Annie Sprinkle

Annie Sprinkle
Sprinkle in 2005
Born	Ellen F. Steinberg July 23, 1954 (1954-07-23) (age 57) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Spouse	Beth Stephens (2007 – present)
Website
http://www.anniesprinkle.org/

Annie M. Sprinkle (born Ellen F. Steinberg; July 23, 1954) is an American and former prostitute, stripper, pornographic actress, cable television host, porn magazine editor, writer and sex film producer. She received a BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in 1986 and earned a degree in human sexuality from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco in 1992. Currently, Sprinkle works as a performance artist and sex educator. Sprinkle, who is ecosexual,^[1] married her long-time partner, Beth Stephens, in Canada on January 14, 2007.^[2]

Life and career

Sprinkle was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is known as the "prostitute and porn star turned sex educator and artist."^[3] Her best known theater and performance art piece is her Public Cervix Announcement, in which she invites the audience to "celebrate the female body" by viewing her cervix with a speculum and flashlight. She also performed The Legend of the Ancient Sacred Prostitute, in which she did a "sex magic" masturbation ritual on stage. She has toured one-woman shows internationally for 17 years, some of which were are titled Post Porn Modernist, Annie Sprinkle's Herstory of Porn, Hardcore from the Heart, and Exposed; Experiments in Love, Sex, Death and Art.^[4]

Her work and publications, spanning almost four decades, are studied in courses at numerous universities, in theater history, women's studies, and film studies courses. She also is a faculty member at The New School of Erotic Touch.^[5]

Annie Sprinkle began working at the ticket booth at Tucson's Plaza Cinema at 18, when Deep Throat was playing. The film was busted, and when Sprinkle had to appear in court as a witness, she met and fell in love with Deep Throat's director, Gerard Damiano, and became his mistress, following him to New York City where she lived for twenty years. Annie's first porn movie was Teenage Deviate, which was released in 1975. Perhaps her best known mainstream porn featured role was in Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle (co-directed by Sprinkle and sexploitation veteran Joseph W. Sarno) which was the #2 grossing porn film of 1981.

In 1991, Sprinkle created the Sluts and Goddesses workshop, which became the basis for her 1992 production The Sluts and Goddesses Video Workshop – Or How To Be A Sex Goddess in 101 Easy Steps, which was co-produced and co-directed with videographer Maria Beatty, and featured music by composer Pauline Oliveros. Sprinkle pioneered new genres of sexually explicit film and video such as edu-porn, gonzo, post porn, xxx docudrama, art porn, and feminist erotica.

She starred in Nick Zedd's experimental films War Is Menstrual Envy (1992), Ecstasy In Entropy (1999), and Electra Elf: The Beginning (2005).

She has appeared in almost 200 films, including hard and softcore pornography, B movies, loops, numerous documentaries, various TV shows including four HBO Real Sex programs. She has produced, directed, and starred in several of her own films, such as Annie Sprinkle's Herstory of Porn, "Annie Sprinkle's Amazing World of Orgasm, and "Linda/Les & Annie--The First Female to Male Transsexual Love Story". These films played in hundreds of film festivals, in museums and galleries. Her work in adult films has earned her a spot on the Adult Star Path of Fame in Edison, New Jersey, she's in the AVN Hall of Fame, the XRCO Hall of Fame. For three decades she has presented her work as a visiting artist at many major universities and colleges in the USA and Europe. Currently her lecture presentation is called "My Life and Work as a Feminist Porn Activist, Radical Sex Educator, and Ecosexual." She also has done dozens of "Free Sidewalk Sex Clinics," offering free sex education to the public in public space.

Sprinkle's work has always been about sexuality, with a political, spiritual, and artistic bent. In December 2005, she committed to doing seven years of art projects about love with her wife and art collaborator, Beth Stephens. They call this their Love Art Laboratory. Part of their project was to do an experimental art wedding each year, and each year had a different theme and color. The seven-year structure was adapted to their project by invitation of artist Linda M. Montano.^[6] Sprinkle and Stephens have done fifteen art weddings, eleven with ecosexual themes. They married the Earth, Sky, Sea, Moon, Appalachian Mountains and the Sun in six different countries. These weddings are well documented at www.loveartlab.org

Sprinkle and Stephens have been exploring their ecosexuality since they took the Earth as their lover and married it in a ceremony presided over by Guillermo Gómez-Peña on May 2008 in Santa Cruz. They married the Moon with artist Reverend Billy presiding. They also created a new field of research they coined Sexecology—which explores the places where sexology and ecology intersect. They've produced two Ecosex Symposiums (see sexecology.org), and facilitate ecosex walking tours. Their co-created experimental theater piece, Exposed: Experiments in Love, Sex, Death and Art, was favorably reviewed in the New York Times. They also co-created the theater piece, currently touring, Dirty Sexecology—25 Ways to Make Love to the Earth.

According to John Heidenry, Annie Sprinkle was the lover of the Dutch artist, and European Chairman of the Fluxus art movement, Willem de Ridder, and of the erotic writer and author Marco Vassi.^{[citation needed]} Sprinkle has also long championed sex worker rights and health care. She worked as a prostitute from 1973 until 1993.

Nickname

Steinberg first gave herself the name "Annie" when she started working in pornography. As her career continued she had an epiphany one night and she says "as if from the goddess herself" the name Annie Sprinkle came to her. She thought the name appropriate because "I was attracted by the sprinkles over ice cones (I am a bit of a sugaraholic!) and I love waterfalls, urine, vaginal fluids, sweat, anything wet. So the name "Annie Sprinkle" seemed perfect.^[7]

Bibliography

Annie Sprinkle as The Neo Sacred Prostitute.

• Sprinkle, A. Post-porn modernist: my 25 years as a multimedia whore. Cleis Press, 1998. ISBN 1-57344-039-6
• Sprinkle, A. Dr. Sprinkle's Spectacular Sex—Make Over Your Love Life with One of the Worlds Greatest Sex Experts. Tarcher/PEnguin 2005. ISBN 1-58542-412-9
• Sprinkle, A. Hardcore from the Heart—The Pleasures, Profits and Politics of Sex in Performance. Continuum International Publishing Group 2001 ISBN 0-8264-4893-3
• Heidenry, John. What Wild Ecstasy. The Rise and Fall of the Sexual Revolution. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. Reviewed by Robert Christgau in The New York Times, April 27, 1997.

See also

• Sex-positive feminism
• International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Annie Sprinkle

• Annie Sprinkle's official website
• Annie's Love Art Laboratory website
• Annie teaches vulva massage and masturbation at The New School of Erotic Touch
• Annie Sprinkle's artworks presented by aeroplastics contemporary, Brussels
• Documenting the Orgasm: An Interview With Post-porn Modernist and Feminist Art Teacher, Annie Sprinkle by Gary Morris, LiP Magazine: 2002.
• How Psychedelics Informed My Sex Life and Sex Work
• Annie Sprinkle video, Metamorpasexual
• Annie Sprinkle at the Internet Movie Database
• Annie Sprinkle at the Internet Adult Film Database
• Annie Sprinkle at the Adult Film Database