of the Internet Archive to make government publications and information broadly accessible and available. But Democracy’s Library is about more than collections – it is also about building community. 

In March 2026 the Internet Archive hosted the Information Stewardship Forum, a three-day convening that brought together 120 people working to preserve and provide access to United States government information. Participants came from libraries, archives, journalism, research, policy, philanthropy, nonprofits, and technology, and represented federal, state, and local parts of the government information ecosystem. We spent three days together discussing shared challenges and solutions as well as building community and connections.

We are pleased to share that a report from the event is now available. The report documents the methods used to design the meeting, what we heard, and shares results from the post event survey. 

What we heard

• There are many efforts, but no common map. Libraries, journalists, technical teams, and community groups are all doing serious work, but no one holds a full picture of what exists, what has been saved, and what is already gone.
• Stewardship is more than storage. Bytes can survive while public access disappears. Metadata, documentation, interfaces, and sustained human expertise are part of preservation.
• This work must evolve from emergency response to durable infrastructure. Rescue work has been indispensable and is also unsustainable. Triage can’t substitute for the maintenance.
• While policy exists, enforcement and access do not. Records laws are on the books, yet information still gets removed, obscured, trapped in unusable formats, or placed behind paywalls. Web harvesting restrictions aimed at AI crawlers can also block public interest archiving.
• Who is government information for? Local government records, climate data, health data, and disaggregated data that lets communities see themselves in the record were all named as especially vulnerable. Broadening participation beyond specialists was a recurring call.

What participants told us

Responses to the post-event survey were very positive:

• 93% said the Forum strengthened connections across organizations
• 89% identified opportunities for collaboration or shared initiatives
• 83% learned about tools, workflows, or preservation methods used by others
• 98% planned to stay in contact with people they met
• Roughly 20 respondents described a specific collaboration or initiative they intended to pursue

Democracy invites participation; democracies require it.

One concrete outcome of the Forum is Preservation of Government Information: A Call to Action, which argues that public access to government information cannot be left to chance. Individuals and organizations are invited to sign in support.

Coming together in community and common purpose helps to drive our work forward. We hope you will plan to join us at our upcoming event, Democracy’s Library: Tools for Participation which will take place at the Internet Archive Headquarters and online on Wednesday, October 21, 2026. We will celebrate what we have accomplished and look to continue this work together.