Arsenic Ballerinas
2026 - Radio sound installation
133 Prepared Lipsticks, FM Transmitters and Receivers
Commissioned & Curated by: iii - instrument inventors initiative, CTM Festival,
DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.
Technical support & circuitboard design:
Dorian Largen
FM transmission support: Martin Kuentz
Historical Lipsticks from the collection of: Tasos & Angelos Gkousis
Special thanks to:
Tudor Vreme Moser - power engineering advice
Eunice Martins - funding application support
Steffen Klaue, Marije Baalman, Tonia Ude,
Jasper van den Berg, Pia Baltazar - for install support
Project supported by: Recherchestipendium für Alte Musik, Neue Musik und Klangkunst 2025, Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt and iii - instrument inventors initiative
A lipstick shares the shape and materiality of a bullet, sometimes coloured with radium, or with lead, and most times hiding in a brass shell. During the Second World War, lipstick tubes were melted into bullets, and bullets became lipstick tubes. Lead, arsenic, and mercury became shared and favoured materials. Found in early radio experiments and now in our computing devices, these heavy metals slowly spread from our lips to our technologies. Can the inherited toxicity of one’s lipstick become a semiconductor that receives radio transmissions? And if so, which transmissions would it receive? Arsenic Ballerinas is a long-term research project that turns to the mineralogy of cosmetics to transmit an uncharted part of radio and war history.
The installation presents a swarm of resonating radio lipsticks that hold the charged instant before a bullet breaks the air. Tilted and arranged in formation, these 'Ballerinas' become projectiles that expose through tension the intertwined histories of wartime transformations, YL networks (YL or young lady operators is code for amateur women radio operators regardless of age), and the heavy-metal mineralogy embedded in cosmetics and radio circuitry alike. The lipsticks become FM radio receivers, concealment agents with their anatomy functioning as electronic components. The metal shells, assorted with tiny loudspeakers, resonate and shield the circuit, and the lipsticks themselves embed antennas. Piercing through radio static, a multitude of transmissions bombard the space with YL tales in Morse codes and voice, archival Lipstick propaganda snippets and songs, as well as the artist's recording of her own Lipstick application. The clutter envelopes the public in an intimate time capsule, with sounds reflecting a pre-war moment braced for an unavoidable impact.
Find out more - Interview for CTM Magazine in conversation with Lottie Sebes:
→ Is my Lipstick a Semiconductor?
Arsenic Ballerinas. Research Box
Sketches, documentation, artefacts and prototypes from the research, 2025-2026
The research box showcases the pathway from lipsticks to electronic radio frequency circuitry. Pigments mingle inside the vitrine among bullet-like Elisabeth Arden lipsticks, moulds, crystal radio pieces, and drawings. Amongst these research artefacts, heavily performed archival instruments from the beauty salon belonging to the artist’s performance alter-ego, Coquetta, convolute with their insides out.
Arsenic Ballerinas. Bad Girl Organ / Lipstickon
2025 - multiple Sound Objects with Lipsticks
Is my Lipstick a Semiconductor? In the instrument 'Bad Girl Organ', lipsticks oscillate between bad morale, toxicity, Barbie-centric beauty norms, and resistance movements. From Rhodopis Serviteur (one of the first lipsticks cast in a bullet shape) to 'The Kiss of Death' (a KGB agent’s pistol concealed as a tube of lipstick), lipsticks and lead have been entangled through history. Seven historical heavy metal recipes are cast and prepared with their elements on top. Mercury oxide, arsenopyrites, minium-red lead and iron oxides are set in oscillation. Their semiconductive properties conduct and deflect currents to noise.
Arsenic Ballerinas. Lipstick Bar
2025 - Lecture-Performance
Red Lips resist fascism in war myths.
Lipsticks as defiance; Lipsticks as poison; Lipsticks as bullets; Lipstick as power. This lecture-performance looks at lipsticks as both oppressors and liberators.
Number 33 is transmitted live through Morse code on AM from one lipstick to the other. 33 stands for: Love sealed with friendship and mutual respect between one YL and another YL. Between 1890 and 1930, a communication network in the air was established across the world, leaving behind radio friendship cards. The Lipstick Bar looks at these forgotten moments of resistance and connection through mineral hardware and red lips.
The lecture follows the path of Eccentric historical makeup recipes, old concoctions and laboratory apparatuses and presents tactile experiments conducted for the project. Substances are distilled, waxes melt, powders pressed, and pigments crushed. High voltage applied. The once very controversial red lipstick is prepared to resonate from its inherited history.
Bad Girl Organ is presented as a prototype activated during the performance, where seven lipstick concoctions trigger and resonate in different sounds. At the end, each member of the audience is served with a small lipstick dose. We all end up with red lips.
This project was developed in residency at: iii - Instrument Inventors Initiative
Curated and Supported by: Instrument Inventors Initiative, NL
cables and residency support: Mariska de Groot
w. Special thanks for the stands: Koenraad L. de Groot; Lipstick formula advice: Maria Osterveen;
Steel Needles: Mihalis Shammas
