Sexecological Walking Tours | Sprinkle Stephens

The Park As Lover: A Walking Ritual

by Julie Rogge | Oct 22, 2024 | Sexecological Walking Tours

June 22, 2024

Düsseldorf, Germany

The Park as Lover, in the Lantz’sch Park (the People’s Park) in Düsseldorf, Germany where we will explore and honor the park by walking in and around it. Eventually we will come to a sacred grove, where we will hold a participatory commitment ritual for the park, the forest, and for peace on Earth. Many friends from the Buga Festival will join us there, as well as Joy Brook Fairfield (our director) and amazing author, Dr. Mithu M. Sanyal. Beekeeper and Theater Director Luke Dixon will be there too. This performance ritual take place the afternoon of June 22, 2024, the first day of summer. More details to follow.

Location: Lantz’scher Skulpturenpark

What: Our piece will take the best parts of our eco-weddings and our eco-walking tours and spin them into a new form–the Ecosex Walking Ritual.

Who: An eco artist collective; Beth, Annie, Joy, 5 Mannheim-based artists, Luke Dixon (London bee-keeper& artist). K.Klang and team, and several local artists.

Intentions:
To generate love and appreciation for the Park (Earth) and each other.
To pollinate the ideas of Park (Earth) as lover
To nurture ourselves and each other.
To get ecosexy, have fun and heal the world!

The Plan: Parts of the Ritual Walk

Gathering (welcome audience, ambient performances, do the eco name tags…)

Opening scene and introductions to the team with Beth & Annie and the group

Go on the Walk with stops for artist’s performance rituals along the way

Climax is a (simple) wedding ritual with vows to love and honor the Earth, rings, kiss

Strong finale with the group

Photos by Lydia Daniller

BUGA Garden Show

by bethandannie | Jan 25, 2024 | Sexecological Walking Tours

BUGA Garden Show | August 17, 2023 – August 24, 2023

Mannheim, Germany

Carman (with Margret) Göth and the Mannheim Queer Center (QZM) invited Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle to queer the ’23 Buga Garden Show (August 17-24). BUGA is short for “Bundesgartenschau” and is the German Federal Garden celebration. The 2023 BUGA took place in Mannheim, Germany. With our director Joy Brooke Fairfield and our team of five local performers, we completed five walking tours, presented artist talks, screened Water Makes Us Wet with a water bar, and more.

The Federal Garden Show includes exhibitions, arts and cultural events, and flower shows, as it aims to support urban and regional development over the long term. Sustainability and environmental protection were the show’s focus during the planning process of the two exhibition areas – the Luisenpark and the Spinelli sites. Global sustainability goals are the guiding principles of the Federal Garden Show.

Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens’ walking tour performances titled The Earth as Lover was a further development of the basic ideas of the two US artists, together with queer artists from Mannheim. BUGA 23 specifically commissioned these walks to “help awaken the desire to love, appreciate, and honor the Earth as a lover, rather than expecting the Earth to take care of us all.” “Mother Earth” becomes the “Beloved Earth” – as a gesture of love, protection, and respect. “The Earth as Lover” asks central questions about the positioning of individuals: how do I stand in the world? How do I connect with my environment?

These site-specific walks were developed for BUGA 23, and carried out throughout the grounds under the artistic direction of Sprinkle, Stephens, Joy Brook Fairfield, and the other participating regional artists.

Earth as Lover Ecosex Walking Tours
August 19, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m.
August 19th 6-8 p.m.
August 21st 6-8 p.m.
August 22nd 6-8 p.m.
August 23rd 10 a.m. to 12 p.m

Photos by

Performance: Ecosex Walking Tour | Bernal Heights

by svilleg6 | Apr 24, 2022 | Sexecological Walking Tours

Performance: Ecosex Walking Tour | April 24, 2022

Get off your computer and follow along with a gang of colorful, fun tour guides in this site-specific exploration, embodied experience and performative walk around Holly Park. Your attention will be called to beautiful sights, sumptuous scents, the sounds of nature and tasty treats as you massage the Earth with your feet. The group will develop an ecosexual gaze as it shares environmental concerns and explores possible ways to better love the Earth.

Performed by Beth Stephens, Annie Sprinkle & their Tour Guide Team. Directed by Joy Brooke Fairfield.

WALKING TOUR CAST INCLUDES

Jax Blaska

Saul Villegas

Bubble Diva.

Sage Alucero

Aranza Cortéz

Wataya Kyd

Brielle

Shelly Errington

Alessia Cecchet

This program was sponsored by Friends of the San Francisco Public Library

Photos by Liz Highleyman

Photos by Saul Villegas

Queer New York International Arts Festival—Central Park

by estephe | Oct 15, 2020 | Sexecological Walking Tours

Central Park Walking Tour

Our Croatian curator friend, Zvonimir Dobrovic, invited us to participate in the 4th annual New York International Queer Arts Festival. We love Zvonimir and we love New York, so of course we said yes! September 16th, 2015, was a perfect day and we met in Central Park with a group of artists, academics, friends and activists for a special walk in the Park. This Ecosex Walking Tour of Central Park adventure started with Ecosex Orientation. We then invited our audiences to explore 25 Ways to Make love to the Earth and find their “E-spots (ecosexy spot).” We did a special ritual in honor of Candida Royalle who had recently passed. This tour featured a special water toast, Ecosexercises, and climaxed with rubbing Manhattan’s planetary clitoris which was a gorgeous knob on a tree. We heightened awareness about environmental issues along the way. By the end of the walk, everyone on the tour came out as ecosexual. This tour was special. Some favorite artists joined us. Maria Korean Bride added her great energy. It was the last time Fluxus artist and “Cloudsmith,” Geoffrey Hendricks joined us in a performance and he was magnificent as always, giving himself over to the full experience. Plus our tour guide collaborators were two fantastic artists, Tif Robinette and Bruno Isacovic. We’d love to do another Ecosex Walking Tour in Central Park again one day as there is so much more to explore.

