In the field of politics of sexuality and its representational strategies, Sprinkle and Stephens introduce queer-art making strategies for social change to broader queer communities. As a follow up to Beatriz Preciado’s The Death of the Clinic? conference in March, both artists and activists continue examining and challenging the implications of the neoliberal condition, by introducing new forms of activism and critical languages as responses to the collapse of disciplinary institutions and the revision of medical, socio-political and audiovisual discourses centred around the body.
Sprinkle and Stephens propose a new field of research, SexEcology, which explores the places where sexology and ecology intersect. They use experimental theatre, visual art, and video as tools to express and assume this ecosexual position. Political an environmental activism also become an inextricable and essential part of the SexEcology doctrine. Ecosexual is an identity; for some, it is the primary sexual identity. Ecosexuals can be GLBTQI, heterosexual, asexual, and/or Other. Ecosex holds that we are all part of, not separate from, nature.
Along with the performative lecture, there is a showing of Sprinkle and Stephen’s movie Goodbye Gauley Mountain-An Ecosexual Love Story. It tells the story of both ecosexual artist-activists as they join forces with rural West Virginians in a quest for environmental social justice. Goodbye Gauley Mountain raises awareness about the devastation of mountain top removal (MTR) mining while celebrating the Earth in, quoting Sprinkle and Stephens, all her queer ecosexual glory.
As the culminating activity of the Somateca program, Sprinkle and Stephens’ intervention is as an opportunity to answer and resolve any pending questions that have arisen throughout the course.
Participants
Annie Sprinkle, artist, activist and lecturer. Sprinkle started out in X-rated pictures, has since produced her own brand of feminist films as a reaction against the heteronormative rhetoric of mainstream pornography. Currently, she lectures at colleges and universities about her life, her work in the sex community and about ecosexuality. Her performative and video works has been internationally shown in museums and art centers. Her 1990 film, The Sluts & Goddesses Video Workshop Or How to Be A Sex Goddess in 101 Easy Steps, is considered one of the foundations of the post-porn movement.
Beth Stephens, artist and lecturer. Stephens is an artist whose filmmaking grew out of her previous queer installations, photography projects, and body-based performance art. She is a Professor of Art at University of California, Santa Cruz, and an affiliate of Digital Art and New Media.
Beatriz Preciado is a philosopher and activist. She has published Manifiesto Contra-Sexual (Balland, 2000), Testo Yonqui (Espasa Calpe, 2008), Terror Anal (epilogue to El Deseo Homosexual by Guy Hocquenghem, Melusina, 2009) and Pornotopía. Arquitectura y Sexualidad en Playboy durante la Guerra Fría (Anagrama, 2010). She teaches political history of the body and queer theory in Somateca, one the Critical Practices Program at Museo Reina Sofía, and in MACBA's Independent Studies Program, and also at University of Paris VIII.
