Meet the Curator: Molly Soda

It’s now a little over one month since Metalabel opened its digital doors to anyone releasing creative work (That’s right. Join us). We set out to create a space where creators could self-release on their own terms, with context and community instead of algorithms and one-dimensionality. And now here we are. New releases every week. New connections being forged. Something is definitely happening.

One part of this equation of supporting artists on Metalabel is our curators and growing team. Last month we introduced Josh Citarella, and I (Rayna) joined the team as Metalabel’s Community Manager (say hi!). Today’s curator introduction: Molly Soda.

Molly Soda is a Brooklyn-based internet performance artist known for exploring the boundaries of reality, performance, and physical space. A creator who has released many of her own works on Metalabel, we were beyond excited when she agreed to partner with us on platforming others making meaningful work on and beyond the web.

Today, Molly shares some of the love and lore behind the projects she’s been working on so far. Have something you’re interested in releasing on Metalabel and putting in front of Molly? Reach out: hello@metalabel.com.

Hi guys !!!!! <3

It’s Molly Soda. If you don’t know me, I’m an artist based in New York, but you’re more likely to stumble upon my work online. Maybe you’ve come across a video of mine on YouTube (there are nearly 500), you know me from way back in the day on Tumblr, or, if you’ve been around for a long time, you knew me as Amalia on LiveJournal. 

For nearly two decades, I’ve been uploading my likeness to the internet. Sometimes it’s with the intention of making art, sometimes it’s a playful experiment, and sometimes it’s because I have to. My performance-based practice evolves, interacts with, and decays within its networked ecosystems. The comments, the advertisements, and the suggested videos in the sidebar are just as important as work itself. Every post is akin to making a wish or sending a message in a bottle. My work asks, what are the ways in which we perform for the imagined other on the other side of the screen? How do these volatile platforms shape our memories and our relationships?

Because of the nature of my art practice, I’ve had to find alternative ways to “make a living” as an artist. Occasionally, my mostly non-physical work gets accessioned into permanent institutional collections like the Centre Pompidou or the Thoma Foundation, but it predominantly gets collected by my peers by way of editions. It began a decade ago, with just me and a black and white laser printer, selling zines for $5 and mailing them to my friends from Tumblr. I’ve since produced multiple publications, co-edited art books, gone on tour, sold VHS tapes, t-shirts, prints, and even custom tarot cards. No matter who collects the work, it must remain online and freely accessible to anyone. 

Not only is it crucial that I have multiple access points for my work, both by way of distribution and price, but I want to be able to collect the work of artists I love as well. As much as I’d like to, I can’t afford most works in a gallery, but I can buy an art book, subscribe to a podcast, or buy a ticket to a performance. Making art is a lifelong commitment. The methods by which we achieve success are varied, and often confusing.

Releases I’m curating

Extreme Animals
“Musical Television”
DVD, CD, and mini-poster

I first became aware of Jacob Ciocci and David Wightman’s long-running audiovisual performance project Extreme Animals when a friend brought me to a show of theirs roughly 15 years ago. Since 2002, the duo have been combining music, animation, and video (both original and found material) to create a truly singular, chaotic body of work. Engaging with Extreme Animals is somehow both overstimulating and “oddly satisfying.” After being a fan from afar, I had the pleasure of going on tour with them in 2013. I and a group of “very online” performers joined them to play parents’ basements and college parties. I even brought my pet rats along for the ride. That entire experience deserves its own post.

Their latest release, “Musical Television” brings more of the frenetic energy we’ve grown to expect from them, this time referencing MTV and its outsized influence on music and video…and reality TV. It’s a double-sided coin: a 10 minute diamond-cut DVD 960i/p (NTSC) and hi-def, bass-boosted Compact Disc clocking in at just under 12 minutes. Plus! There’s a mini-poster inside for anyone who may want to hit pause. This release comes ahead of their upcoming VHS cassingle, which will drop on the platform early next year. 

Superstars Only
Ouija Board

Superstars Only is one of the more interesting independent publications coming out of New York right now. First started in 2021, the magazine offers a critical perspective into the art world by highlighting what they refer to as the “everyday superstar,” blurring the line between insider and outsider art. Have you ever wondered who designed the poster in the background of a TV show you were watching or what the person sitting next to you on the subway had in their bag? Superstars Only has the answers. Maybe you need a beginner’s guide to attending an art opening or instructions on how to make your own puppets. They’ve got you covered. I was interviewed for their latest issue, BAGAZINE, which has straps that allow you to wear it as a bag. You’ll have to get it in print to read it. Maybe bundle it with a t-shirt while you’re at it!

