Superstars Only

Is it strange to you that I refer to you as Molly instead of Amalia?

Everyone calls me Molly.

Are you Molly now?

I would say that I'm both Amalia and Molly—they've sort of just morphed into one another. Before, it was distinct. Like, if you knew me from a certain time, you knew me as Amalia and if you knew me from the internet, you knew me as Molly. Now they're sort of interchangeable. My boyfriend calls me Molly.

So, Molly isn't just a stage name?

I think when I first set out, I thought of Molly as a stage name. I'm inspired by all these other people that have used stage names and I thought I'd want to experiment with that. Did I know that it would catch on? No. I could have gone back to Amalia if it had not worked out. Now, I sort of accept it. Some people I only know by their username and all that stuff just bleeds into real life.

I feel like in my group of friends there will always be that real person that we only know through Instagram, and then when you see them in person, you can only refer to them as their username. And it's awkward, because then you have to stop yourself from referring to them by their handle. Do you think that would ever be normalized?

I feel like maybe it is normal. I think what made me accept the name Molly more was that people would find out my name was Amalia, and use it almost as a way to feign closeness to me. I found that that would happen sometimes with people that I was friendly with but not close like that. It almost feels manipulative that you're using my real name. Of course, I don't want someone close to me referring to me as Mollysoda. I have all these complicated feelings about it all the time, where sometimes I change my mind and I'm like, why aren't you calling me Amalia? It's like constantly shifting.

I could feel that when I would watch your videos. I think like the video where you're crying and taking selfies—that's you. And I understand that feeling because I've done that too. There's been moments where I have pressed record on myself crying, but it doesn't go anywhere. But, you've turned that into art. When do you say to yourself, this is going to be my art? Is it when you turn on the camera? Or is it after it happened? Or is it while you're crying?

When I took that video, I didn't have the intention of it being public. It wasn't until I went back and found it a year later when I was like, I'm interested in what was happening here. Sometimes an idea feels fully formed or flushed out and I can fully enact it. Sometimes I'm just creating material to be sifted through down the road, whether that's in six months, or 10 years. I might come at it with a different lens. I'm always kind of hoarding, and collecting. I really think of myself as someone that collects a lot of stuff and then eventually, it might become part of a larger thing. It's kind of running in the background.

Like that one piece where it's a screen recording of you singing the same song every year.

Yeah, exactly. That started as a webcam video where I was literally just singing like a Death Cab for Cutie song. I don't know what compelled me to first shoot that webcam video and upload it to YouTube. I also don't know what compelled me to look at it and then perform it again. After I noticed that this was a pattern that had happened more than once, I was like, Okay, well, now I have to maintain this thing. So a lot of this work is ongoing and I think what makes it more interesting is time. I've always been really interested in what's happening at the moment on the internet, but I think that everyone sees that stuff as frivolous when it's happening right in front of you. Our neglect of the thing in the moment makes us not appreciate it and, as a result, we lose the ability to make sense of it in the future.

I'm always thinking about those levels of shame and embarrassment as well. Like, how I might find something that I did like a few years ago embarrassing, but if enough time passes I can look at it again. You're always approaching it with a different eye, I guess. I don't even want to say nostalgic because I think nostalgia is a trap and I find it very boring, which is funny because I think most people will look at my work and be like, Oh, she's interested in nostalgia. I'm more interested in memory and the way that it's shaped online and how it's constantly refreshing. And so I'm less so like, Oh, isn't it cool that we wore that 10 years ago or that happened? I'm much more interested in documenting and archiving these things that are I think seen as mundane but I think are imbued with a lot of information.

Yeah, it feels more genuine and not just for the sake of y2k aesthetics. A lot of artists have been referring back to that, but you're an OG.

I've been wading through the fucking muck of it sometimes where I knew that y2k would make a comeback eventually. I remember around 2016/2017 I was trying to pitch a photoshoot to SSENSE at the time being like, Okay, webcam, myspace—this is how we can style it. They fucking ghosted me and were not down. I was just too early. But I was starting to work with a lot of that material around that time, 2017. I started using the internet—blogging, photographing myself, documenting my life—at 14, so that would have been 2003-2004. Seeing that sort of stuff circling back right now, it's interesting to see what survives and what iteration of it manifests. Everything's like a sexier version of what it was at the time, right? When I was in high school and a tween we were doing a sexier version of like the 70s or the 90s or whatever. This stuff is so cyclical and I think once you figure that out, it's almost a little bit freeing.

