Press Agent
Lady Kate Productions
Email: kate.d.fritz@gmail.com
Phone: (707)484-8885
Website: www.theEcosexuals.org and www.sexecology.org

For Immediate Release

June, 2015

Ecosex Contingent Is Coming Out at SF Pride and Will Add the ‘E’ to LGBTQI’E’

San Francisco, CA—June 28, San Francisco, CA—Beloved Bay Area performance art icons Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, and their band of ecosexual movers and shakers from all over the world, in cross-pollination with La Pocha Nostra performance troupe, are converging under the banner of the Center for Sex & Culture to create a 100-person ecosex performance art offering for the SF Pride Parade on Sunday June 28, 2015. The Ecosexal Contingent is directed by Saul Garcia-Lopez, co-artistic director of La Pocha Nostra, and features contributions by La Pocha Nostra’s founder Guillermo Gomez-Peña and performance poetess Balitrónica. Other artists contributing are burlesque queen Lady Monster, “Eco-core” band The Traveling Ills with drum line, the band Tony's Circus, NYC performer Dragonfly aka Justice Jester from Reverend Billy’s Church of Stop Shopping, ecosex performance artist Caro Novella from Spain, plus an array of Sexecologists, Heidi Cramer’s giant human-powered salmon puppet, a garden gnome army, a group of ‘March Against Monsanto’ bees, and a live DJ, all centered around the sparkling blue jewel box theater ‘pollination pod’ designed by Stephens. Sarah Stolar created wearable art/ costumes. The contingent is part of the National Queer Arts Festival.

The Ecosexual parade event will kick off with a shamanic water blessing and a ribbon cutting ceremony to mark the moment they will ‘Officially add the E’ to LGBTQI’E’. “We’d love to see more queer people involved in the environmental movement, so we want to make the movement more sexy, fun and diverse,” says Sprinkle. Director Saul Garcia-Lopez says of the Ecosexual Contingent, "As fierce Ecosexuals we are looking for a sexy, edgy and poetic imaginary that reveals our love relationship with nature. This incredible contingent embraces ecosensuality and water to show this" and La Pocha Nosta Founder and spiritual godmother of the Ecosexual Pride Contingent Guillermo Gomez-Peña adds, “Transmigration, ecosexuality, multi-discipline – we are developing a new language to describe our new identity.” Gomez-Peña has contributed poeticized text for the Ecosex Manifesto 2.0, which will be unveiled at SF Pride.

UCSC Professor of Art Beth Stephens says that the focus of the contingent’s efforts are to highlight water issues in California and beyond because, “it’s great that same sex couples can get married, but what good is marriage if there is no water to drink? Water is the pressing environmental and social issue right now. Our activism is celebrating the Earth as our lover using performance art. We want to inspire LGBTQI’E’ people to protect, love, and stand for the environment.”

The Ecosexual Contingent will be filmed for a documentary-in-progress “Water Makes Us Wet” [working title] with a generous grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission, and is just one event in a series of events in the “Here Come the Ecosexuals” California summer tour, in which Stephens and Sprinkle will lead Ecosexual Walking Tours, glamping trips, and continue to gather material for the new documentary about water issues. The film will include footage from visiting French eco-sexual filmmaker Isabelle Carlier of Bandits-Mages.

Stephens and Sprinkle acknowledge the UC Arts Research Institute, UC Santa Cruz E.A.R.T.H. Lab, UCIRA, UCSC Committee on Research, and the Rydell Foundation for their support of the contingent, as well as generous donations of food and drink from GT Kombucha, Oh My Green, D.O.V.E. Distributors, Sprogs, Pepples' Donut Farm, Frontier Bites, Amy’s Kitchen, Trade Paper Supply and Rainbow Grocery, to keep the contingent nourished and hydrated in the week of the event. Special thanks to Becka Shertzer/Brazen Nectar for gathering food and drink donations.

This Center Sex & Culture Ecosexual Contingent will be staged to launch on Main Street between Howard on Folsom. The Ribbon Cutting & Water Ritual Toast will be there from 10:30AM til 10:45. For details about upcoming “Here Come the Ecosexuals” events, and more about this parade project, please visit
https://theecosexuals.ucsc.edu/sf-pride/

ECOSEXUAL MANIFESTO 2.0
Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens in cross-pollination with Guillermo Gomez-Peña

We are Ecosexuals: the Earth is our lover.

