Yellow Wedding Video and Photos

Yellow Wedding Video and Photos

At the One Yellow Rabbit Theatre in Calgary, Canada, on January 14, 2007, 300 guests witnessed our Yellow Wedding #3. Over thirty-five performance artists collaborated to create this event. We were legally married by Naomi Whalen, our wedding officiant. We asked for no material gifts, but invited people to help us co-create the wedding. This was a dream artist wedding and our one and only legal ceremony. Below are some of the photos by Ben Tsui, Corinne Cornish and Yarko Yopyk. Additional photographers are listed in the program. The Boob Cake was created by Cindy Baker, Anthea Black and Megan Morman.

Yellow Wedding Homily

Yellow Wedding Homily by Nomi Whalen

NOW THERE IS NO RAIN,
FOR EACH OF YOU WILL BE SHELTER FOR THE OTHER.
NOW THERE IS NO COLD,
FOR EACH OF YOU WILL BE WARMTH FOR THE OTHER.
NOW, THERE IS NO LONELINESS,
FOR EACH OF YOU WILL BE COMPANION TO THE OTHER.
NOW, YOU ARE TWO PEOPLE
BUT, WITH ONE PATH BEFORE YOU.
GO NOW TO YOUR DWELLING
TO ENTER INTO THE DAYS OF YOUR LIVES TOGETHER
AND, MAY YOUR DAYS BE GOOD, AND LONG, UPON THE EARTH.

(From an Apache ceremony)

Yellow Wedding Vows

Yellow Wedding Vows by Nomi Whalen

NOW THERE IS NO RAIN, FOR EACH OF YOU WILL BE SHELTER FOR THE OTHER. NOW THERE IS NO COLD, FOR EACH OF YOU WILL BE WARMTH FOR THE OTHER. NOW, THERE IS NO LONELINESS, FOR EACH OF YOU WILL BE COMPANION TO THE OTHER. NOW, YOU ARE TWO PEOPLE BUT, WITH ONE PATH BEFORE YOU. GO NOW TO YOUR DWELLING TO ENTER INTO THE DAYS OF YOUR LIVES TOGETHER AND, MAY YOUR DAYS BE GOOD, AND LONG, UPON THE EARTH. (From an Apache ceremony) I choose you to be my life partner. To live with you and laugh with you. To stand by your side And share in our home To be joyful with you. (Even when we grow old!) To bring out the best in you. And, for you, to be the most that I can. Therefore, I give myself to you now. To hold you always in my heart. To be blessed by the gift of your love... For all the days of my life. With this ring, I promise, and give to you, The truth, my trust, my support and my love. And, as this ring is round and has no end, so will my love have no end!

Artists’ Statement

artists' statement

cash_heart_spoon-yellow

WE ARE DELIGHTED TO ENTER INTO THE THIRD AND YELLOW YEAR of our seven-year Love Art Laboratory project with a big fat queer wedding in beautiful Calgary, Canada. We'll be getting legally married for the very first time. We are told that while Calgary has gay marriage rights, there are still a lot of people against gay marriage and who want to abolish it. So we will make our wedding into a public relations fest and a unique performance art event to celebrate our queerness and generate more love for each other and with the Calgary community.

OUR THEMES THIS YEAR WILL BE COURAGE AND POWER, and we are looking forward to exploring them whole-heartedly. We'll wear gold wedding attire, with a Samurai, Mad Max, super hero theme created by artist Victoria May, complete with deer antler crowns, veils and football pads. We will also wear shit kicker gold platform boots. Move over Wonder Woman, here comes Beth and Annie.

WE ARE MORE IN LOVE THAN EVER AND THRILLED TO COMMIT yet again to each other, and are continually looking for additional creative ways to help make the world a more peaceful, safe, and egalitarian place.

