Ioana Vreme Moser (b. 1994, RO) uses rough electronic processes to obtain different materialities of sound. She places fluidic and electrical currents in situations of interaction with her body, minerals, lost and found items, and environmental stimuli. From these collisions, sounds emerge to carry personal narrations and observations on the history of electronics, their production chains, wastelands, and toxicological entanglements in the natural world.

Is my Lipstick a Semiconductor

My research during the residency will examine the mineralogy of Lipsticks, Blushes and Powders, their inherited toxicity, and radiopotencies. Lead, Arsenic and Cinnabar (to list a few) colour faces for centuries.

A lipstick takes the shape and materiality of a bullet, sometimes made of Radium, sometimes with lead all the way through. 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 the semiconductor industry.

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 of toxicity.