Sometimes when certain aesthetics start trending again, it can be discouraging when you've been doing it. Like, do I have to change my thing now?

The thing I like about being an artist, and I think maybe a lot of artists share this sentiment is that, essentially, we're working at the same problem and we're getting better at sort of refining that process. I don't feel pressure for my work to change because it will change on its own, naturally.

Can you talk about your first experiences with being on Tumblr and making Mollysoda?

Yeah, so I've been thinking about this. Like, how indie sleaze is popular—or maybe it's a little bit trite at this point—but I was like, Okay, well, what comes after that? After that it's like 2012, which is the beginning of the Tumblr era.

Based on my feed, we seem to be there already.

Who's gonna come knocking when this stuff starts to become exciting to people again? I'm interested to see how that will take shape. I started my Tumblr in 2009. I was 20. I was in school for photography. I grew up blogging so it was really natural for me to want to try a new platform. I came out of the LiveJournal kind era, which was very diaristic. I was posting really detailed accounts of my life for my friends and was just generally in that world. I was also interested in fashion, blogging, and I was also trying to become an artist: I was doing photography and I was starting to become more interested in video and performance and web based art projects, which I didn't even know were possible until I got into college. I began my Tumblr account just because I was interested in trying a new platform. I think what was exciting about it to me was that it felt really open ended and I didn't feel like I had to blog in the way that I had been before. I was like, if I want to, I can make like text posts, but really, I'm just like, oh, like, you know, that weird folder that everyone has on their desktop where they just save shit that they like? Oh, I can make that public? It was the first time that I realized I could show people my taste or my brain without having to explain it. I think the reblog function also made it so that you could meet new people or find new people. I think that was like the first taste of virality that anyone had really experienced. And then the name Mollysoda—my real name is Amalia Soto and at the time I was really into the 1980s New York punk and art scene, so I was really into Lydia Lunch and her stage name. I remember when I made my Tumblr, I was like, I want to be Lydia Lunch famous. I was really into Richard Kern at the time, and I remember emailing him asking for him to photograph me. I was just really excited!

Did he answer?

Yeah, we took photos together in 2010. It's funny because sometimes I'll find them in books of his and, and I'll be like, Oh, this feels like a totally different person. I looked so different. I don't think most people would see it. I had a weird, blue mohawk-y thing. So I think for me, Tumblr felt like an extension of what I already was doing and I was just able to experiment in a way that felt really exciting and new. Also, Tumblr is really where a lot of my early experimentation with my art practice began and it was where I was able to bridge the gap between being a girl in art school, and being a girl who blogged. I mean, I was just shitposting honestly, and shitposting is a big part of my craft.

So when did your natural instinct to shitpost on Tumblr turn into art?

I think I've always fallen into stuff. I think in some ways, I've had a really nice art career, because I've been handed a lot of really exciting opportunities. But, at the same time, I think that my work has not been taken seriously because of the nature of visibility when you're 22. And I think there's like a strength in coming out fully formed when you're a little bit older. I mean, look at Emma Chamberlain—I can see how badly she just wants to be friends with cool hipsters and go to Oberlin. It sucks that she's stuck in like this hell of her own making and I think that happens to a lot of people who grew up on the internet. And so you're given opportunities, but you're also delegitimized in certain ways. Sorry, what was the question?

When did it turn into art?

I was experimenting and starting to post daily webcam videos and these sort of shit post-y things. My senior thesis was on Tumblr and I feel like people were excited about it outside of just school—people were watching it and were interested. It was this thing called tween dreams, which I still am really fond of. I'm glad I like this thing that I made in college. Most of the time in college, everything you make is like fucking shit. Like, you have to get it out of your system. I would say that my first art piece was in 2012, which was a year after I graduated. I had moved to Chicago because I didn't really want to be in New York. I don't know—I just didn't really know what I wanted to do. I also think like I was young and more interested in going out and thinking that I would probably just work retail, which is what I did: I moved to Chicago, went out a lot and made $8 an hour working retail.

