SEASON 31 | September 2018

Water Makes Us Wet:
An Ecosexual Adventure

A new roadtrip film by Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens
Presented by The VORTEX

A sexy, fun, diverse, environmental activist film directed by artist/partners Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, narrated by trans icon Sandy Stone, and featuring a diverse range of folks including performance artists, biologists, water treatment plant workers, and scholars. This film chronicles the pleasures and politics of H2O from an ecosexual perspective. The VORTEX has been pleased to host Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens work for more than two decades, and we are thrilled that they will be here in person for the Austin premiere.

Join other pleasure activists and artists in a celebratory screening at The VORTEX, a longstanding hotbed of art, activism, and ecosexuality. The film will be followed by a Q&A with filmmakers Sprinkle and Stephens.

In the film, we travel around with Annie, a former sex worker, and Beth, a professor of art, and their dog Butch, in their E.A.R.T.H. Lab mobile unit, as they explore water in all its glorious forms. Ecosexuality shifts the metaphor “Earth as Mother” to “Earth as Lover” to create a more reciprocal and empathetic relationship with the natural world. When their road trip climaxes in a shocking event, their affectionate partnership with the Earth saves the day, reuniting their family, and affirming the power of water, life, and love.

Stephens & Sprinkle have been partners and collaborators for 17 fertile years. Annie was a Manhattan-based prostitute and porn star who morphed into an internationally known performance artist touring one-woman shows about her life in sex. Beth was a feisty punk rocker dyke turned interdisciplinary artist and professor at UCSC whose work explores themes of gender, queerness, and feminism. In 2008, Beth and Annie married the Earth and came out as ecosexuals. Their “Ecosex Manifesto” launched a movement, and they officially added the E to GLBTQI-E. Their award-winning documentary film about coal mining, Goodbye Gauley Mountain—An Ecosexual Love Story is distributed by Kino Lorber and is available on YouTube and iTunes. Currently they are working on a book about their work, “Assuming the Ecosexual Position” for University of Minnesota Press. Their visual art, films, and performances were presented in documenta 14 in 2016-2017. These girls have gone green and are dirty and proud.

Funded and supported in part by VORTEX Repertory Company, a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts, and by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department.