National Queer Arts Festival—San Francisco

by estephe | Oct 15, 2020 | Sexecological Walking Tours

The International Queer Arts Festival Bernal Heights Walking Tour

Leading an ecosexual walking tour in our neighborhood of Bernal Heights during the Queer Arts Festival, June 21, 2015 was exciting. This was the first time we had scripted our walking tour into an actual performance piece. Joy Brooke Fairfield was our director. Our team assistants were Maria Ramirez and Bronwyn McCleod. Our Pollination Pod functioned as a stage, backstage, dressing room, prop room, and post-show café. Costume design by Sarah Stolar.We led a group of artists, academics, ecologists and activists 360 degrees around our beloved hill. This was the same site where we had married the Sun in 2011 to end the Love Art Lab project. Everyone seemed to have a beautiful walk, and enjoyed the first iteration of our new ecosexual performance outside with the Earth as lover.

Photography by Seth Temple Andrews.

Sample from Walking Tour Script

WATER VISUALIZATION —(Station #4. Top of Bernal Hill)

Sounds of water?

Beth: We are so lucky to have this beautiful lagoon and the sea to enjoy. We love water! I wrote a poem this morning about water.

Water
Is a sexy little slut

In tumultuous, simultaneous

Continuous love affairs with the sun, the air, the earth, and all its life.

She moves in a cycle with no beginning and no end,

Circulating around the planet, moving energy in her wake.

Tickling over the rocks as rivers and streams

She carves her name into stone cliffs so they will never forget her

She spills out into the sea in mucky silty deltas

Only to be raised up by the powerful pull of her lover the sun,

Turned by fire into steamy vapor

As she cools off, water grabs on tight to tiny particles of dust suspended in the air

In their embrace, clouds form

Water fucks the dirty air, And drops fall

She rushes back down to her lover the Earth

Pounding the forests, Drenching the pavements

Filling the lakes, The animals gulp her up and release her again

The plants suck her down then let her fly back off green leaves as the sun calls.

Water is a sexy little slut

Fearless, secretive and generous. Unafraid of movement and change.

Slow as stone sometimes in glaciers

She pretends to be a mountain.

Fast and dangerous through river rapids

Relentless in a hard rain,

Endless out at sea, Then becoming-cloud in damp fog banks

But.

The world is not always kind to sexy little sluts

Some try to take advantage of her boundlessness

Some buy and sell her, treating her as a commodity

Some try to hold her in place and control her movement

Some exploit her power to do their work, to make their money.

Water – erotic guardian of us all, show us how to flow fearlessly and ride the cycle of change!

documenta 14—Ecosex Walking Tour of Kassel

by svilleg6 | Jun 14, 2017 | Sexecological Walking Tours

When Paul B. Preciado began the curatorial process to present our work at documenta 14, he asked what we would like to do most, and we both instantly said the Ecosex Walking Tour. Joy Brooke Fairfield had done a great job helping us script the tour and we were excited to share it in Kassel

Using email and social networking, we issued a call for collaborators to perform with us as tour guides; so many wonderful artists responded it was hard to choose. Documenta paid artist fees and supplied nice places to stay. We were scheduled to perform five afternoon tours, June 14–18, 2017. Piedmont Boutique made us flashy new costumes in collaboration with Christina Dinkel.

Joy joined us in Germany to direct the production. We chose a route that would begin between the first and last of the trees that Joseph Beuys planted for documenta 7, called 7,000 Oaks (7,000 Eichen). It was exciting to stand between those trees that were also right at the base of Marta Minujín’s huge Parthenon of Books, a re-creation of the Greek landmark constructed of banned books and the centerpiece of documenta 14.

We were really pleased with our performance team, most of whom we had not met before that day. When we arrived to give our first tour, we were shocked to find around two hundred people awaiting us and a mob of news photographers and journalists. We led our tour group over to the Karlsaue Park, the map of which looks remarkably like a vulva and an anus. Our tour wove through major documenta sculptural works, through water fountains, and down flower-lined stone steps. We shared our ecosexual herstories and invited our audience to share theirs. Our group then assembled at a semi-private spot where Annie led our team in an ecosexercise workout—breathing, undulating, building, and circulating erotic energy—which the audience could follow along with if they wanted. Next, we walked to the park’s trash cans, and our team picked up trash as we opined about pollution. Sitting on a nearby bench were a group of men, refugees from Africa, that wanted to share their thoughts. Then we invited the audience to step up to the mic and share their environmental concerns, which they did, illustrating the seriousness of environmental crises. It’s spontaneous moments like these that make working in public space so exciting. The dramatic high point of our show was at the park’s war memorial, where we gave a rousing antiwar speech flanked by our fabulous tour guide team posing with the protest signs. After a few minutes of silence, we ended the tour, handing everyone a special card for their wallets, stating that they had made love to the Earth and were now officially ecosexuals.

Our generous ecosexy performers were Sarah Bouars, Daniel Cremer aka Gaiaboi, Sura Hurtzberg, Camille Käse aka Jemelen, Mathias Lenz aka Dr. Menta, Kristianne Salcines, Tessa Huging, Kay Yoon, Allegra Bliss, Jean Roux aka Rhizome, Jake Winchester, and Valentina.