Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens
Conducted on February 11th, 2021 on a Zoom call from Davis to Santa Cruz, this interview features sexologist, writer, and filmmaker Annie Sprinkle, as well as her wife, Beth Stephens - a filmmaker, writer, and professor at UC Santa Cruz. Together they have created films such as Water Makes Us Wet and Goodbye Gauley Mountain, written and published books like Assuming the Ecosexual Position, as well as doing performances and expositions which gave birth to their ecosexual movement that brings sex-positivity, queerness, and environmentalism to feminism.
Annie Sprinkle’s website: https://anniesprinkle.org/
Beth Stephens’ website: http://elizabethstephens.org/
Sex Ecology website: http://sexecology.org/
Kyla Jennell: So during your creation of Water Makes Us Wet, I know that you guys went and you talked to experts. Did any of them provide you any sort of information that made you want to shift the focus of that film; any interesting things that made you say, “hey, maybe we should bring more attention to that with this film?”
Beth Stephens: Well, we are process based artists, and so we had already shifted our focus many times. By the time we really started interviewing people, the big climax of the film made us realize that we could get killed before the film was over if we didn't focus. So even though we went to visit certain experts -- we went and visited John Smith at the septic place in San Francisco and the water treatment plant -- it really was sort of organic. And a lot of the shifts probably happened in the editing room. We started out pretty casually, and then these things started happening, the floods and the drought and the accident, and then we just realized “we have to really focus on this now”. So it was more than the interviews that caused the shift, it was natural elements, the catastrophes in life. I realized that we needed to not shift but focus.
Annie Sprinkle: We just knew in the beginning that we wanted to make a film about water from multiple perspectives, because we were living in the mountains in California where there was a big drought. But then the floods came, and then the fires are now here. So now we're working on a film about fire. I think process-oriented filmmakers would describe us; we don't plan ahead much. We go where we're drawn, we follow where our muses, hearts, clitoruses, and spirits lead us.
Kyla Jennell: So comparing both of your biographies, you two have different backgrounds that shaped and helped create your feminist and pro-sex identity. And then you also created the ecosexual movement and your book Assuming the Ecosexual Position. What turned you on to adding this more ecological side on to exploring sexuality?
Annie Sprinkle: I think our love just grew and grew. We were both solo artists, had solo careers, and our work was focused on our own sexuality or our own lives. And then when we married the earth, we took the earth as a lover, as an art project, but it sunk in. When you do a ritual, to love, honor, and cherish the earth, it has an impact. And so that's when we started thinking in terms of ecosystems and that we ARE the earth.
Beth Stephens: And also at that wedding, I had to hire an environmental artist couple, Helen and Newton Harrison, and they did the homily of the green wedding when we married the earth. I'd been talking to Newton a lot about mountaintop removal and how destructive it was, and his last words in that homily were, "So now let us go to the mountains." And that was really the genesis of me starting to think, “well, I should make a film about this thing in West Virginia”.
Our environmental films incorporate a lot of joy and pleasure and love, which is really not what you see in most environmental activist films. But I just feel that those things actually are there so that ecosexuality can really provide some hope for the future in a very dark landscape. Also right now, it feels like there's a lot of censorship and a lot of suppression of different kinds of sexualities and sexual freedom. And that was really how we started doing ecosexuality and doing these eco-sex films.
Annie Sprinkle: We didn't invent the word eco-sex, but we created a manifesto, and in our manifesto we say what our version of eco-sex was, and it was a call to action. So it really took off. And now a lot of people are doing work, films and all kinds of projects about eco-sex, being loving -- imagining being lovers with the earth.
Kyla Jennell: So, when you created the ecosexual movement and that call to action with your manifesto, what was the most difficult task in creating both a sex-positive and environmentally conscious sort of campaign?
Beth Stephens: I don't think anything is hard. We, we have so much fun. And we are so privileged and lucky and in love with each other and in love with the earth, and then we love our work. We've met lots of resistance; people poopoo us all the time.
