Date/Time
Date(s) - September 9, 2021
9:00 pm - 11:00 pm
Location
The Lyric
Water Makes Us Wet (2017), an independent film by artists Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle
On Thursday, September 9, the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art and the Lyric—an independent cinema in Fort Collins, Colorado—will partner to screen the 2017 film Water Makes Us Wet in conjunction with the current exhibition Reclamation: Recovering Our Relationship with Place, curated by CSU Professor of Painting Erika Osborne.
The film stars multi-media and performance artists Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, who chronicle “the pleasures and politics of H2O from an ‘ecosexual’ perspective.”
Water Makes Us Wet synopsis:
“With a poetic blend of curiosity, humor, sensuality and concern, this film chronicles the pleasures and politics of H2O from an ecosexual perspective. Travel around California with Annie, a former sex worker, Beth, a professor, and their dog Butch, in their E.A.R.T.H. Lab mobile unit, as they explore water in the Golden State. Ecosexuality shifts the metaphor “Earth as Mother” to “Earth as Lover” to create a more reciprocal and empathetic relationship with the natural world. Along the way, Annie and Beth interact with a diverse range of folks including performance artists, biologists, water treatment plant workers, scholars and others, climaxing in a shocking event that reaffirms the power of water, life and love.”
–watermakesuswet.ucsc.edu
Tickets:
Tickets are available through the Lyric. Prices are $10 for the general public and $8 for students and seniors.
Location:
Water Makes Us Wet will be screened at the Lyric’s outdoor stage, beginning at 9 p.m.
Sprinkle and Stephens will also give a brief introduction followed by a Q&A session before the film begins.
Free Water Bar:
The screening will feature a free water bar, with plain and infused water options available to all viewers and attendees.
About the artists:
Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle are multi-media performance artists who create work about sex, love, and queer ecologies. Stephens is an Art Professor at UC Santa Cruz, where she teaches and directs the E.A.R.T.H. Lab, and Sprinkle is a former sex worker and current sex educator with a Ph.D. in Human Sexuality. The pair have been creating together since 2002, and since 2008, have developed the ‘ecosexual’ movement through art, theory, practice, activism, and especially their Wedding to the Earth and the Ecosex Manifesto.
Currently, the artists focus on projects like Water Makes Us Wet—environmental films with an “ecosexual gaze.” In their own words, “By shifting the metaphor from ‘Earth as mother’ to ‘Earth as lover’ we aim to entice people to develop a more mutual, pleasurable, sustainable, and less destructive relationship with the environment.”
Stephens and Sprinkle also create in theater, performance art, and produce symposiums and workshops. They have been honored as official documenta 14 artists and awarded a 2019 Eureka Fellowship. Most recently, the pair were awarded a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship. Stephens and Sprinkle’s new book, Assuming the Ecosexual Position—the Earth as Lover, is available through the University of Minnesota Press.
Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle will also lead an Ecosex Walking Tour along the Cache la Poudre River on September 10, from 4 to 5:30 p.m.
This program and the larger exhibition, Reclamation: Recovering Our Relationship with Place, are presented in collaboration with the Energy Institute at Colorado State University and the CSU Department of Art and Art History. Reclamation is also part of the worldwide art project EXTRACTION: Art on the Edge of the Abyss.
Support has been generously provided City of Fort Collins Fort Fund, by the FUNd Endowment at CSU, and with additional support from Colorado Creative Industries. CCI and its activities are made possible through an annual appropriation from the Colorado General Assembly and federal funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.
This project was also made possible, in part, through a grant from the Lilla B. Morgan Memorial Endowment, which works to enhance the cultural development and atmosphere for the arts at Colorado State University. This fund benefits from the generous support of all those who love the arts.
