EAR Forest Artists in Residence
The Forest As Lover is a new audio piece made by Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle while in residence with the EAR Forest. It can now be listened to throughout the path, with the trees, every Thursday & Friday from 12pm-4pm.
For those who can’t access the walk, the audio is available here.
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Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle are ecosexuals, making art as collaborative artists, activists, feminists, and lovers. With a healthy dose of humor, desire, and subversion, Stephens and Sprinkle playfully provoke audiences to develop a more pleasurable and reciprocal relationship with the Earth. Many people imagine the Earth as a mother. What if we imagine the Earth as a lover? We were honored to welcome Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle as the inaugural artists-in-residence at Lewis & Clark College’s Experimental Art Research (EAR) Forest.
The EAR Forest is a 16-channel audio system of speakers nestled in the trees along a winding pathway behind the Lewis & Clark Art Department. It offers visiting artists, students, and faculty a space for creating audio works within the forest, allowing for immersive experiences, getting us closer to our own senses.
In addition to creating the new ecosexy sound installation during their April 2024 residency, the following events with Stephens and Sprinkle welcomed members of the Lewis & Clark community and the public:
- Thursday, April 4, 6:30pm, Miller 105: Water Makes Us Wet: Screening and Talk by EAR Forest Artists-in-Residence, Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle
- Monday, April 8, 11am, Fields Art Dept.: BYO Lunchtime Picnic During Partial Solar Eclipse With EAR Forest Artists-in-Residence: Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle
- Tuesday, April 9, 5-6:30pm, in the EAR Forest: Celebration! EAR Forest Artists-in-Residence, Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, Debut New Sound Installation at LC
More about the Artists
Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle have created multi-media art projects about love, sex, and queer ecologies together since 2002. In 1994, Beth became a professor of sculpture and intermedia at the University of California Santa Cruz. Annie was a sex worker from 1973 to 1995 and morphed into a feminist performance artist and sex educator. These days the duo make environmental films with an ecosexual gaze; they also create theater, performance art, eco-activism, produce symposiums and workshops, and co-direct the E.A.R.T.H. Lab SF. Their Wedding to the Earth and the Ecosex Manifesto launched the Ecosex Movement in 2008. Notably, they were official documenta 14 artists, received a 2019 Eureka Fellowship, and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship. Their new book, Assuming the Ecosexual Position—the Earth as Lover, published by University of Minnesota Press, is available from wherever books are sold.