Annie Sprinkle: Controversial with the right wing...
Beth Stephens: It was controversial with the left wing too; I mean they don't feel like we're serious enough, , and that, perhaps we're disrespectful. I mean, GLBTQ people -- my students -- have accused us of not not taking GLBTQ issues seriously enough or challenging them by making this new category of sexuality.
Annie Sprinkle: We're riding up against a sex-negative culture. So when we say, “Oh, the tree’s our lover, their minds go crazy, because we're not supposed to think that way. We're not supposed to think of sex. The bee pollinating the flower is a live sex show, so we're playing with a fantasy and imagination. Sex is just taboo. It's political. It's a feminist issue.
Kyla Jennell: What are some of the ways that you encourage both new people to come into viewing these different mediums, and then also reaching out to people who are already interested?
Annie Sprinkle: When Beth made Goodbye Gauly Mountain, it was her first feature film, obviously, we were a couple in it and we're queer. We asked a lot of people to think of any other queer environmental activist film -- there weren't any. So it's finding a niche that's needed. A lot of queers are environmentally conscious, but where are the films? Even people who don't agree with us, we hope they'll watch. So someone who might be interested in mountaintop removal, coal mining, might watch our film, and disagree. And we try not to bore people, for sure. And we try to make the medicine go down with humor.
Beth Stephens: But I think in terms of sex positivity, this culture was not always so conservative. When we started in the 80s, the 70s and 80s and 90s, it was really a pretty sex positive culture, and we came up in it -- we started making our work in that culture, we started showing our work to other people, and we created networks of like-minded galleries, museums, distributors, magazines, and so forth.
And as time’s gone by, those things have diminished to some extent, but we still have networks of people who really help us reach other audiences or who will sponsor our events. I'm a professor down at UC Santa Cruz and I have a center down there where I get funding from private funders and from grants and from the university itself, we both use the space there. Annie's a research associate there, and that's the sort of hub of activity that we use to sponsor things. People invite us to lecture quite a lot because I think what we're doing, you can think about it academically right now. And if you think about feminist science studies, or just, eco-feminism as the new materialism, right? A lot of people are doing this work. There's Indigenous Studies: there's connection between the human and the nonhuman. We also fit into the whole conversation about queer rights and queer agency and same-sex marriage. So we hit a lot of conversations that are happening right now, and we have great support systems from the arts, from academia, and from the community. We spent years and years building these structures -- these are friendship networks too; it's not just business.
Kyla Jennell: And then, Annie, I'm going back to your biography which says that you worked in the porn industry, but that you didn’t think you were a feminist. What were some of your influences that inspired you to start becoming a feminist?
Annie Sprinkle: I say when I look back, I was a feminist; I was a sex-positive feminist, I thought feminists were anti-sex. But once I realized there were women that were like me - that identify as feminist -- that I could be a feminist. Linda Lovelace was my role model at 18 years old, she made the film Deep Throat. And I was interested in film, and I was interested in sex. And that was the first porn movie I saw; I was deeply inspired and profoundly moved by the performance she did and it changed my life.
But I think I was born and raised to be a feminist, I just assumed that you couldn't make porn and be a feminist. And we're still seeing the same arguments today -- the anti porn feminists. There's as much censorship now, I tell you. I used to go around to colleges 25 years ago and show clips from those films. I won't do it anymore because students, a lot of students and colleges are too uptight about it now.
Also, part of our work is redefining what sex is, and then that pisses a lot of people off or people roll their eyes. Eco-sex is a very interesting topic. We are sex positive feminists filmmakers, and we're butting up against some of those same issues that pornography did in the day -- it's just different form.
Beth Stephens: We're the product of those movements. We also have the ghosts of all the hippies hovering around. People think like, "Oh, god, this is so hippie” or, “this is so new age”. But when you start breaking down all of the parts of what we're doing,, we're products of these historical moments.
