Marion Stokes was a guerrilla archivist based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For over thirty years, Marion and her family privately recorded live television for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. This ritual eventually amassed a collection of 71,000 VHS and Betamax tapes, representing hundreds of thousands of hours of footage that may otherwise have been lost to time.
Per her directive, Stokes's son donated her tapes and personal papers to a charity of his choice after her passing: the Internet Archive.
Many of Stokes' scanned papers (notes, journal entries, et cetera) are published but inaccessible on the Internet Archive. The actual content is trapped within the metadata, readable only through Extensible Markup Language (XML).
This series examines the XML of these archival files.
The XML script for these unreadable files was 3D-printed in the negative. A rubbing of the print was taken using a graphite stick on wax paper.
The bare areas of the XML text on the wax paper are strikingly matte; the varied graphite marks are reflective and easily cast light. 3D-printed arms hold each rubbing at an angle, allowing the print to reveal itself to the viewer upon approach while indistinct or illegible from a distance.
𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 (𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘯) #1–3
2025
Rubbed graphite on vellum, privacy filter, 3D-printed mount
7.5 x 10 x 6.5”
2025
Rubbed graphite on vellum, privacy filter, 3D-printed mount
7.5 x 10 x 6.5”
Images: Craig Jun Li