Upcoming Events
April 21, 2024 1pm-4pm
Sensuous Earth Day Stroll, Ecoerotic Poetry and a cool down at the Wild Side West
Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens invite you to their 3rd annual Ecosex Earth Day celebration. https://sfpl.org/events/2024/04/21/celebration-sensuous-earth-day-stroll-poetry-affair Embark on a whimsical journey through Holly Park, guided by the enchanting duo of Stephens and Sprinkle, along with their nature-loving companions. Leave behind the digital realm and immerse yourself in the tactile pleasures of our earthy escapade. Throughout this sensorial adventure, indulge your senses in sumptuous scents, captivating sights, and the melodious symphony of nature’s whispers. As we tread lightly upon the earth, we will serenade our beloved planet with verses that paint her as our cherished lover. Join us for a celebration of the sensual and the ecological, where poetry intertwines with the pulse of the Earth itself. This eco-erotic poetry walk is inspired by the Earth—for the Earth.
Presented with the E.A.R.T.H. Lab SF (ELSF). This org builds community by creating collaborative, multidisciplinary art projects that re-envision the Earth, all of its beings, and environmental activism with fresh eyes. ELSF expands prevailing notions of environmental art, challenges the mainstream’s binary concepts of gender, sexuality and race, and incorporates inclusive, diverse and imaginative possibilities for sustainable living. Their projects promote love, tolerance, sustainability and peace.
Stephens and Sprinkle have been creating multimedia projects together for 20 years, about love, environmental issues and the sensual pleasures of the natural world. Stephens has been a professor at University of California Santa Cruz for 27 years. Sprinkle was a sex worker turned performance artist. The duo make films, produce symposiums, create theater and performance art. Their Ecosex Manifesto launched the Ecosex Movement. They are currently making a film about fire for which they were awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2021. Their book, Assuming the Ecosexual Position—the Earth as Lover (University of Minnesota Press) chronicles their epic love story and art/life adventures.
Attendees of the event will receive complimentary copies of Assuming the Ecosexual Position: The Earth As Lover, courtesy of SFPL. Copies will be distributed before (please arrive early) and after the event. Additionally, following the stroll, the book giveaway will continue at the Wild Side West garden, accompanied by a book signing. While supplies last.
Connect:
Sprinkle & Stephens Collaboration – Website | Earth Lab SF – Website
April 27, 2024 @ 3:00–5:00 pm
Erotic Resisters & Ecosexuals Unite! with Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa at the Tenderloin Museum
Join us for a collaborative discussion and book signing with our friend Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa, facilitated by our beloved Director Joy Brooke Fairfield. Copies of Erotic Resistance and Assuming the Ecosexual Position will be available for purchase and signing. More details below. https://www.tenderloinmuseum.org/public-programs-2024-1/2024/4/27/erotic-resisters-ecosexuals-unite
In celebration of the recent publication of Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa’s new book, Erotic Resistance: The Struggle for the Soul of San Francisco, Tenderloin Museum hosts the author for a double-header book talk with Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens, fellow activist-artists and scholars of human sexuality, who will discuss their latest latest, Assuming the Ecosexual Position:The Earth as Lover.
A celebration of the erotic performance cultures that have shaped San Francisco, Erotic Resistance: The Struggle for the Soul of San Francisco (UC Press, 2024) explores a milieu that is indelibly intertwined with the Tenderloin’s history: the city’s bohemian past and its essential role in the development of American adult entertainment by highlighting the contributions of women of color, queer women, and trans women who were instrumental in the city’s labor history, as well as its LGBT and sex workers’ rights movements. Otálvaro-Hormillosa utilizes visual and performance analysis, historiography, and ethnographic research (including participant observation as both performer and spectator), and interviews with legendary burlesquers and strippers to share a remarkable history and to frame an intersection of art, activism, performance, and human sexuality. Otálvaro-Hormillosa explores how, in the 1960s, topless entertainment became legal in San Francisco for the first time in the US, even while cross-dressing continued to be criminalized, and how, in the 1990s, stripper-artist activists led the first successful class action lawsuits and efforts to unionize! She writes, says Annie Sprinkle, “courageously and eloquently from her perspective as a performance artist and scholar inspired by the tradition of sex-positive feminists since the 1960s who have resisted patriarchy by reclaiming and celebrating their sexuality.”
