Annie Sprinkle

Annie Sprinkle was a NYC 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. Annie has consistently championed sex worker rights and health care and was one of the pivotal players of the Sex Positive Movement of the 1980’s. She got her BFA at School of Visual Arts in NYC was the first porn star to earn a Ph.D.. She’s a popular lecturer whose work is studied in many colleges and Universities. For the past 12 years she 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.
In 2013, Sprinkle proudly received the Artist/Activist/Scholar Award from Performance Studies International at Stanford, and was awarded the Acker Award for Excellence in the Avant Garde.

Annie M. Sprinkle is an internationally known multi-media artist whose work is often studied in History of Performance Art classes, gender studies and film studies at major Universities/Colleges. Ms. Sprinkle has continuously toured one-woman theater performances about her life since 1989, such as Post Porn Modernist and Hestory of Porn. One of the pivotal players in the 80’s “sex positive feminist movement,” Ms. Sprinkle’s art work has long championed sex education and equal rights. The film she produced and directed, The Sluts and Goddesses Video Workshop has played in well over 100 film festivals, at museums and galleries, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC. She became the first sex film star to successfully bridge into the world of art, and to earn a Ph.D., which she was awarded from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco, in 2002. She is a popular visiting artist at many Universities. Annie Sprinkle’s autobiographical book, Post Porn Modernist broke new ground in art books that include sexually oriented imagery. Her book,

Hard Core From the Heart; The Pleasures, Profits and Politics of Sex in Performance was published by Continuum Press for the academic market and won the Firecracker Alternative Book Award (2002).

Annie Sprinkle is a feminist filmmaker with a Ph.D. in Human Sexuality. She toured one-woman theater pieces, including Post Porn Modernist and Hardcore from the Heart, from 1989 to 2003 to 20+ countries. Before bridging into the art world, Sprinkle made X-rated films from 1974 to 1994. She also appeared in dozens of documentaries, B movies, and arty films. The people she met along the way shaped her involvement in social justice, human rights, and freedom of expression and she remains avidly committed to these ideals. She is heavily inspired by Fluxus. Awards include Kathy Acker Excellence in Avant-Garde, Performance Studies International Artist/Activist/Scholar Award, Tom of Finland Lifetime Achievement, and a Eureka Fellowship from Fleishhacker Foundation.

In 2002 Annie Sprinkle fell madly in love with artist Beth Stephens and has worked collaboratively with her ever since. They launched the Ecosex Movement (2008) and have been doing art experiments to make environmental activism more sexy, fun, and diverse. Career highlights include Wedding to the Sea at the Venice Biennale, being documenta 14 artists, and a screening of their documentary film Water Makes Us Wet at NY MoMA. Sprinkle’s sixth and newest book, co-authored with Beth Stephens (University of Minnesota Press), is Assuming the Ecosexual Position—Earth as Lover.