On Halloween, they dropped their Superstars Only Ouija Board, exclusive to Metalabel. It’s a super limited release with only five editions. The board features colorful imagery true to their unique design style: toys, dogs, Marilyn Monroe, a donkey and even comes with a custom planchette! It’s the perfect device for communicating with spirits!

Everyone Is A Girl
FANDOM
Collaborative .pdf

Everyone Is A Girl is a London-based collective that I stumbled upon the way I find most things, by clicking around on the internet. Their primary focus is on the relationship between femininity and online culture. Together, with the help of open-calls and collaborators, they weave together thinking by “girls online” as well as their cyberfeminist predecessors. The collective produces publications, hosts talks, and events. 

Their latest publication is on the subject of Fandom. The zine takes a look at past fandom communities, many of which existed on platforms like Tumblr and were integral to the contributors' adolescent development, and asks “where are the fans now?” A .pdf version of FANDOM is available for free (donations encouraged) on Metalabel. Let’s romanticize together <3

Philippa Schmitt
Supradolls
Fanzine

Philippa Schmitt is an artist and DJ living in France whose work I have been following online for a long time. Her design approach is playful, resembling a digital scrapbook. She has a penchant for stationary, which she keeps publicly archived, and recently created her own custom letter sets. Her self-published fanzine Supradolls is printed and handbound, using paper from her extensive collection. Every copy is one-of-a-kind. Schmitt combines images she hunts down with those from her personal clothing archive to create this modern take on a doll dress up game. Join the dolls Kiki Fraise, Kelechi Chou, and Lucy Fée as they get ready and tackle cut-creases, picking the perfect shoes, rivals, and more. 

Maya Man
FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT
Book

Artist Maya Man is a good friend and collaborator. She even starred in my play Trivial Pursuit earlier this year! Maya makes work about contemporary identity culture online. I love the way Maya works with popular online language and signifiers, often splicing and recontextualizing comments, aspirational adages, and e-commerce descriptions in her generative art works. Her book FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT presents her Javascript-based, generative art collection that borrows from the cutesy, pastel, highly aestheticized landscape of Instagram self-help graphics. Tips on wellness, self-care, and confidence are reconfigured to produce results that are sad, silly, and weirdly profound.

DON’T CONSUME, ENCHANT!

SCARE THE PEOPLE THAT FOLLOW YOU

YOU ARE EXPENSIVE, YOU ARE LATE

Trace Loops
Cutout Flipbook
Limited edition sculptural art toy books

Trace Loops is an animator and musician who conducts experiments with motion and sound. Speaking with Trace Loops, it is clear how much care he takes in making his work. There is a true pleasure in the process and in figuring out how to do something from start to finish. He often moves between mediums, preferring to experiment and learn a new skill along the way.

Exclusive to Metalabel, his Cutout Flipbook is the first time he has made his paper cut animations into a physical object that can be purchased. The flipbook is highly tactile with its cardstock paper, smoothed and finished walnut wood covers, and its magnetic clasp. Less than half of the 15 editions remain.

Lizzie Klein
Virtual Memorials
Book

Back in 2021, artist Lizzie Klein took me on a tour of the 3D avatar-based social environment, IMVU. Since 2004, IMVU users have been creating their own 3D models to proliferate the platform: clothes, chatrooms, furniture, food, etc. In this metaverse, there is a virtual archive of practically every trend that has proliferated Western culture for the last two decades. When Lizzie showed me around IMVU a few years ago, we dined together at a Red Lobster, walked the red carpet, played table hockey at Chuck-E-Cheese, and even got a quick workout in. 

Lizzie’s Virtual Memorials is a piece of internet history. While freelancing for IMVU in 2019, she stumbled across a series of memorial chatrooms. These rooms, while unclear if they are part of a larger tradition of role-play on the platform, are often dedicated to specific individuals or groups. The book collects 60 of these memorials, many of which have since gone dark—to keep a chat room online the admin must be an IMVU VIP member, which costs $10/month.