On Saturday April 27th, Otálvaro-Hormillosa will present her work and new book at a TLM public program in conjunction with her friends and fellow artist-activists Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, who also work in the space where scholarship, sexuality, activism, and the arts intersect and have in fact helped shape the field and discipline of human sexuality studies. Both have long and storied careers as artists and academics, and since 2002 have been life partners and “50/50 collaborators” on multimedia projects. In 2008, Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens married the Earth, which set them on the path to explore the realms of ecosexuality as they became lovers with the Earth and made their mutual pleasure an embodied expression of passion for the environment. Ever since, they have been not just pushing but obliterating the boundaries circumscribing biology and ecology, creating ecosexual art in their performance of an environmentalism that is feminist, queer, sensual, sexual, posthuman, materialist, exuberant, and steeped in humor. Their latest publication, Assuming the Ecosexual Position: The Earth as Lover ((U. of Minnesota Press, 2021), describes how the two came together as lovers and collaborators, how they took a stand against homophobia and xenophobia, and how this union led to the miraculous conception of the Love Art Laboratory.
Join us for these complementary book talks, both of which explore subjects that resonate with the Tenderloin’s history and culture, in a program moderated by professor at Rhodes College, media-maker, and Sprinkle/Stephens collaborator Dr. Joy Brooke Fairfield. Free or suggested donation ($10); please register via Eventbrite to let us know you’re coming! This program is one of many happenings for “I Love Tenderloin Week,” a celebration of the neighborhood and its people, businesses, and culture by a coalition of local individuals and organizations.
Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA94102
June 14, 2024
Opening of Splash! Eco and Hydrosexual Unite! at Gallery lokal 30, Warsaw, Poland
Ecosexual Artists: Annie Sprinkle, Beth Stephens; cyber_nymphs: Justyna Górowska, Ewelina Jarosz
Some of the Earth Loving seeds we’ve planted are coming to fruition. This June we are having a two-collaboration art show, Splash: eco + hydrosexuals unite!! with our friends, Evelyna Jaroz and Justyna Górowksa at lokal 30. Curated by Director Agnieszka Rayzacher. We began discussing this show in August, 2022 and now it is finally going to happen. We will exhibit some older works as well as more recent ones, including a screening of the film we curated with The One Minutes, Imagine the Earth As Lover. As we have never been to Poland, we are very excited and appreciative of this invitation.
Curatorial text: cyber_nymphs
Imagine falling in love with someone more than human — like with planet Earth. It’s a tantalizing opportunity to explore the Earth as a lover and to experiment with your more-than-human sensuality. Drinking cocktails on the beach during sunset may have the feeling of a romantic fairy tale, but building a functional, mutually beneficial relationship turns out to be more of a challenge. The dating app photos leave no illusions: Earth, more than ever, grapples with the loss of biodiversity, global warming, and anthropogenic pollution in the litho-, hydro-, and atmosphere. Earth’s post-apocalyptic selfie is accompanied by the hashtag #heartbrokenearth. This is more than an empty cry for attention; it reflects the reality of a being who has been through a lot: violence, an extractivist economy, and degradation. Earth is increasingly tempted to withdraw from the human dating scene. They’ve even changed their relationship status with us humans to ‘it’s complicated.’ These romantic disappointments prompted the establishment of stimulating preferences like #EphemeralEco, #WarmingHeart, and #EcoFlirt. Would you leave this more-than-human being out in the cold by swiping left?
Swipe right, and we invite you to the eco- and hydrosexual movement’s “pollen-amourous relationship.” In 2008, artists Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens launched the ecosexual art movement and pledged their eternal love to the Earth. The California-based artists have made performance art history by combining sex positivity, queer pleasure activism, and environmental art. They proposed a reconfigured paradigm of love, in which artists, activists, sex workers, academics, and others (!) began to imagine the Earth as a partner to whom they can offer more pleasure, love, and joy. The exhibition is the first comprehensive presentation of Sprinkle and Stephens’ achievements in Poland, presented in collaboration with the artistic-research duo cyber_nymphs, also known as Justyna Górowska and Ewelina Jarosz. W akcie dialogu międzypokoleniowego, cyber_nimfy zainicjowały ruch hydroseksualny, czerpiąc z własnych doświadczeń oraz różnorodnych form sztuki środowiskowej wypracowanych przez amerykańskie artystki. It focuses on Earth’s aquatic ecosystems, whose vastness and importance lead to the Earth’s nickname— “the Blue Planet.” The hydrosexual movement cultivates ecosensual experiences in the realms of digital art and imagination, stimulating eco-technological practices.
