Image courtesy of Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle
The screening will be accompanied by organic popcorn and ice-cold limeade, and will be followed by an open discussion on current ecological as well as gender-related issues. The subject of this film is as relevant today as it was when it was made in 2013, as current U.S. presidential orders have been dismantling major laws respecting the Earth.
Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story is an autobiographical documentary exploring the “pollen-amorous” love affair between artist-couple Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, and the biodiverse Appalachian Mountains. This documentary follows Stephens and Sprinkle on a journey home to Beth’s native West Virginia, to talk to rural community members, environmental activists, family and friends in order to speak out against mountain top removal (MTR) mining practices, which are destroying the forests, towns, and people they love.
Link to preview: http://sexecology.org/projects/goodbye-gauley-mountain-an-ecosexual- coming-out-story/
Q&A Participants
Lillian Ball is an ecological artist/activist working on wetland issues with a multidisciplinary background in anthropology, ethnographic film, and sculpture. She exhibits and lectures internationally, receiving fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, NEA and NYFA. She is a Ramsar Culture Network member, an advisor for the NYSDEC Awards, and a longtime appointee of Southold Land Preservation Committee. Ball’s ongoing WATERWASH® project series combines long-term public art with native habitat restoration, storm water remediation, and conservation through educational outreach. The original prototype transformed a water access park and was funded by the Long Island Sound Futures Fund as a concept that can be adapted to coastal situations worldwide. WATERWASH Bronx River, is an innovative collaborative green infrastructure solution to runoff pollution. Rocking the Boat job-skills apprentices planted 10,000 native plants. It cleans commercial parking runoff before entering the river, opened private property to pubic use, and was funded by the NYS Attorney General’s Office. http://www.lillianball.com/
Brooke Singer engages technoscience as an artist, educator, nonspecialist and collaborator. Her work lives “on” and “off” line in the form of websites, workshops, photographs, maps, installations, public art and performances that often involves participation in pursuit of social change. She is Associate Professor of New Media at Purchase College, State University of New York, a former fellow at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center (2010-11), co-founder of the art, technology and activist group Preemptive Media (2002-2008) and co-founder of La Casita Verde (2013-) a community garden and living lab in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Microsoft and Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy. http://www.brookesinger.net/
About the filmmakers
Annie Sprinkle was a New York City prostitute and porn star for twenty years, then morphed into an artist and sexologist. She has passionately explored sexuality for over forty years, sharing her experiences through making her own unique brand of feminist sex films, writing books and articles, visual art making, creating theater performances, and teaching. Sprinkle has consistently championed sex workers’ rights and health care and was one of the pivotal players of the Sex Positive Movement of the 1980's. Sprinkle has been collaborating on art projects with her partner, an artist and UCSC professor, Elizabeth Stephens. They are movers and shakers in the new “ecosex movement,” committed to making environmentalism more sexy, fun and diverse.
Beth Stephens is an interdisciplinary artist, activist and a professor at UC Santa Cruz. Her visual and performance work has explored themes of the body, queerness, and feminism for over 25 years. She has exhibited and performed in many museums, galleries and theaters across the U.S. and Europe, such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Vortex in Austin, PS1 in New York City, the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, Spain and the Museum Kunstpalast in Dusseldorf, Germany. SexEcology is the current focus of Stephens’ research. Stephens and Annie Sprinkle coined the term and have been developing this new field of research over the course of their twelve-year collaboration. They shift the metaphor of Earth as mother to Earth as lover, to inspire others to engage in a more mutual relationship with nature and with each other.
This event takes place in conjunction with As Far as the Heart Can See (September 21 – November 17, 2018).