Author Archive: Saul

Cyber Wedding to the Brine Shrimp

Cyber Wedding to the Brine Shrimp

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Cyber Wedding to the Brine Shrimp 2021. Ewelina Jarosz, Justyna Górowska in collaboration with Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens.

Cyber Wedding to the Brine Shrimp is a hydrofeminist ecosexual performance that took place on September 14th, 2021. Inspired by the ecosexual weddings of Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, cyber-nympho artist-brides, Ewelina Jarosz and Justyna Górowska have married the brine shrimp. The interspecies ceremony was witnessed by the public in a multi-species documentary movie, enhanced with augmented reality technology. The brides encouraged others to love, honor, and cherish the resilient brine shrimp and learn about the perils they and their ecosystem face. The vows to the brine shrimp of the Great Salt Lake were made on the Rozel Point peninsula near the Spiral Jetty (1970), a land artwork by Robert Smithson. This performance was also an intervention into the history of this iconic work, through which the queer Polish and American artists explored and pursued its ongoing transformation in the times of climate change.  At first, this famous work manifested the masculine energy of its creator and was associated with liberation from the museum-and-gallery context. Next, it was discovered as a post-humanist salty crystalline artwork that “provokes non-anthropocentric configurations of perception”. However, the most recent chapter in the history of Spiral Jetty links its meaning with ecosexuality, hydrofeminism,  and land acknowledgment for Ute, Paiute, Goshute, Shoshone, and Dine peoples’ land.  

This hydrofeminist ecosexual ceremony was the first more-than-human wedding event in the world using augmented reality to create the brine shrimp brides/grooms out of digital air. After downloading Artemia App, every person using an Android smartphone can enjoy being in digital nature and explore the posthuman community in augmented reality. Finally, through this performance, the future-making environmental cultural politics are addressed to reorient the public interest in the Spiral Jetty from the Western art world establishment and ideology to the climate change context. And therefore, bringing and focusing attention on the depleting Great Salt Lake’s biodiversity and multispecies justice in the hydrocene.

Visual documentation of the ceremony.

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Justyna Górowska in collaboration with Ewelina Jarosz The Ongoingess of Love in the Time of Mourning, Kreis Galerie, Nürnberg, Germany. May 6th – June 18th 2022. Organized by Cloud Foundation during Blaue Nacht Nürnberg 2022.

View selected images.

Assuming the Ecosexual Position Book

Franconia Sculpture Park

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – July 26, 2021

Franconia Sculpture Park

Contact: Alyssa Auten, Communications & Creative Director

[email protected] | www.franconia.org 

 

FRANCONIA SCULPTURE PARK HOSTS OFFICIAL BOOK LAUNCH FOR ASSUMING THE ECOSEXUAL POSITION: THE EARTH AS LOVER AND US PREMIERE OF THE ONE MINUTES—IMAGINE THE EARTH IS YOUR LOVER WITH ANNIE SPRINKLE AND BETH STEPHENS

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1

Franconia Sculpture Park in collaboration with the University of Minnesota Press and The One Minutes is pleased to present the official book launch for Assuming the Ecosexual Position: The Earth as Lover by Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens with Jennie Klein. Published August 15, 2021 by the University of Minnesota Press, the book presents the story of the artistic collaboration between the originators of the ecosex movement, their diverse communities, and the Earth. Assuming the Ecosexual Position tells of childhood moments that pointed to a future of ecosexuality—for Annie, in her family swimming pool in Los Angeles; for Beth, savoring forbidden tomatoes from the vine on her grandparents’ Appalachian farm. The book 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, which involved influential performance artists Linda M. Montano, Reverend Billy Talen, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, theorist Paul B. Preciado, and feminist pornographer Madison Young. Please join Franconia on Wednesday, September 1, 2021 for a meet and greet and book signing with the artists, an outdoor book hunt throughout the sculpture park, and a night of ecosexy short films which explore mad, passionate, and fierce love for the Earth.

Wednesday, September 1, 2021 at Franconia Sculpture Park

An Ecosexy Book Launch Happening with Annie Sprinkle, Beth Stephens, and Jennie Klein

6pm-6:30pm: Meet & Greet, Book Signing, and Drinks with Annie Sprinkle, Beth Stephens, and Jennie Klein at Franconia Commons 

6:30-7:30pm: Assume the Ecosexual Position: A Peripatetic Walk and Book Hunt through Franconia Sculpture Park

7:30-8:30pm: The US Premiere of Imagine the Earth is Your Lover, a document of the Ecosex Movement. 23 one-minute films and other ecosexy shorts from around the world curated by Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle.  Watch the trailer at: https://vimeo.com/463829285

8:30pm-9:00pm: Q&A and Discussion

For more information on Assuming the Ecosexual Position, please visit: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/assuming-the-ecosexual-position

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens have been life partners and 50/50 collaborators on multimedia projects since 2002. They are authors of the Ecosex Manifesto and producers of the award-winning film Goodbye Gauley Mountain and Water Makes us Wet, a documentary feature that premiered at documenta 14 and screened at MoMA in New York. Sprinkle is a former sex worker with a PhD in human sexuality. Stephens holds a PhD in performance studies and is the founding director of E.A.R.T.H Lab at University of California at Santa Cruz.

Sprinklestephens.org

Jennie Klein is professor of art history at Ohio University. She is editor of Letters from Linda M. Montano and coeditor of Histories and Practices of Live Art and The M Word: Real Mothers in Contemporary Art.

About Franconia Sculpture Park

The mission of Franconia Sculpture Park is to foster an inclusive community to create and contemplate contemporary art inspired by nature and our ever-evolving world. Founded in 1996, Franconia operates a 50-acre outdoor museum, active artist residency program, and a depth and breadth of arts programming for a diverse and engaged public.

Franconia is located at 29836 St. Croix Trail in Shafer, Minnesota, and is free and open to the public 365 days a year from 8am to 8pm. Please visit us at www.franconia.org.

Our Book Assuming the Ecosexual Position: The Earth as Lover

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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 them on the path together to explore the realm of ecosexuality, taking the Earth as our lover and making our mutual pleasure a 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 their performance of an environmentalism that is feminist, queer, sensual, sexual, post-human, materialist, and steeped in humor.

Now available for pre-order at
University of Minnesota Press and Amazon

See our Press Articles

Future Farmers’ Fog Wedding

Futurefarmers’+ EarthLab Fog Wedding

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FUTUREFARMERS, ECOSEXUALS, AND A FOG WEDDING

A fog of bodies roll in from the coast, tumbling onto the Great Meadow, a gathering site for two lines of force within radical feminist art where ecosex is enacted and medico-judicial categories of sexuality (homosexuality / heterosexuality) are troubled. Among an assembly of humans and animals, bio and trans, men and women, transgender bodies, mutants survivors, witnesses, ring bearers... Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle will marry the fog – together a reeroticism of the universe, a calling into question the hierarchy of species, definitions of sexuality, and the political stratification of the body.

Click here to view the program for the Fog Wedding.

Photography by Saul Villegas

documenta 14 Kassel

documenta 14-Ecosex Walking Tour of Kassel

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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.