I made my first piece in 2012, which was a piece called Inbox Full and is what I would consider the first piece of my career. Basically, I was getting a lot of questions on Tumblr because I was starting to get attention on there and I started collecting things in my inbox, which allowed people to ask you questions. I ended up sitting down and reading all the questions for 10 hours. That was the piece. But then there were a lot of failures there. I don't think that I really found my footing until much later. I don't think that there were any other pieces that I had made between 2012 and 2015 that I'm excited about. There was a lot of trying to figure out how I wanted to make work. I would see stuff, and I would want to make work about it, but I couldn't figure out how, which would take a lot of trial and error to figure it out. For example, I started getting interested in the beauty community on YouTube in 2013 and I was really excited about it, but I didn't know how to make work about it. I was like, oh my god, a haul video? Like, that's crazy. This stuff is so fucked up and weird. So I would just put on a wig and do a fake video and turn it into a performance, but that didn't really work. And I was like, I'm more interested in the blurring of the lines, which I think you kind of said at the beginning. I'm interested in playing with legibility, I guess? I think sometimes that can make it hard to know what to do with me. Like, I remember I gave a talk very early on at the Sotheby's Institute in London—very random. One of the curators there was like, "Well, what's the difference between you and Jenna Marbles?" At the time, I was really like, taken aback by the question. And I was like, it's obviously contextual. Like, that artist that's at MoMA PS1 handing out curry right now. It's all contextual, right? It's all about where you place it and how we codify it, right? So, for me, I like playing on these platforms, because I like to make work within the platforms themselves because it informs the work but also blurs it. Also, I don't want to make work about stuff that I'm not interested in or that I'm not actively participating in because that feels like I'm casting judgment. Like, no! I want to be implicated in it as well.

That really excites me because that was my biggest struggle when I was watching your work. At first, Lanie showed me your piece Me Singing Stay by Rihanna. And then I saw your book in LA. I was like, let me sit with her for a second. And I was just in my bed, on YouTube, watching Molly soda. That's what really intrigued me with your work because I've never been able to—especially with video artists, their work is kind of inaccessible outside of like the exhibit where you see it. But, you're everywhere on YouTube. I can watch you and do my makeup and hang out with you in the same way I would hang out with Jenna Marbles back when I was little. That's when I get confused because Mollysoda is real to me, but then also, she is real because she is you. Then I was like, this was a performance? I got confused. But I love that I would watch your video and you'd clutter your room and it's obviously satire. And then the next video that YouTube will queue up is a genuine video of a girl doing a get ready with me. So YouTube is placing you with these, like real like not saying you're not real. But like, that's how, yeah, but then flashing? What was the first time you were acknowledged by a gallery or taken out of the digital realm?

The first big opportunity that I had was in 2013, when I got approached by a curator to be in this Tumblr art auction that was at Phillips auction house in New York. It was deemed the first ever digital art auction. I sold a version of Inbox Full—I reshot a new one that was for a private collection. I actually don't know who ended up collecting it.

You had to make a completely new piece?

I made a new one a year later; I made an eight hour version. That one sold at that auction. And once that happened, I started to get a little bit of attention. I was quite young—2013, I would have been like, what, 23? Then I was approached by a gallery in 2015. And I think I was really, really excited to show my work and to finally be accepted in this world. But I also wasn't fully vying for it. I just feel like I came into the art world in such a different way and I still feel like I operate in the art world in a different way. Like, I don't really show my work in New York that often. I just have had a different career than maybe a market artist would because I don't make a living off of selling my work. Sometimes it sells, but mostly to an institution and not to a private collector. And also the art world is really fickle and it's not really in vogue to sell video right now and hasn't been for a while. I think the art world has actually been really conservative lately—it's a lot of figurative painting, a lot of identity stuff. I guess I've looked to the careers of other people I'm more excited to model after. Someone like Miranda July: people that make films and write, etc. I'm more interested in that than trying to fit into the art world that's based off of a speculative purchase.

I'm not sure if I'm getting it, but they asked you to make a new piece to buy or did you just make a new piece for that?

I made a new piece. They were interested in Inbox Full. Another stipulation of mine now that I've gotten older is if even if someone buys my work, it has to remain online. But sometimes people want exclusivity. Usually when you sell videos, you sell editions. I usually sell editions of three. Sometimes people sell editions of six. Also, when you're an artist, you kind of just throw it out there without much guidance. I learned a lot by just asking other artists that were a little more established than me, which can be scary. So, I made that piece which doesn't exist anywhere; someone just owns it. I don't even think I have a copy of it anymore because of hard drive failures.

I like that you make sure that everything stays online.

