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Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle
Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, Big Nudes Descending a Staircase, 2007. Performance piece/ video still. Emmetropââ¬â¢s Transpalette installation space, Bourges, France. Photo by Julien Guezennec. Courtesy of the artists.Dear Erotic Art Enthusiasts,
Greetings from San Francisco, the clitoris of the USA. We are pleased to share with you a bit about our lives and work regarding the subject of “erotic” art.
We are two artists in love in the grand tradition of artist couples such as Yoko and John, Gertrude and Alice, Gilbert and George, Sonny and Cher, and Seigfried and Roy. Annie Sprinkle hails from the world of mainstream porn and prostitution from which she bridged into the art world in the mid 80s. She was a pivotal player in what is now known as the “sex positive feminist movement.” She became a performance artist who traveled internationally for 15 or so years doing performance art about her life in sex. Elizabeth Stephens was a very smart, sexy dyke playboy from West Virginia. She got herself a great education, and today is a working artist, as well as a full professor in the art department at the University of California in Santa Cruz. This is really amazing, because she was such a naughty girl in her youth, and has done rather provocative art projects that were about sexuality, feminism, and queer issues.
When we fell in love five and a half years ago, we found ourselves wanting to fold our individual art practices into one great, big, juicy collaboration. We became each other’s muses. Making art together was making love together. Both of us shared enthusiasm for the concepts “life is art,” and “the personal is political.” Today our motto is “eroticize everything.” We work in video, photography, sculpture, installation, printed matter, theater, activism, and interventions.
Today we are very sexually experienced middle-aged women, and what we used to think was erotic, is no longer very erotic. So we are exploring new possibilities. What is sexy for us now does not look like anything resembling mainstream erotica, fetish, or pornography—and it’s certainly not teenage and blonde.
Here are some examples of projects we have found to be erotic for us:
Hairotica—In 2005 Annie was diagnosed with breast cancer. When she began to lose her long Leo mane and pubes from chemotherapy, we decided to make the best of it. We asked photographer David Steinberg to shoot us making scissorly love while cutting off Annie’s hair and shaving her head and pussy bald. Then Beth had Annie shave her head in solidarity. With this series of photos we coined a new genre of photography: "cancer erotica." Most folks might not find cancer very sexy, but for us it was. Our hearts were open, and we loved each other so deeply, we faced a life-threatening situation together, and it turned us on. We made it into an installation piece. The photos were displayed as a slide show on a computer monitor, the monitor on a metal table, with an IV that had our hair spilling out of the bag.
Breast Cancer Ballet—We asked Annie’s radiologist for copies of Annie’s colorful radiation treatment plans—big scans of her breasts made on a fancy computer. We juxtaposed some of Annie’s old pin-up photos with the new topless scans, MRI images, bits of hair, pink bows, and other ephemera to create a series of collages. We thereby juxtaposed the erotic breast with the medicalized breast, the younger woman with the older woman. For us these are eyegasmic.
R. Muff—When we went to France last October for an artist residency, we came up with the theme, “We made love with Marcel Duchamp.” We were two women hot for Marcel D. and his work. So we made a “readymade,” as a wink and a nod to his spirit. We signed “R. Muff” (a lesbian take on R. Mutt) on our favorite mega-vibrator, which heated up and lit up with a red glow. It hung from three stories high down to the gallery goer’s crotch level. People could touch, fondle, even use the warm vibrator for the run of the exhibition. Also, as a performance event with about 100 people in attendance, we held a séance where we invoked the spirit of Marcel and made love with his spirit energetically. It was mystical, magical and very titillating.
Big Nudes Descending a Staircase—When we first entered the exhibition space for our show in France, we fell in love with the most beautiful spiral staircase running up the center of the building. Within minutes we stripped naked, filmed each other, and our own bodies from above, descending the staircase. We also recorded the sound of our dainty footsteps echoing throughout the building. The final product was projected on two big white perpendicular walls across from the staircase. As we had not appeared nude in public since gaining some extra pounds, it would take some courage to display our new bigger bodies. Sometimes we love our big bellies, sometimes we don’t. But when we do performance art, we always love our bellies exactly as they are.
Love Art Laboratory—Three and a half years ago we committed to doing the Love Art Laboratory, a project that is dedicated to doing projects that generate, celebrate, and glorify “love” (sex falls under that umbrella of course.) Our commitment is for seven years, a structure inspired by Linda M. Montano’s 14 Years of Living Art. The virtual home of our project is on our website where we house all our documentation and share our progress. We created The Love Art Lab in response to the violence of war, the anti-gay marriage movement, and the prevailing culture of cynicism. Each year we do a big performance art wedding in collaboration with other artists and various communities. We think celebrating love is very erotic. May 17 is our Green Wedding #4. And you are invited. Wear green. No gifts please, but we welcome your collaboration. At our web site you can see photos and short films of our other weddings.
Our hope is that the Love Art Laboratory will help make the world a more fun, sexy, tolerant, love-filled place. And expand the boundaries of what is “erotic.”
