Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens
The Collaboration
ART, ACTIVISM & EQUITY: A Retrospective on San Francisco’s Cultural Evolution
San Francisco Public Library, Main Branch, Latinx Community Room
Saturday, June 1, 2024
1–3pm
Artists Idris Ackamoor, Marie Acosta and Pam Peniston discuss cultural equity in San Francisco’s arts scene and its national impact, hosted by grantwriter Jeff Jones with artist/activists Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens. Learn how SF’s BIPOC and Queer artists transformed arts funding from the60s to the 90s, challenging exclusionary practices and securing CulturalEquity Grants. Discover how they increased support for diverse art forms and venues like Theater Rhino and SoMarts. Co-sponsored by the SanFrancisco Public Library, this event is funded by an Individual Artist Grant from the SF Arts Commission and a Major Project grant from UC Santa Cruz.
More info: See Interviews & Video of Panel
Porn Studies:
A Symposium honoring the work of Linda Williams
December 5, 2023
2:00 – 5:00 pm
More info.Wedding to Fire & Pageant
August, 2022, we performed a Wedding to Fire & Pageant, which was a magical ritual, a performance art happening, and a film shoot for our movie “Playing with Fire.” We invited some of our favorite artists, activists, and friends. Their offerings were extraordinary.
Featured Project
documenta 14
We were invited to participate in documenta 14 by curator Paul B. Preciado. We traveled to Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany to perform, lecture, hold walking tours, free sidewalk sex clinics, mount a visual art exhibition and premiere Water Makes Us Wet. We had the time of our lives in one of the most exciting art exhibitions on the planet.
Guggenheim 2021
Stephens & Sprinkle awarded Fellowship in Film for Playing with Fire- a documentary
For the most recent news click here!
Our film is now streaming on Kanopy!
Water Makes Us Wet
With a poetic blend of curiosity, humor, sensuality and concern, this film chronicles the pleasures and politics of H2O from an ecosexual perspective. Travel with Annie, a former sex worker, Beth, a professor, and their dog Butch, in their E.A.R.T.H. Lab mobile unit, as they explore the role of water.
Book- Assuming the Ecosexual Position:
The Earth as Lover
The story of the artistic collaboration between the originators of the ecosex movement, their diverse communities, and the Earth.
What’s sexy about saving the planet? Funny you should ask. Because that is precisely—or, perhaps, broadly—what we have spent many years bringing to light in our lived art. In 2008, we married the Earth in a performance art wedding which set us on the path together to explore the realm of ecosexuality, taking the Earth as our lover and making our mutual pleasure an embodied expression of passion for the environment. Ever since, we have been not just pushing but obliterating the boundaries circumscribing biology and ecology, creating ecosexual art in our performance of an environmentalism that is feminist, queer, sensual, sexual, post-human, materialist, and steeped in humor.
Now available at
University of Minnesota Press
and Amazon or order from your local book store.
Click here for the book’s press release.
CNN Article
Featuring Stephens and Sprinkle’s Work and Book
“Their nearly 20-year collaboration has produced ecosexual performances, exhibitions, events and theory. A new book, Assuming the Ecosexual Position: The Earth as Lover, details the entirety of their practice, from early projects on love and intimacy, to their annual weddings, to their documentary films like Water Makes Us Wet. (Their next film on wildfires and ‘social fires,’ per Stephens, will be supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship.)”
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/ecosexual-annie-sprinkle-beth-stephens-new-book/index.html