During the pandemic, I was so excited because galleries and museums had to make their shows accessible to the internet, so I was watching so much good video art that I would never otherwise have had access to. I was like, Oh, I can finally see all these Barbara Hammer videos or whatever. Also like video in a gallery has its difficulties—I always make work with that in mind, too. Like, is this just gonna be something someone can pass by or is it something that's going to be screened? What I also find exciting about having all my work be accessible online is that not only is it better for people that want to just engage with it, but I love the various entry points of getting to my work and how people find it. I don't always do myself favors with that. Even if you look at my website, it's not like, "And then I did this piece, and then I did this piece", it's more like, "Figure it out!".

Do you think there are a lot of people who view you as a legitimate influencer?

I don't think that anyone sees me as an influencer anymore. I was thinking about this a lot, especially last year. I think there was a time where I could have taken the attention that I was getting and moved it into more of an influencer career. But I think that subconsciously, I always knew that I wanted to be an artist and I never really was interested in influencing. Also, around when I was starting to get attention, that wasn't really like a viable career option. I remember people starting to approach me and getting me free stuff. Someone tried to manage me once and got me some free stuff and I was so excited. I was like, Oh, my God, free Lime Crime lipstick, this is great. But I never made a conscious effort to go in that direction because I kind of knew that it would have hurt me in the long run. I think that I've never taken short term financial success, which is an issue of mine. Like, I didn't get into NFTs and I've never changed my work to be sellable, which is maybe a mistake in terms of my financial security. I think I'm more strategic than I give myself credit for, but I've always been long term. I strove to, for better or for worse, be accepted by the art world. Sometimes I wonder what my career would have been like, if I hadn't worried so much about what those six cool people thought about me. I think everyone has those six cool people that you don't want to seem lame to and I think in order to be successful, you have to be a little bit lame to some cool people. Being cool is really easy: just don't post anything.

But anyway, about the influential stuff—I think I genuinely wasn't that interested in it? There's also other factors at play. When you use your likeness in your work, it becomes complicated. I think being young, and being traditionally attractive is also its own thing. I would always be like, Well, I'm not hot enough to be a model, but I'm too hot to be taken seriously.

And especially since your work is also just being a girl. I think that's why it's cool that you have gotten that recognition. Like, people don't just see you as a silly little girl.

Having a little bit of blind confidence when you're young is really important. And I think also just continuing to make the work. If I didn't like doing it, I wouldn't do it. Every artist has their own failures and successes, which I really like reading about. I love knowing how someone got to where they are. A lot of it is just about persistence. And I don't think you also realize how much of art is not just about making art. It's showbiz.

I think that's why I eventually had to leave the job at the galleries because I witnessed the art world. It kind of made me a little sad. Like, I can't be in this too. I can't be an artist and also be in this.

I also think it's really hard to be idealistic. I think most systems are corrupt, but you're operating in a pretty corrupt system and you have to make some concessions with yourself in order to want to succeed in those systems. It's complicated.

I got to work at NADA and on my last day, I couldn't stop crying. I think my brain was just opening its eyes to things that I'm still trying to figure out. Anyways, have you ever gotten a Curology sponsorship?

No, I've never done any sponsored content. I did one sponsored post for the show Search Party. They reached out to me like 2016 or 2017 and paid me $2,000 to make a series of posts about it. That was the only time I've ever been paid to post on Instagram. And then last year, I was really thinking about this influencer thing and I started to wonder if I could get free shit. So I started sliding into everyone's DMs, because I was being shameless. And some brands I actually wanted to work with. Like, photograph for them. I don't know how the fuck people get that stuff—managers, I guess? None of it worked out. Like, if it was advertised to me, I would DM them. Some people would follow up and send me an email and I would send them a pitch, but it never went anywhere. Cold emailing is not easy.

That's why I was happy you answered! That was a cold email.

I love shooting my shot and I love when other people shoot their shot. I respect it so much when someone just asks me for something. I also feel like we live in an era where people are just cool guy-ing each other. I think that I have a problem where I come off a little aloof or standoffish and I try really hard not to do that. I feel like I missed out on a lot of stuff because I didn't realize I was coming off that way.

When I Googled you, it lists you as a performer? Do you like that?

I think I like it. I never know how to label myself because I think that I exist between a lot of worlds. I think some people would be like, Oh, she's a digital artist. And I'm like, Well, I'm not really that like tech, though. I'm actually very low tech. Same with like, performance, where, I'm like, I guess I'm a performance artist, but I'm also a video artist and all these other things. And I think probably a lot of artists feel that way. I'm certainly interested in performance. I would say that if I taught a class, it would be on online performance.

Have you ever taught a class?

