Performance Manhattan image

EcoSex and the City: Exploring the Earth as Lover

June 14 -18, 2023

Performance Space New York

EcoSex and the City: Exploring the Earth as Lover

Manhattan, New York

A Co-Created Symposium & Performance Art Happening with Beth Stephens, Annie Sprinkle & Friends 

For more information, updates and symposium passes go here

Join us for a three-day multi-disciplinary gathering to explore our relationships with the environment and social justice, engage in human/non-human collaboration, critique ideologies and create new sexualities. Let’s examine if our “bodies” end at our skin or are part of something much more complex. This unique gathering includes paradigm-shifting panels, ritual, storytelling, poetry, music, films, ancestors, queer glam, keynote speeches, and creative environmental activist strategies. Experience eco-burlesque, learn about the science, and enjoy soil-idarity, conceptual art, and abundant sensual delights. This happening will be Beth & Annie’s 9th symposium and the first on the East Coast. Mingle with diverse life forms and various communities of artists, scholars, sex workers, queers, fashionistas, plants, spores, water drops, clouds, and more, more, more. If desired, dress in costumes inspired by the Earth, and bring your biome clouds. What happens when we posit the Earth as our lover? We invite you to get your ecosexual gaze on and find out. Everyone is invited.

Photos by Lydia Daniller

Photos by Annie Forrest

Program View pdf

EcoSex and the City program

 

Playing with Fire Symposium

🔥 October 7-9.
We will explore the pleasures, perils & politics of fire through art, theory, practice, and activism.
October 7, 8th and 9th. DARC 108 CLICK HERE to view supporting documentation.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

Everyone is welcome. The symposium is free.

All events take place at the UCSC DARC building. Google map link here. It's a big campus, be sure to follow our link! There are many food options for purchase on campus, have a look at the cafe link here.  We've also got a great link with directions to the DARC building hereYou can find everything else you need below, but if you have any additional questions, shoot us an email at [email protected], and we'll be happy to answer.

Photos by Lydia Daniller

Photographs by Justin Hoover

Photographs by Saul Villegas

Photographs by Jaren Bonillo

SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE

WHERE: All events are at UCSC in DARC #108 (Digital Arts Research Center), except where noted

Friday, October 7

   
 
Honoring and Celebrating our Environmental Art Ancestors:
a Tribute to Newton and Helen Harrison
6-6:30pm
Gather

Manifestadora del altar– Juanita Mora-Malerva
Video: Linda Montano (9 minutes)

6:30-7:30pm
WelcomeBeth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle

Ritual for the Departed & a Sevda–Nada Miljkovic
Kaddish–Ruby Barnett
Metabolism is the Fire that Burns Within Us–Lauren Bon
Poem–Ed Shanken
Open Mic– Share your stories
Closing- Beth & Annie 

7:30-8pm
Eat, drink and be grateful

Saturday, October 8

At UCSC in DARC #108 (Digital Arts Research Center)

Time  Event
10-11:00am
Morning Gathering

Breakfast bites, coffee, tea

11:00am-12pm
A Warm Welcome 

Professor Beth Stephens–artist, filmmaker, and
Annie Sprinkle–ecosexual artist 

12-1:30pm
Panel # 1 — Smoldering Embers

Becca Fenwick, Director of UCSC’s CITRIS Program. “A Drone’s Eye View of the UCNRS”
Cláudio Bueno, Assistant Professor of Art, UC Santa Cruz. “Curupira; The Red Head”
Kim TallBear, Professor of Native Studies, University of Alberta.
“A Sharpening of the Already Present: Apocalypse and Radical Hope”

1:30-2:30pm
Lunch
2:30-4pm
Panel #2 — Art and Artists On Fire

Michael and Heather Llewellyn– Artists and Co-Creators.
 “Creating the FOREST⇌FIRE Exhibition”
Laura Smith-Fillmore – Artist and Translator.
Fire: the Wà:šiw word for wildfire is yengi’iši’ (the plural of ‘running’) or literally ‘everything is running’
Tracy Brown–Artivist and African American Art & Culture Center FellowChoose Your Punctuation from the Fire”
Justin Hoover– Artist, Director of the Chinese Historical   “Fire as Practice in Chinese American Traditional Culture” 

4-4:30pm
Break
4:30-6pm
Panel #3 — Flaming Desires

Courtney Desiree Morris, Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies, UC Berkeley.  “Fire Wedding Orishas” with Martîn Perna (sound design and saxophone) & Sequoia Jane Morris-Perna (firebaby).
K-Haw of the Rural Alchemy Workshop (R.A.W.) “Any Body Can Be a Rodeo Queen of the Pyrocene,”
Lady Monster, Eco-burlesque Artist, “Bringing the Camp to the Fire as the Quadra-Flame Twirl-inator”
Nicole Rudolph-Vallerga, Artist, “The Phoenix Letters, A Ritual Offering. 

