Marriage with the Earth, the Moon and nature: who are ecosexuals and why they arrange unusual weddings - ForumDaily
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Marrying the Earth, Moon and Nature: Who Are Ecosexuals and Why They Have Unusual Weddings

When longtime partners Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stevens married Earth in 2008, it was a vibrant event in the green redwoods of Santa Cruz, California, with over 300 guests. As a result, the couple managed to hold weddings with many natural sites. The edition told in more detail CNN.

Photo: Shutterstock

As Sprinkle and Stevens read their vows to honor and cherish the Earth, they asked the guests to read them too. Each participant was presented with a bag of earth and invited to inhale the fragrance.

This Green Wedding wasn't the first time Sprinkle and Stevens got married, and it won't be the last. Since their first alliance, a family partnership with each other in 2003, the performance artists have married the sky, moon, snow and sun, and other natural objects. They hosted ceremonies around the world with hundreds of guests, even getting married on the Adriatic at the prestigious Venice Biennale.

After the Green Wedding, Sprinkle and Stevens gave their movement a name and manifesto. The couple proclaimed themselves "ecosexuals," eager to treat the Earth like a lover in order to save her.

“We're really trying to change the way people look at Earth,” Stevens said. “We want people to see the Earth not as a resource, but as a source of pleasure for life and health. We are truly interconnected."

At first glance, grandiose ceremonies may seem like something ridiculous. But as playful as Sprinkle and Stevens are, they solve serious problems. Artists used wedding rituals as a vehicle for LGBT people, sexually affirmative action at a time when same-sex couples could not get married in the United States, and for environmental activism at a time when it was becoming clear how dangerous a climate emergency was.

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According to Stevens, artists use "strategies of joy" and "absurdity."

Their nearly 20-year collaboration has resulted in eco-sexual performances, exhibitions, events, and theory. The new book, Taking an Eco-Sexual Position: Earth as a Lover, details their entire practice, from early love and intimacy projects to their annual weddings and documentaries such as Water Makes Us Wet.

Treating Earth as a lover (and not Earth as a mother) means that they are “madly, passionately and fiercely in love” with our planet, as they stated in their manifesto ten years ago.

“We shamelessly hug trees, massage the Earth with our feet, and talk erotically to plants,” they wrote. “We make love to the Earth through our senses.”

Wedding as a performance

Sprinkle and Stevens' first union was a domestic partnership in San Francisco ten years after they first met at Rutgers University. The ceremony was a public affair; they declared their love along with 33 other couples, both LGBTQ and straight. Sprinkle wore a silver disco dress and a feathered cape, while Stevens wore a silver tuxedo. The event included performances by the San Francisco Gay Men's Choir and The Believers, a transgender choir.

As the couple explained in Embracing an Ecosexual Position, it was then that they realized that they "can make the wedding ceremony a vehicle for further political conversation, community building and the generation of love."

At their subsequent weddings, which became part of a seven-year project called the Laboratory for the Art of Love, attendees were also able to participate and take an oath. At each event, they collaborated with different artists and refused material gifts.

Inspired by the work of their close friend and mentor, performance artist Linda Montano, Sprinkle and Stevens assigned a "chakra color" and theme to each of the seven years they worked on the project. In their first year, 2004 (or "Red Year"), the couple debuted in a series of public appearances with hugs and hours of kissing, set up sidewalk sex clinics, and held their "red wedding" at a former burlesque club. In the "orange year" they got married and the guests came in costumes of orange and carrot juicers. The Green Year, when they announced their eco-sexuality, was their fourth year.

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“Our love for each other just blossomed into a love for the community, which blossomed into a love for the environment,” Sprinkle said.

When they got married to the natural world, weddings became larger and more theatrical. In the "Blue Year", in addition to the Venice wedding with the sea, the artists were married to the sky in Oxford (Great Britain). This was followed by their "Purple Year" with an overnight rave marriage to the Moon and a daytime union with the Appalachian Mountains.

The last wedding in the seven-year project was a snow wedding in Ottawa, Canada, where everyone was dressed in white.

Although the Love Art Lab came to an end in 2011, they continued their wedding performances even as they embarked on a series of EARTH projects.

But even though Sprinkle and Stevens are no longer in the business of organizing weddings, other eco-sex enthusiasts have gotten to work. Shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic, a group called Future Farmers invited Sprinkle and Stevens to marry the fog at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and this September artist and scientist Evelina Yarosh will host a wedding between Sprinkle, Stevens and the Great Salt Lake Shrimp. (Utah).

“We passed the wedding torch on to future generations and future brides and grooms,” Sprinkle said. Their book even includes instructions on how to combine elements of nature for those who want to create their own ceremonies. Following a United Nations report that gave the most urgent assessment of climate change to date, the couple added: "Increasing love for the environment is needed now more than ever."

Sprinkle and Stevens have long used their joint projects to bring joy amid injustice and deprivation, to change people's relationships with the environment and make saving the planet a little sexier.

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