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.

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.

Insert photo gallery

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!

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.

The Earth as Valentine

On Valentine’s Day, 2009, we led a group of artists, academics, ecologists, and activists on a special lover’s tour/walk in the Southern California desert. Absolutely everyone can have a beautiful Valentine and a delicious day of ecosexual lovemaking when the Earth is your lover.

The Love Art Lab participated in the Luminous Green Desert, a conference at a University of California desert research retreat facility near Palm Desert. About thirty-five people were in attendance, primarily artists involved in environmental art.

At 2:30 P.M., a dozen of us gathered and walked into the desert. First, we read our “25 Ways to Make Love to the Earth,” then had everyone introduce themselves and tell us anything that came to mind regarding Earth as a lover. We were delighted to hear some very erotic stories from our colleagues and to know that everyone has had at least one erotic experience with the Earth.

Artist couple Paula Poole and Brett Stalbaum collaborated on the tour with us. Paula invited us to each locate and share our V-spot, a view, or a plant, or a place that we found particularly erotic. One by one, we did, and Paula gifted us each a beautiful hand-beaded necklace that she made. Brett, her husband, photographed our spots, which Paula translated into beautiful pencil drawings later that night.

For some people, a cactus was their V-spot. For others, it was a particular view. It was a few grains of sand for Annie because she said, “In every grain of sand is an entire erotic universe waiting to be explored.” She then ate and swallowed the grains of sand with great pleasure. Beth was a total eco-slut, as she had no less than five V-spots. As tour guides, we pointed out other points of interest; a multitude of phallic and vulvar shapes, a gray granite rock with a white heart, sensual textures, eye-gasmic colorful delights, the scents of lavender, creosote, and more more more. Annie demonstrated the joys of licking and hugging rocks. Beth and artist Larry Bogad picked up a watermelon-sized rock and licked it simultaneously. It licked them back! Further down the path was a rock with a big wet spot.

We moseyed and meandered for a couple of miles. At the end of the trail, we stood in a circle for some ‘ecstasy breathing’ circulating energy with the north, south, east, and west, bringing us to an energetic climax with the Earth. Then we made our way back to base camp as the sun sank behind a breast-shaped mountain. We basked in the afterglow while sucking on the dried mangos and figs we had brought for everyone (healthier than bonbons). We talked about our various environmental art projects, pillow talk, as it were. The desert was a fine lover this fine day.

We hope you will join us on our next lover’s tour.

On a warm, sunny January day, we guided 27 people on a SEXECOLOGICAL WALKING TOUR of San Francisco’s famous Castro neighborhood. We began at our art exhibit at Femina Potens Gallery on Market Street (FP produced the tour). We slowly wound our way around several blocks to Dubose Park. On route we shared our past eco-erotic experiences/stories with each other, everyone found their e-spots, sniffed, tasted, and licked nature’s delicious trees, rocks, plants and sensuous abundance. We stopped into a wood furniture shop for a sniff and a poem about the erotic love of nature. There was a cactus vagina dentate, a mistletoe moment, and a tree with a marble clitoris. The tour climaxed on top of a breast like grassy knoll when we all formed a circle and facilitated people’s sacred vows to be lovers with the Earth. A good ecosexually satisfying time was had by all. Photos by Malia Schlaefer and the Love Art Lab.

Boston Public Garden, November 15, 2009

We spent a rainy November day in the heart of the Boston Gardens, exploring the Earth’s sensual delights.  On this tour we encountered roses blooming, sexy burls, carpets of yellow leaves, old friends and new.  We also heard the enchanting story of the lesbian swans who used to swim in the garden lake.  A lovely erotic day.