Kyla Jennell: So Beth, you said in your own biography, you began as a visual artist with a particular interest in sculptures. So what exactly initiated your broadening to film, photography, magazines, writing; what was the inspiration for you?
Beth Stephens: There was a critic named Rosalind Krauss, a very famous critic, and she wrote an essay called “Sculpture in the Expanded Field”. And I was more of a sculptor who was working in an expanded field because when I got out of school in the 80s, you could do installations with film components. When I was in graduate school getting my MFA, I got a little disillusioned with sculpture, and I decided I wanted to branch out into doing installation and photography together. I wanted to work with issues of the female gaze and -- being a big ol lesbian -- I sometimes identify more with the male gaze. So I thought I would explore the lesbian gaze and see where the crossover was between the female gaze and the male gaze, this gaze and that gaze.
Annie Sprinkle: Now we explored the eco-sexual gaze, and we've come to realize that making art -- big photographs in frames and sculpture -- and just making stuff is nowhere near as environmental as doing some digital filmmaking. So we've rolled with the times and as we're more eco-concerned with shipping costs and materials and using plastic and even wood.
Beth Stephens: And especially now with so many theaters and galleries and museums being shut down, you can still distribute your film work over the internet or stream it. But there's an environmental cost to streaming and all the servers; there's nothing innocent anymore.
Annie Sprinkle: We're working all the time, and we just finished a work sample for a new film about fire, and we are applying for grants. But it's not easy; I gave up filmmaking for 10 years pretty much because of the costs, and there's no money in it unless you're a big director or hit on something. It's almost like the lottery. So I stopped, but she [Beth]’s got the drive. This film on fires is the third in a trilogy of ecosexual documentary films, and we've got lots of little shorts and a ton of performance art documentation. We scrape it together, but it's not cheap and there's no real profit. You don't even come close to paying back what you spend on your film. I mean, we went around for a month filming for the water film, but we had a great time!
Kyla Jennell: And then just as a last thought, because you did say if you're not super big or you don't hit a certain niche, that it's very hard to be compensated by the films that you create; what keeps you motivated then?
Annie Sprinkle: I think getting to express ourselves and say our piece, like the Madonna song "Express Yourself". You have something you want to tell people and you're excited about something, an idea. I've been documenting my sex life since I was 17. Actually, when I first had sex, I started writing; I think it’s just wanting to share what I'm enthusiastic about with others.
Beth Stephens: Well also making something that's beautiful; to be able to create a vision, to be able to create your vision and then be met in the world with an audience. That meeting with you, your work, and an audience, is really so electric and fabulous. And I think that our work has changed some of the conversation around environmentalism, it's giving people new ways to think about things, and that's exciting.
I love a great conversation, and I think that what keeps me motivated is that I want to continue these cultural conversations and because I don't want them to be just hijacked by mainstream films or by a certain kind of documentary film. I feel like there are other ways to engage reality; there are other opinions that I think are important to be out there, especially feminist, queer visions of what the world could be. And by making the films and putting them out in the world, we can change the ways people see it.
Annie Sprinkle: Well ultimately, we're trying to make the world more happy, more fun, and nice in a way we think could help. We're pleasure activists, we’re students, and we're also teachers for each other. Just yesterday, we got about a four page letter from a 24 year old, gender-fluid person in England who found out about our work and was like, “Oh, my God, I've been waiting all my life to find you”. So there are also people out there who also identify as ecosexuals and making someone understand themselves better or learning something about themselves--
Beth Stephens: --and validating them. That's gratifying.
Annie Sprinkle: So we have a great time and we just want to spread the love.
This interview was hosted by aspiring director and student, Kyla Jennell, a second-year at UC Davis double-majoring in Cinema/Digital Media and French. At the moment, she is focusing her energy on her studies and work, but hopes to one day create her own films for the public to view and enjoy.