Fiercely in love, we are permanently grateful for this relationship. To create a more mutual and sustainable union with our lover, we collaborate with nature. We treat the Earth with respect, affection & sensuality.

We are aquaphiles, teraphiles, pyrophiles and aero-philes.
We are skinny dippers, sun worshippers and stargazers.

We are artists, sex workers, sexologists, academics, environmental and peace activists, feminists, eco-immigrants, putos y putas, trans/humanistas, nature fetishists, gender bending gardeners, therapists, scientists and educators, revolutionaries, dandies, pollen/amorous cultural monsters with dogs and other entities from radical ecologies…

Whether GLBTQI, hetero, asexual or Other, our primary drive and identity is being Ecosexual!

Viva la ECOSEX REVOLUTION!

For Immediate Release
May, 2015

Inclusive ‘Ecosexual’ Identity Captures Imagination of Environmental Movement

San Francisco, CA—Celebrated performance artists and mountain-top removal activists Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle have championed ecosexuality since 2008. In the last two years, the ecosexual movement has taken off, with people who identify as ecosexuals writing books, organizing academic symposia, creating ecosexy adult entertainment and producing many events to promote ecosexuality inspired by Stephens and Sprinkle’s work. “Every day we hear from people who are ‘coming out’ as ecosexual. This is hitting a cultural nerve that is relevant to activists and environmentalists right now” says Stephens.

In 2008, the two artists made a commitment to infuse the environmental movement with more play and sensual pleasure to counteract prevailing doom and gloom narratives about climate change, mountaintop removal coal mining, and water issues. That led them to develop the branch of academic study they called ‘sexecology’—which explores the intersection of sexology and ecology—and to focus their performance art and research on the budding field of ecosexuality. They have since organized three International Ecosex Symposia, performed nineteen ecosexual weddings in nine countries, and produced and directed an award winning documentary, Goodbye Gauley Mountain—An Ecosexual Love Story, created in response MTR in Stephens’ home state West Virginia. Now many other academics, writers, artists and environmentalists have begun contributing to the body of ecosexual work.

In June, Stephens and Sprinkle will be joined by more than a hundred ecosexuals who will co-create public performances as part of San Francisco and Santa Cruz Pride parades, officially adding the E (for ecosexual) to the GLBTQII moniker. The artists admit their work is inspired by Greenpeace, ACT UP and other highly visible organizations that use direct action tactics. Says Sprinkle, “We’re addressing very serious issues, such as California’s current water situation. We aim to entice more people to join the environmental movement by making it more sexy, fun and diverse.”

Stephens, a professor of art at UC Santa Cruz, says, “The Ecosexual movement is really about imagination and desire. As ecosexuals we feel that humans are not better than other species, and we are not separate from the ecosystem around us. We are part of the Earth and it is part of us..” Sprinkle adds, “Actually all sex is ecosex!”

“Our detractors say that ecosex is really perverted and all about having sex with trees” Says Sprinkle, “The Ecosexual movement is about reframing the narrative of “Earth as mother” to Earth as lover”. We expect our mother to take care of us, but we desire to take care of our lover. It’s a more mutual, equal relationship with the natural world. We invite people to imagine the Earth as lover through our research, art projects and public performances.”

Press Agent
Lady Kate Productions
Email: kate.d.fritz@gmail.com
Phone: (707)484-8885

For Immediate Release

April 2015

Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens Add ‘E’ for ‘Ecosexual’ to GLBTQII at SF Pride

San Francisco, CA—Celebrated Bay Area performance artists Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle will create the first official ‘Ecosexual contingent’ at the San Francisco Pride Parade on June 28th. They will march with their human-powered 'Pollination Pod’ parade float, and a group of over one hundred collaborators who embrace the ecosexual identity. The contingent is sponsored by the Center for Sex & Culture and is part of the Queer Arts Festival. Everyone is invited to participate. Stephens and Sprinkle want to raise the visibility of Ecosexuality and have it recognized as an identity alongside lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, transgender and intersex. The Ecosexual parade event will kick off with a ribbon-cutting ceremony to ‘Add the E’ to LGBTQI’E’ and a water toast. “We’d like to see more queer people involved in the environmental movement, so we want to make the movement more sexy, fun and diverse,” says Sprinkle.

