save for later
Every so often, a picture of a particularly infamous Antoni & Alison shirt makes the rounds online. It’s a white t-shirt with blocky green text and a red heart that simply reads “i ❤ info.” The .jpeg circulates gathering likes, comments, shares, and adoration. So true. Same. Need. Obsessed. I even have a hazy memory of seeing the exact text tattooed on someone while scrolling Instagram. The tattooed version was done in black ink, but nonetheless it would be instantly recognizable to a certain subset of people online. The t-shirt was part of a 2011 collaboration with the Japanese brand Uniqlo, originally selling for just under $20. Other shirts from the collaboration sport phrases such as: “I HATE MY HAIR,” “Girl going to work in an office,” and “I ❤ FINE ART.” While I would be happy to have any of these in my wardrobe, there’s something universally captivating about the “i ❤ info” shirt. I’ve never seen one in person, and most likely never will. There are plenty of bootlegs to go around, though they can never seem to get the shape of the heart just right. It lives on as a low-quality image, posted in perpetuity. A concept saved to hard drives and re-uploaded to the Internet when the mood feels right.
I just wrapped up teaching the first week of my class, Imperfect Pictures at the School for Poetic Computation (SFPC). On the first day, a student uploaded an image of the “i ❤ info” shirt to a shared document we were working on together. Along with the .jpeg of the shirt—which I already had—she posted a screenshot of an advertisement for the Uniqlo collection when it initially came out. The model is wearing the shirt and giving a peace sign. I hadn’t seen it before and immediately saved it to my computer. Good! More info!
I ❤ info and it’s easier than ever to accumulate it. Tabs with articles are left open with the intention to be read later, bookmarks to cool websites pile up, pins of aesthetically pleasing photos and memes made by 13-year-olds are pinned on Pinterest, photos fill up my phone’s camera roll only to show up later in an oddly poetic—sometimes embarrassing—auto-generated iPhone video titled “Pet Friends” or “Together.” I’ll look at it later, but first, let me save a few more things.
When everything is saved for later, when do you actually get to it? Information overflow is built into my art practice. I’m often pausing to take stock in the things I’ve accumulated, reintroducing them into newer bodies of work. You’re just as likely to see a picture of me during my peak Tumblr era (2011-2013) as you are a picture of me today. I don’t post the Tumblr era photo as some sort of #throwback or nostalgia grab, but as an effort to recirculate and recontextualize it. All of my files (selves) exist together, they get reconfigured and overlap, creating new inflection points.
Last week, I celebrated the launch of my project mollysstuff with Metalabel. This series takes 20+ years of accumulated content from my archive and condenses it into 20 unique artist books. mollysstuff was initially conceived when I experimentally printed out the entirety of my computer’s Downloads folder, just to see what it looked like. I was trying to physically embody some of these born-digital files I had been accumulating over the years. What would it look like if every folder on a hard drive was printed out, its contents put into a 3-ring binder, and neatly stowed away on a bookshelf in my home? It wouldn’t be possible to house them all.
After some tinkering with the format, I began to curate the files for mollysstuff. I searched through three computers, my cell phone, two cloud drives, and six external hard drives. Any file I deemed interesting was saved to a master folder named “mollysstuff.” After I had exhausted all of my archives and amassed 2000 files, I distributed them amongst 20 individual folders: “mollysstuff1,” “mollysstuff2,” etc. Once each folder had 100 files, I began the process of physically printing everything out.
Embodying these digital files also meant making sure they were printed in a format that made the books feel layered and textured. Images were printed and cut down to different sizes (8.5x11”, 4x6”, 5x3.5”, 2.5x3.5”), videos and .gifs were split into frames, and anything with a transparent background was printed on transparency paper. I wanted the effect of flipping through a mollysstuff binder to feel like scrolling your phone or toggling between tabs on your computer. “Beautiful” images live side-by-side with advertisements, online detritus, and embarrassing screenshots.
It feels strange trying to describe something that needs to be handled in person. Especially as someone who makes work with the intention of freely distributing it online. You’ve probably seen some of the files in mollysstuff before: a still from a video on YouTube, an Instagram post, an ad on Pinterest, a .gif of a teddy bear crying, or a sexy spam email that got sent to your inbox as well.
As these contents age, they take on new meanings and contexts. The clickbait from 2016 looks ancient compared to the AI clickbait from 2024. The crying selfie I took feels less urgent. I’m happy I saved that glitter graphic of a heart-shaped necklace that reads “You are Precious I love you” because they’ve become increasingly harder to find. I showed my friend a photo of me in high school taken on a digital camera. I’m wearing glasses and standing in front of a fountain. She said she thought it was a photo ripped from influencer Devon Lee Carlson’s Instagram. There’s never a desire to feel finished or to neatly put things away because the info builds upon itself, getting better, simultaneously clearer and messier.
You can purchase a copy of mollysstuff here. Edition of 20. Each .zip folder and binder is one-of-a-kind. Thank you for supporting my file obsession and providing a home for these freaky little artist books. If I saw you in person for the launch, thank you for coming, for flipping through, and for watching the performance (more on that soon)!
*Funnily enough there is no image of the i ❤ info shirt in any of these binders, but the I ❤ FINE ART shirt .jpeg is present!