ONE YELLOW RABBIT, a well-established arts organization in Calgary, is having the twentieth anniversary of their High Performance Rodeo. Our first two weddings were small private affairs with our closest friends. This time our wedding and reception Will be open to the public as part of the Rodeo program. Anyone can attend. We will be collaborating with the Calgary community where our wedding will follow the form that we have established during our first two weddings. Essentially we ask our guests to collaborate with us in the co-creation of the wedding. This time, people from a different country, whom we have never met, will help us make a wedding by contributing their art, performances, energy and resources. We can hardly wait to see who will end up in our wedding. (See www.oyr.org for more information.)

WE OF COURSE DON'T KNOW YET how this yellow year will manifest. But we see taking more personal risks, doing some great political actions, and having the courage to go even deeper into our relationship. We hope to develop more powerful bodies, minds and spirits.

WE HOPE YOU WILL ENJOY OUR YELLOW WEDDING. If you can't make it, tune in online at our web site (www.loveartlab.org).

With courage, power, and lots of love,
ELIZABETH M. STEPHENS & ANNIE M. SPRINKLE

Orange Year Installation

Orange Year Installation

Each year at the end of the year, we do a gallery exhibit of the year’s projects. Here is our orange year exhibit, which we did at Femina Potens gallery in San Francisco. Click on the photos to see the full images.

End of Year Summary

End of Year Summary

A 10-minute stream-of-consciousness writing by Elizabeth Stephens

Orange year, a lot of love, love and sexuality, sexuality translated to love. Lovesex, loveart, lovesex. Powerful. Hot everything=sex, food, walking, sex, talking, performing. Lovesex, art sex, performancesex, sexuality. I could feel my sexuality at all moments. Powerful. Just being beside Annie is sexuality. Animal. Animals. In our den, in our bed, in our car, in our power. We performed, we made, we talked, we lived our lives as creative experiment. Experimenters, like scientists. We created situations, we invited our audiences to be creative and to be sexual for that matter. We threw many, many seeds into the waters, into the earth, into the air and probably into the fire. We threw up. Creativity. Breathing. Everything is breath. Breathing creatively, breathing sexually, Breathing sexuality. Hot juicy. The work, the sex. Hot Juicy just having breakfast. Our relationship is sexuality. Vienna, Chicago, Southern CA. All sexuality. Swimming at the gym. Sexuality. Every pore in my body is filled with creativity. Sexuality is creativity and visa versa. Second Chakra. Where emotions are held. Next to security, root, where the roots are unplugged. Creating new visions. New visions of the world, of the work. What is really new. Recycling. Recycling is environmentally friendly. The environment is filled with sexuality and creativity. The trees at Boulder Creek. Big sexual redwoods. Male and female all in one. Beautiful hermaphrodites all in one fell swoop. The weather, sexual. Emotions sexual. Performance creative, Sexuality is creative. Essential for moving up the charkas. Hooray for the charkas, cha, cha cha.

Security/Survival, Sexuality/Creativity. Everyday we do the first two-now time to add another. Power/Courage. These are everyday ingredients for moving through life. All ingredients are necessary. All ingredients can be fun or terrifying. All depends on ability to dive in. Sexuality can take so many forms. In this moment just listening to the sound of my baby’s fingers on her keyboard is sexy. Smell, sight, hearing and touch. Imagination, endless imagination. We played too. That is where Bob comes in. Bob who makes us take a walk and seriously play. Play is creative. Play is sexual. We should play more. Our work is play. Creativity in every move we make. Creativity even in our shits. Sexuality too. Creativity is hard work. We work so hard. Changing the way others see the world. Presenting love as art. What could be more creative? Love as Art. What could be move sexy. Good art is very sexy. Change is sexual. Changing the way I think about sexuality. Life as art, sexuality everywhere. Makes the world a much more colorful place. There is no place for war in the world of loveart. No room for pent up anger caused by not expressing sexuality. Nurture sexuality or it will eat you alive and lead to war. War is sexuality, homosexuality. The new year of power is on the way. Yellow-power/courage. Give me the courage to survive this next year with my sexuality intact.