6:00-7:30pm
Outdoor Dinner & A Sound Performance

Anna Friz & Gabriel Saloman“Between the Fires”

7:30 sharp!-9:30pm
Feel the Heat — Live Art and Film

(Performances are listed in random order and subject to change)

Julie Weitz. Prayer for Burnt Forest” (Film, 14 mins)
Courtney Desiree MorrisSopera de Yemaya” (Film, 20 mins) with sound design and saxophone performance by Martin Perna
Vin Seaman as LOL McFiercen–Mistrexx of Ceremonies:
Roxi Power“Zig Zag: Fire Poems”
K-Haw“Rodeo Queen of the Pyrocene: Fire Ride with Me”
Shelly Truman– “Surviving”
Spyce– “Songs to Light our Fires”
Larry Bogad– “A Word From Our Sponsors”
Lady Monster– “Ignite; a Dance”
Justin Hoover–“Divine Conduits” 

Sunday, October 9

At UCSC in DARC #108 (Digital Arts Research Center)

Time  Event
10-11am
Morning Gathering

Breakfast bites, coffee, tea

11am-1pm
Panel #4 — Firefighter Stories

Julie Weitz, My Golem as a Wildland Firefighter
Brandon Smith (Director of the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program).
Benny Fillmore (Elder Wašišiw and Former Hotshot Firefighter) in conversation with
Helen Fillmore (Environmental Scientist and Former Hotshot Firefighter).

1-1:45pm
Lunch
1:45-2:30pm
Community Open Mike

(Sign up for a 5 minute slot)

2:30-3:00pm
Final Comments & Closing

Beth & Annie

FOOD

Food available for purchase around campus, or feel free to bring your own.

PARKING

There is a fee to park in the UCSC parking lot. Our beloved parking enforcement team is extremely vigilant. Please follow the link here to avoid an expensive ticket.  

LODGING

We want you to be warm, comfortable, and cozy. Here are some places to stay:

Camping: The Redwood Resort has free camping for symposium participants and their close guests. This includes shower and restroom facilities. They're great friends of Annie and Beth, and are co-sponsoring this event! Please keep in mind that they're a 40 minute drive from UCSC. The map link is here. If you want to use this option, please contact Beth Stephens [email protected]

You may also like Henry Cowell State Park. They don't have a website, but the map link and phone number is here.

Hostels: There are lots of options here.

Hotels: A list of all hotels in Santa Cruz can be found here.

We love staying at The Ocean Pacific Lodge. They're offering a 10% discount for our symposium, just mention that you're going to UCSC when you book. We've had a great time there in the past, and it's a nice mid-priced hotel. A google map is here. For a high end experience, we recommend the Dream Inn. Their location is right next to the ocean, with incredible views.

 

Heartfelt thanks to our collaborators friends and sponsors

Dean's Fund for Excellence and the UCSC Office of Research

Thank you to the Ocean Pacific Lodge, UCSC catering, and India Joez. Thanks also to the incredible technical team of the Digital Arts Research Center.

Special thanks to our generous, amazing hosts: Donna Haraway, Shelly Errington, Nada Miljkovic, Kyle McKinley & Jennifer Gonzalez.

Our dear friends who gave their time to help us with this event: Scott Brandt, Dean Solt, ARI, Center for Science and Justice, Center for Arts and Science, Redwood Resort, Feminist Studies, Jennifer Gonzalez, Jordan Phillibert, Lindsay Moffat, Rachel Smith, Cowell College--Alex, Kristin Grace Erickson, Julie Rogge, Dr. Gary Greenberg.

Thanks also to the amazing UCSC staff.

  Guggenheim logo

 

Thank you everyone who gave their time and resources to help us with this event:

ARI, Center for Science and Justice, Center for Arts and

Science, Redwood Resort,

The amazing UCSC staff.

Thanks UCSC catering,

Thanks again to Nada Miljkovic’s KSQID.

Extra special kudos to Rogge Design for the poster designs.

Thank you all for coming!

Earth day photo

Library on Earth Day

It’s part performance art happening, part environmentalism and part sex-3d! Discuss your hopes and concerns, learn about ecosexuality and imagine abundant futures in the face of global climate crisis. Share what’s ailing you and receive a (collectible) prescription for ecosensual activities that will help you to feel better. In collaboration with the San Francisco Public Library. For more information about the event click here.

Seedbed poster

SEEDBED: A SOIL SYMPOSIUM

This multimedia symposium took place from April 26-27, 2018 at the UCSC Fram & Garden. In collaboration with the Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems (CAVS), the E.A.R.T.H. Lab hosted this interdisciplinary event. It featured visual artwork installed throughout campus, performances, interactive activities and meals. Panels were held in the Cowell Ranch Hay Barn exploring a diverse range of topics from microbes to waste management, labor and farming; the magic composting and soil science. Seedbed explored how climate change and human industry have endangered our topsoils – rendering it deadly- as well as the amazing life sustaining potential of what we call “dirt.” 

