Water Makes Us Wet: An Ecosexual Adventure
Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle
This film will also be available online on our VoD platform from March 29 to April 10, 2022. Please note: This film will only be available in Germany.
Artists Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens set out on a road trip through California in their E.A.R.T.H. Lab mobile unit with dog Butch. In their performative exploration, they look at the sexuality of water. With great curiosity and humour, they meet and interview numerous accomplices, including performance artists, biologists, water treatment plant workers and other scientists.
Their method is eco-sexuality: they shift the metaphor ofMother Earth to Earth as a lover, offering a healing strategy to those who strive to find an equitable coexistence in a more-than-human sense. They look for reciprocal and empathetic relationships between humanity and the environment, but they also present hard facts about the exploitation of water, and allow Mother Earth herself to comment off-screen on their film. Wherever needed, they perform inspiring healing rituals with fellow campaigners. In the mix are activist-performative, delightfully shrill and sexy elements, presented by Annie and Beth in positive Golden State style. Even when a traumatic event brings their journey to an abrupt end, their belief in the power of water, life, sex and love remains unbroken.
Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle
Annie Sprinkle is a performance artist, porn actress, author and sex therapist who helped shape the post-porn genre with films such as The Sluts & Goddesses Video Workshop (1990) and Linda/Les & Annie – The First Female to Male Trans Love Story (1989). Beth Stephens is an interdisciplinary artist and professor in the Art Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and directs the E.A.R.T.H. Lab SF.
Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens have been life partners since 2002 and founded the Ecosex movement together in 2008. They are the authors of the Ecosex Manifesto and producers of the award-winning films Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story and Water Makes Us Wet: An Ecosexual Adventure, which premiered at documenta 14 in Kassel.
Films by Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens
Water Makes Us Wet: An Ecosexual Adventure 2019 | Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story 2014
Awards for Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens
Guggenheim Fellowship 2021
Eureka Fellowship 2019
Kathy Acker Excellence in Avant-Garde Award 2019
Sheffield International Documentary Festival, nominated for: Sheffield Green Award (Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story), as well as Performance Studies International Artist/Activist/Scholar Award and the Tom of Finland Lifetime Achievement Award