A 10-minute stream-of-consciousness writing by Annie Sprinkle

Still very in love, what a miracle. Lots of creativity all the way around. Sex very beautiful, but not a lot of fucking brains out in the old way. Every moment with Beth is erotic, no matter what. Sex is new. Different. Post-menopausal. Tamoxifen fucks with my fucking. But am happy as a clam. We are lucky and delighted to live and work and play together. Sometimes low self esteem crept in. Crapped in.
Body changing. Belly bigger, hanging covering twat. The “apron” Antoinette calls it. My lust and longing and desire for Beth are thankfully still present after almost five years of being lovers. I think we have better sex than most people on the planet. But how to measure? It’s different, in any case, than courtship sex. I let go of what sex is supposed to look like. Am deeply satisfied. Creative juices flow freely.
Our new home in boulder creek took lots of juice. Beth makes great house sculpture. She provides, I nourish. We were monogamous. Adventurous monogamous. We ate too much and gained weight. We love to eat. Sensual delights. Starbucks fans. South Beach Diet fans. Bob was very much a part of orange year. Our third family member. A wise doggie.

Tamoxifen year. Made body stiff and many hot flashes. Hot asses, love passes. Warm, wet, bushy pussy. I want to spend my whole life with my face in her crotch. But we don’t have time. Other things to accomplish. Many nights of sleeping very closely. Sleeping sex. Zen. Wise people who thought up the chakras. Orange wedding was phenomenal, satisfying, very sex community.

Our lives are rich. Time is of the essence now. Life getting short. Days go fast. There’s so much more love to make. Sex to have. Life to live. Musicals to see.
Sexy candles, galleries, people. War rages. Death in Middle east, torture, killing, suffering all around the world. And we are safe in love. So it seems. But anything can happen. Sometimes I’m a little paranoid. Will she leave me? Am I not good enough?
Family, friends, pets, computers, life is a smorgasbord. Lets go to Boulder Creek. Let’s change the world again, one more time, at least. Let’s change. You change, I change, we all change change change.

Email consumes me. I’m a hedonist. I’m dying. I’m deep inside Annie Sprinkle. And deep inside Beth Stephens.

FREE SIDEWALK SEX CLINIC

FREE SIDEWALK SEX CLINIC

New York

We set up tables and chairs on 5th avenue (@ 27th St.) in front of the Museum of Sex. We invited experts Barbara Carrellas, Veronica Vera and Candida Royalle to join us. The five of us counseled the public about sex, love, and relationships from noon until 4:00 PM. We helped a gay Mormon man, a married couple who were tourists from India, a group of 18 year old students on a field trip, a woman whose husband had just admitted to an extramarital affair, an older gentleman whose wife didn't want him to touch her, a lesbian couple that wanted to be polyamorous, and dozens of others. All for free.

Good Vibes, San Francisco

We set up tables and chairs on Valencia Street (@17th St.) in front of Good Vibrations boutique during gay pride weekend. We invited experts Dr. Carol Queen, Dr. Robert Lawrence, and Violet Blue to join us. The five of us counseled the public about sex, love and relationships throughout the afternoon. We helped a college student majoring in gynecology, a bachelor party, a transsexual woman looking for a lover, a middle aged male virgin, a young woman whose own scent disgusted her and dozens of others.

Amherst

EROTIC ART-MAKING EVENTS

EROTIC ART-MAKING EVENTS

The Love Art Laboratory is doing its part to make the world a sexier and more creative place. We have presented several EROTIC ART MAKING AND GIVE AWAY EVENTS. (Inspired by the work of Yves Klein.) We gather thirty artists who would like to come make a whole bunch of erotic art for an evening and be willing to give it all away at the end of the night. We also invite thirty people of all genders, shapes and sizes, colors, who would like to be artist models and muses to come pose for the artists. We then set up a spectacularly sexy tableau vivant.

The public is invited to attend and enjoy this live-art making process/performance. Each guest is given a special ticket to exchange for a piece of erotic art of their choice, to take home with them. Thereby the Love Art Lab, the artists, the models, and the guests infuse a city with hundreds of pieces of erotic art in just four hours. We have done this at the Museum of Sex (N.Y.C.), the Center for Sex and Culture (S.F) and at the Minna Gallery (S.F.). Perhaps you would like to invite the Love Art Lab to do one of these events in your city/country.