The exhibition explores one of humanity’s most significant and challenging relationships: the bond between us and the environment. It proposes a dialogue between the ecosexual and hydrosexual movements, creating transcultural connections crucial for caring about diverse, multispecies futures. It is an invitation to an anti-honeymoon, where you will witness the interactions of natureculture under extraordinary circumstances. Art creates the hydrosensory connections between both movements, allowing us to dive deep into embodied ecological pleasures. Our show also reminds us that we humans are part of the Earth, not separate. We are an eco(sexy) system.
This show aims to make our agency in environmental activism visible, as our movements play strategic roles in building a grassroots, emancipated social movement embodying fifth-wave feminism. We showcase aquatic themes found throughout the artistic biographies of Sprinkle and Stephens, as well as artworks created collaboratively by artists within the ecosexual movement, which inspired postmedial performances by cyber_nymphs. In this exhibition, we share an environed, embodied, and transmedial story of our encounter with the Earth, the Blue Planet – our Lover!
June 22, 2024
Solstice in Düsseldorf, Germany: Park as Lover: An Ecosex Walking Ritual
We have accepted an invitation to join the project, 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.
June 28 – July 1, 2024
Workshop, Film Screening and Artists’ Lecture in Prague
We received an invitation to organize a workshop or ritual that will create some form of togetherness for students during our visit at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. The workshop will focus on our ecosexal art, performance, activism and interdisciplinary practices. We will also offer a presentation for the public. More information coming soon.
January 18 – 21 2024
Index Art Book Fair
Mexico City
At the Kurimanzutto Gallery. We are the keynote speakers for this event which focuses on independent publishing.
February 17, 2024
A Whore’s Eye View
Artists’ Television Access
992 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA
E.A.R.T.H. Lab SF is proud to co-present an important one-woman show, Whores Eye View, by and starring the talented, smart, sex workers’ rights activist Kaytlin Bailey. “Weaving comedic storytelling and the wisdom of lived experience, Whore’s Eye View is a mad dash through 10,000 years of history from a sex worker’s perspective.” After the show, we will lead a Q & A with Kaytlin. We’ll be sure to discuss why body autonomy is an environmental issue. Also co-presenting the evening are Leah Moon of Old Pros, Madison Young of Alchemy Film Foundation, and Carol Queen of Center for Sex & Culture. February 17th. It’s at the beloved Artist Television Access in San Francisco’s Mission district, which is a smallish theater, so tickets are limited, but available now at whoreseyview.com
March 16–25, 2024
West Virginia Research Trip
Beth will be traveling home to conduct film research, work on her archives, and catch up with friends and family.
March 27, 2024
Pocha Nostra 2024: Living Dioramas for a Museum of the Future
Presented by Saint Joseph’s Arts Foundation
During this special evening, Gómez-Peña and his closest collaborators re-imagine his living archives, an over 50 year body of performance work. Audiences will experience and interact with an immersive setting that has been conceptualized especially for the unique site of Saint Joseph’s and in response to the themes, concerns and hopes for our times. Doors 6pm // Performance 7pm
- Balitronica
- The EcoSexuals
- Sarah Stolar (New Mexico)
- Pita Zapot (Tijuana)
- Francesca Carol Rolla (Venice, Italy)
- Justin Hoover
- Bob Webb
- Violeta Luna
- Juan Ybarra
For more information or to RSVP go to: https://thethirdplace.is/event/Pocha-Nostra-2024
April 1–10, 2024
EAR Forest, Portland Oregon
THE EAR FOREST IN SPRINGTIME
Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle are ecosexuals, making art as collaborative artists, activists, feminists, and lovers. With a healthy dose of humor, desire, and subversion, Sprinkle and Stephens playfully provoke audiences to develop a more pleasurable and reciprocal relationship with the Earth. Many people imagine the Earth as a mother. What if we imagine the Earth as a lover? We are honored to welcome Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle as the inaugural artists-in-residence at Lewis & Clark College’s Experimental Art Research (EAR) Forest.
The EAR Forest is a 16-channel audio system of speakers nestled in the trees along a winding pathway behind the Lewis & Clark Art Department. It offers visiting artists, students, and faculty a space for creating audio works within the forest, allowing for immersive experiences, getting us closer to our own senses. The following events with Sprinkle and Stephens welcome members of the Lewis & Clark community and the public:
Thursday, April 4, 6:30pm: Film screening and artists talk
Monday, April 8, 11am,: Lunchtime picnic during a partial eclipse
Tuesday, April 9, 5-6:30pm : Opening reception and debut of the our ecosexy sound installation
For more info: https://college.lclark.edu/departments/art/ear-forest/artists-in-residence/