Tree humpers unite!

Performance artists Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens spread the gospel about ecosexuality and same-sex rights at the Edgy Women Festival

WATERING THE FLOWER BED: Sprinkle and Stephens Photo by JULIAN CASH

Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens insist they want to save the environment, one shag at a time.

Sprinkle, of course, is the legendary porn goddess, performance artist and author, and Stephens is a professor and celebrated performance artist in her own right. The two have been a couple for 10 years, and most recently have been working to change popular notions around weddings and marriage (see loveartlab.org).

On the line from their San Francisco home on separate phones, they give what is perhaps the most—um—relaxed interview I’ve conducted, ever. At one point, the toilet flushes (nature calls!) and later Sprinkle announces: “I’m out in the yard picking up dog crap!”

But amid it all is their serious call for everyone and anyone to ditch their uptight, repressed perspectives on sex and love, and expand their ways of seeing intimacy. Since 2005, they’ve held annual wedding ceremonies, where they marry each other in front of a different group of people. Then they decided marrying each other wasn’t enough.

In Croatia, they held a ceremony where they married the earth. In Britain, they married the sky. At another, they married the sea. Theirs was the first same-sex marriage in the Balkans. They got legally married in Calgary in 2007 (“that liberal bastion,” Sprinkle calls it) at the One Yellow Rabbit experimental theatre. On March 26, they will marry the snow in Ottawa (book your tickets now). “Everyone will be wearing white,” notes Sprinkle. And marrying so many elements has helped Stephens overcome her fear of flying: “Now, when I get into a plane, I know I’m going to be with one of my loves, the sky.” While in Montreal for the Edgy Women Festival (March 19–April 2), Sprinkle and Stephens will present their lecture/performance Adventures of the Love Art Lab, discussing radical sex education, artificial insemination, Sprinkle’s bout of breast cancer, their wedding habit and their erotic environmental activism. “There is so much going on, so many worries in the world, people tend to shut down,” says Sprinkle. “We try to use humour to open people up, and use sexiness to turn them on to environmentalism.”

They’ve spread the gospel about ecosexuality in many ways, including ecosex walking tours. Which prompts the question: what exactly happens on an ecosex walking tour? “We show people how to feel up a tree, how to hump a tree,” explains Stephens. “We want to show people how to bottom for the earth. You can also lie down in the grass, look up and have conceptual sex with the clouds.” Sprinkle says they also advise on how to talk dirty to your plants. (No need to check their IDs—these two are definitely from San Francisco.)

As for the same-sex marriage issue, which has been a done deal in Canada for five years but is still a hotly contested civil-rights struggle south of the border, Sprinkle and Stephens say they know some in the queer community think marriage is a waste of time and energy. “We’d like to prompt people to think about weddings and marriage in a different way,” says Sprinkle. “Who doesn’t love a public kiss? To us, it’s a form of performance art.”

“We’ve got to do something to save the environment,” adds Stephens. “We can’t go on this way. Whether you’re asexual, bisexual, monogamous or even single—you can be single and have sex with the earth anytime!” ■

SPRINKLE AND STEPHENS PERFORM ADVENTURES OF THE LOVE ART LAB AS PART OF THE EDGY WOMEN FESTIVAL, WHICH RUNS MARCH 19–APRIL 2.

SEE EDGYWOMEN.CA FOR FULL SCHEDULE AND DETAILS.

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