Is my Lipstick a Semiconductor?

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Arsenic Ballerinas takes an excursion from Mineral toxicities found in cosmetics and their properties to catch radio, all the way to YL (Young Lady) Operators and their friendship cards, Lipsticks in war and Morals of Paint and Powder. 

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A lipstick takes the shape and materiality of a bullet, sometimes made of Radium, sometimes with lead all the way through. Lead, Arsenic and Cinnabar (to list a few) colour faces for centuries. Found in early radio experiments and now in our computing devices, these heavy metals spread slowly from our lips to our computers. Arsenic Ballerinas sets an inquiry to find the technological entanglements between cosmetics and the development of transistors, radios, and war machines.

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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 1890-1930, a communication network was established across the world, leaving behind radio friendship cards.

 

Red Lips resist fascism in war myths.

Lipsticks as defiance; Lipsticks as poison; Lipsticks as bullets; Lipstick as power.

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Eccentric historical makeup recipes, old concoctions and laboratory apparatuses are engaged in tactile experiments. Substances are distilled, waxes melt, powders pressed, and pigments crushed. High voltage applied. The once very controversial red lipstick is prepared to resonate in strident sound textures 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.

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