I teach a class at NYU. I'm an adjunct professor. It was traditionally a class about live streaming, mostly born out of the pandemic because people were interested in the technology and doing live streams. Next year, it's going to be more of an online performance class, which is what I originally wanted to do. This will be my fourth time teaching it.

Is the work good?

The students are great. The class is an ITP, which is a grad program that's basically an art and tech program. So a lot of the students maybe don't consider themselves artists, but are wanting to do creative stuff with technology. It's like really all over the place. I have students that were art majors, I have students that were in fashion, one of my students was doing wearable tech, other students were interested in making video games and software. The class is so open ended that I feel like they will, they can really do whatever they want with it.

Did you go to grad school?

No, I don't think I will. It does make it harder to get teaching stuff, so it's always been a "who do you know?" situation. I have a good friend that is full time at NYU so she got me through. I just applied for an artist in residence/teaching position at Bard and didn't get it. It required an MFA, so maybe I didn't get it because of that. But I felt like I could argue if I just got in the interview, I could be like, I'm perfect for this job.

It's kind of ridiculous that you need an MFA.

MFAs don't really teach you how to teach. A lot of my favorite artists don't have MFAs and a lot of them end up teaching anyway. I think that something can happen with MFAs, where you start to second guess your work a lot. If things had worked out differently for me, maybe I would have gotten one.

Do you have any Tiktok drafts that you haven't posted? I was curious because you seem so open that it makes you wonder what it is that you keep to yourself?

I seem so open but what do people actually know about me?

I would say that for everything that I post, there's so much that I don't. Tiktok drafts are mostly outtakes of a dancey video. Tiktok is harder for me because something about the form makes me feel a little self conscious. I don't know why. I think also the fact that anything can go viral at any time makes you feel like you have less control than on other platforms. It doesn't come as naturally to me, for some reason. I feel like there's a lot of pressure to be attractive or funny in like 15 seconds. Yeah. I think that stuff that would have come naturally to me a decade ago, isn't really the same anymore. As I get older, I feel more and more like I want to be more neutral and less like, "I'm Molly and I'm funny", or, "I'm Molly and look at how pretty I am." I just want to be blank, like a flattened woman. I want to be an image.

I just want to be an idea versus someone that is relatable. I think when I was younger, I was more interested in forming a relationship with my audience. I didn't say this when we were talking about influencers, but making a living off of whether or not people like you is horrifying. I refuse to do it. I think that part of me back then, was a little more interested in that. But I still know how quickly people turn and, when there's money involved, how entitled people feel to you. When there's monetary weight that feels even more pressurized. And I see people that are really successful on Patreon and build these parasocial relationships—I guess I'm interested in that stuff conceptually, but I never want my livelihood to be attached to whether or not people like me.

You wouldn't be able to make your art, then.

When I was full time as Molly soda, after I got fired from my shitty retail job in 2013—

Why did you get fired?

My coworker was stealing from the register and I knew and I didn't say anything. I wasn't directly stealing, but sometimes he would pay for us to go out to dinner. Look, I was making $8 an hour. Anyways, after that, I decided I was gonna try and just be an artist full time. And honestly, it was so strange. I think I did that for five years and it was so stressful. My self worth—everything was so fucked because I wasn't able to delineate from all of these things that I was doing. It wasn't until I got the job that I was talking to you guys about earlier when I realized you need to make your money off of something unrelated to you. You shouldn't rely on your art practice full time, because that is too scary.

That's refreshing because I feel like there's a lot of pressure to have that be the goal where you can sustain yourself just off of your art.

I feel like the goal for me is to do part time work at a place you don't mind too much and then being able to have enough time to work on your art practice. I also think having less time to sort of ambiently work on your art makes you create better art because you use your time more wisely.

That's kind of where I'm at right now, trying to juggle time.

In New York, it's really hard because it's expensive to live here. It's kind of expensive to live everywhere at this point.

Do you play any video games?

I don't. I've gone through phases, but honestly only when I'm doing really badly. Like, when I'm mentally unwell I'll dabble with Sims, but it's been a long time. Not since the pandemic.

Have you ever done an interview you didn't like?

Yea, plenty. I think it's mostly from people that interview me but don't really get it. Sometimes I do interviews that are used to make my work accessible to boomers, like when I do an interview at a larger publication or space. You and I can get into the weeds because we have a shared language, but sometimes I have to explain what I'm doing to someone that has no background in what I do. It's almost like explaining your art to your parents; I have to make myself legible and I don't love doing that.

What makes someone a superstar?