For more information on this event click here.

 
Environmentalism Outside the Box

Environmentalism Outside the Box: An Ecosex Symposium

This symposium took place in and around the Digital Arts Research Center on the UCSC Campus from May18-19, 2017. 

E.A.R.T.H. Lab Presents!

Join us for a multi-disciplinary gathering to explore our relationships with the environment and social justice, engage in human/non-human collaboration, critique ideologies and debate new sexualities. What happens when we see the Earth as our lover? Let’s examine where our “bodies” end and “nature” begins.

For more  information click here.

 

City Lights Bookstore

Documenta Kassel

WE WERE SCHEDULED TO PRESENT JUST ONE FREE SIDEWALK SEX CLINIC IN KASSEL, NOT THREE LIKE WE DID IN ATHENS, AND WE WANTED IT TO BE OUR BIGGEST AND BEST ONE EVER.

We put out a call for collaborators through word of mouth and on our social media networks. Our friend, Kristina Marlen, a professional tantric dominatrix, author, and sex positive blogger living in Berlin, enlisted some of her German sex worker friends. King Erik and Mamita had enjoyed doing the three clinics in Athens so much that they drove in from France and joined us again. A Japanese friend and colleague, Hiroko Kikuchi, showed up just as we were setting up the clinic and we invited her to join us. She wasn’t exactly a sex expert, but we had plenty of those, what we needed was a conceptual artist, plus she spoke Japanese. There were thirteen of us and collectively we spoke six languages; English, Spanish, German, French, Greek, and Japanese. On the afternoon of our Kassel clinic, we set up our tables, chairs, and props in the city’s main square, the Friedrichsplatz,  between the Joseph Beuys’ 7000 Oaks trees. Just as we were set up and ready to start, a fierce lightning storm rolled into Kassel. We were firmly instructed to move inside to the ground floor rotunda of the Fridericianum Museum for everyone’s safety.

Our clinic in the rotunda filled up with a diverse mix of people who lined up in front of their chosen sex educators, eagerly seeking advice and conversation. Our clinic was hopping as people are not used to free sex advice in public and many were hungry to talk about sex in ways were not shameful or secretive. Participants asked us all sorts of questions. We did our best to provide practical information while also being creative and thinking outside the box. The two of us offered sex life tarot readings, and usually the cards provided just the right guidance. Drawing on our combined personal experience our group gave radical, queer, and punk rock sex advice that eschewed traditional morality. Our clinicians offered tips on topics such as FluxSex, Chthulu compost love attitude, Naughty karma, Amazon play, rosebud reiki, queer celibacy, sex in performance art, sensual presence, aktivist humanist ethics, sexological bodywork, pollen-amory, sophisticated surrender, food porn addiction, sexual alchemy, sex and psychedelics and more.

This documenta sex clinic was a parliament of embodied sexual knowledge. Some of our sex workers who had not seen themselves as sex educators previously, did now and they were elated and empowered. A good time was had by all, and certainly we opened up some minds and performed a sex clinic as art.

Click here to view a PDF of the Kassel Sidewalk Sex Clinic Program

Documenta 14 Athens

CURATOR PAUL B. PRECIADO ASKED US TO DO A SERIES OF THREE SIDEWALK SEX CLINICS IN AND AROUND ATHENS, GREECE, AS PART OF DOCUMENTA 14’S PUBLIC PROGRAMS.

We prepared plexiglass standing placards to put on our tables with our neatly typed names, bios and sex education offerings which read like scores sprinkled with a dose of Fluxus absurdity. We offered radical sex education, although we sprinkled in some practical sex advice.

The documenta 14 team helped us enlist some local sex educators for the performance. We knew that it was important to have Greek citizens be part of our clinician team. Paul brought on board Activista, a genderqueer safe sex expert and an amazing drag performer, as well as Dr. Bubuke aka Bubu, a trans woman with a Ph.D. who offered advice in transgender and queer issues and counter hegemonic sexual practices. There had been some horrible anti-GLBTQ+ violence around Athens, so we were assigned a body guard.

The documenta 14 production team members, including our main handler for the clinics project, Maria Dolores, were all extremely helpful when scouting and reserving our sites and setting up the tables, chairs and signs. Our good friend, Veronica Vera, dean of the Academy for Boys Who Want to Be Girls, joined us from New York. Our French friends from Emmetrop art center, King Erik and his wife Mamita, joined us as well.

The people of Athens were generous with us and hopefully our Free Sidewalk Sex Clinic, which documenta 14 described as a nomadic performance, helped open up more space for queer and marginalized people in Athens as it opened more minds to creative sex positivity and absurdist sex humor.