In 2008, the two artists made a commitment to infuse the environmental movement with more play and sensual pleasure to counteract prevailing doom and gloom narratives. That led them to hold nineteen public ecosex weddings to marry nature entities such as the sky, sun, soil, sea, and moon, with thousands of participants in nine countries. They also made a documentary, Goodbye Gauley Mountain—An Ecosexual Love Story, 2014, in response to mountaintop removal coal mining in Stephens’ home state West Virginia, just released by a respected distributor, Kino Lorber. Stephens, a professor of art at UC Santa Cruz and longtime environmental activist says, “The Ecosexual movement is really about imagination and desire, and creating a more pleasurable and loving relationship with the Earth. Ecosexuals say that humans are not better than other species, and we are not separate from the ecosystem around us. We are part of it and it is part of us.” Annie Sprinkle adds that “Ecosexuality is an inclusive identity—you can be gay, straight, queer, or even celibate and identify as ecosexual.”
The artists agree that their work is inspired by the direct action tactics of highly visible movements like ACT UP in the 1980’s. “These are very serious issues we’re addressing. There’s almost nothing more serious than California’s current water situation. Our activism is celebrating the Earth as our lover using performance art.”

The Pride event will launch the “Here Come the Ecosexuals” California summer tour, in which Stephens and Sprinkle will lead ecosexual walking tours, glamping trips, and start a new documentary film to raise awareness of California’s water issues.
SF Pride starts at Beale and Market at 10:30AM on June 28. Ribbon cutting & toast at 10:00AM. 

For details how to collaborate, join contingent and attend ribbon cutting toast: www.theEcosexuals.org

Press Agent
Lady Kate Productions
Email: kate.d.fritz@gmail.com
Phone: (707)484-8885

For Immediate Release

January 2015

Artists Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens Offer Pop-Up Performances,
Ecosex Walking Tours, H2O Talks, and Roles in Their Next Movie

San Francisco, CA - Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens are two ecosexual artists in love with the Earth and they’re hitting the road to explore their home state of California and its fascinating relationship to water. Beth Stephens explains, “We are taking a caravan of performers, and exciting costumes, props, our dogs, a small film crew, a punk vegan cook, plus the mobile Pollination Pod. We’re doing life as art!” Annie Sprinkle explains, “This trip will create opportunities for the coming together of leading artists, ecologists, thinkers, activists, people in rural areas, and others to create, proclaim, challenge, debate, perform, stimulate, develop new strategies, and to pollinate the ecosex movement.

Sprinkle and Stephens are inviting people to join them as they do their “sexecological research—exploring the places where sexology and ecology intersect.” The public can come to a free pop-up performance art walking tour, listen to a an H20 talk, and be interviewed for a new documentary film, “Here Come the Ecosexuals.” Annie says "They don't call me Sprinkle for nothing! I love and respect water and hope to do it justice with these art projects." All the talks, shows, and filming will be staged entirely outdoors at stops in Santa Cruz, San Francisco, San Juan Bautista, Big Sur, Fresno, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and Arcata in Northern California, and in the fall in Southern California.

Beth and Annie want to entice their audiences to develop a more pleasurable, sustainable, and loving relationship with the Earth. Ecosexuality is a pathway to alternative approaches to current thinking about global ecological crises, environmental art and environmental activist strategies. “We’ll explore how to utilize ecosex strategies to protect, connect to, and maintain our precious water resources.”

Beth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle live and work together in a redwood forest in Boulder Creek and in an old Victorian cottage in San Francisco. They’ve been devoted to developing the ecosex movement through art, theory, practice and activism since 2004, have produced numerous ecosex symposiums, weddings marrying various nature entities, ecosex workshops, lectures, walking tours, art exhibits, and have made an award winning documentary, Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story (www.goodbyegauleymountain.org). Beth is an Art Professor at UCSC, Annie has a Ph.D. in Human Sexuality. They shift the metaphor from ‘Earth as mother’ to ‘Earth as lover.’ Together they are making the environmental movement a little more sexy, fun and diverse.

Stephens notes, "Water issues are urgent in California. Thankfully our project has grant support from the University of California Santa Cruz, UC Institute for Research in the Arts, and the Rydell Visual Arts Fund." Sprinkle promises that, “Even as we explore this serious issue, we are going to have some fun!”

Who are the ecosexuals and what do they do? Can the budding ecosexual movement help save California's water? Where is the “E spot?” These are some of the questions Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens will explain and document on their ten-week journey.

For more information: http://theecosexuals.ucsc.edu
For past projects: www.sexecology.org