blue wedding to the sky

Blue Wedding to the Sky Video and Photos

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Blue Wedding to the Sky Video and Photos

At the historic Grove House in Oxford, England, we married our lover the Sky. We asked for no material gifts, but invited people to collaborate on the creation of the wedding. Many wonderful creative people were extraordinarily generous in their offerings. The wedding was produced by Luke Dixon of the International Workshop Festival. So we also did a five-day workshop that led up to the wedding. Fourteen people attended our Making Love into Art and Art into Love Workshop, then presented their creations at the wedding. It poured rain most of the five days, and cleared up just in time for the wedding. Our Mistress of Ceremonies was Veronica Hart, the lovely adult film star and director. The owner of Grove House, Polly McLean, provided a beautiful environment in which to do the wedding. As some folks wanted to bring their children, we decided to stretch our boundaries and try to do a “family friendly” performance event. Something we have never done before! It was a real challenge, but we all pulled it off without a glitch. (A more detailed story to follow soon. For more info about the collaborators view the program.) Photos by Del La Grace Volcano, Sarah Ainsley, and Petra Joy

Blue Wedding to the Sky Homily

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Blue Wedding to the Sky Homily

Written and Performed by Luke Dixon

In southern Africa the Xhosa people call a sky without clouds a lonely sky. We are here today to ensure that the sky will never be lonely again. We are here today to marry the sky. The blue of the sky reminds us of the blue of the fifth chakra. The chakra of open clear communication, of feelings and of thoughts and of creativity. It is the chakra of releasing and of breathing. It is the chakra of the life-force and of healing. As we look at the sky above us, let us remember the power and importance of communication – of being free to speak what is in our hearts and listen to what is in the hearts of others. Annie and Beth I will now ask you to say your vows.

Blue Wedding to the Sky Vows

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Blue Wedding to the Sky Vows

Blue Wedding of Sky Photos

Vows to the Sky (June 2009)

Luke: Annie and Beth, are you ready to take your vows?
Beth: Yes, Annie: Yes
Luke: What is your gift to the earth?
Beth to Annie: I know that I am not always the best communicator but this year I vow to work on my communication skills. I will go to whatever classes you, dear Annie, decide will help the combined efforts of my throat, tongue and mind to form words and sounds that will express my thoughts and feelings to their fullest and most accurate meaning. I would like to extend my vows to embrace a dialogical aesthetic. I intend to include ACTIVE LISTENING into my art-life process. This will involve an even greater dependence on and vulnerability to my collaborator(s)/audience(s) and I embrace this conversation. I would also like to thank Geoffrey Hendricks aka Cloudsmith who is doing a headstand in Nova Scotia, as we speak, to celebrate the sky.
Annie to Beth: We’ve been together seven glorious years. I love you so much. Good clear communication is an important key to any relationship. So today I vow to learn new, and better ways to have an even deeper communication with you. I vow to do more shamanic journeying and spiritual explorations so that I can communicate more fully with my higher self, and with something even bigger than us, and bring that into our relationship. I vow to become a better listener.

Rings for the Brides

Luke: To remind you of your vows each day you will have rings. May we have the rings please?
Ring bearer comes out of the second story window and repels down the wall and presents the rings. The brides put them on each other

Carbon Capture Kiss

Claire: New scientific research shows that there might be ways to capture the carbon and help stop global warming. We can all do our part with a carbon capture kiss. Let me demonstrate. Do it with another person, or with yourself by putting your hand in front of your mouth.
Luke: You may now carbon capture kiss the brides, and each other. (to audience)

The Vows

Luke: Annie and Beth, are you ready to take your vows to the sky?
Annie: Yes, Beth: Yes
Annie: (Yelling) SKY, I LOVE YOU!! YOU GIVE ME SO MUCH PLEASURE. I LOVE YOUR CLOUDS, YOUR AIR, YOUR RAIN, YOUR BEAUTY. I NEED YOU and WANT TO BE WITH YOU FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. I WANT TO SUPPORT YOU. I AM NOTHING WITHOUT YOU.
1. I vow to make more efforts towards becoming a vegetarian. 2. I vow to learn more about global warming and sky pollution and find things that I can do to help solve the problems. 3. I vow to love and appreciate all of you more each day and to listen to you.
Beth:
1. I vow to work towards becoming vegetarian 2. I vow to work towards ending mountain top removal 3. I vow to thank the sky everyday for being the medium that provides us with oxygen, wind, rain, sunlight, starlight, moonlight and Blue. THANK YOU SKY!!
Luke to Audience: Do any of you wish to make vows to the sky?
Audience: We DO!!!
Luke: Beth, do you promise to love, honor and breath in the sky for as long as you shall live?
Beth: I DO!
Luke: Annie, do you promise to love, honor and breath in the sky for as long as you shall live?
Annie: I DO!
Luke (to audience): Do you promise to love, honor and breath in the sky for as long as you shall live?
Those of you that FEEL THEY ARE READY AND WOULD LIKE to commit to love, honor and breath in the sky for as long as you both shall live, say I DO.
Audience: I do!
Luke: May we have the ring for the sky please?

OfferRing to the Groom

(And Craftsman's Vow)
Ariel: OH SKY! Groom to these two earthly maidens, on whose behalf have I crafted, from earthly rock, this ring of stone, and on whose behalf, do I now offer this ring, as an OfferRing, to you, which, as a token of your acceptance, and, in your own time, Take! And Hold! AND WHEN, OH SKY! After a night of darkness, You regain your blueness, and you wonder or question, ‘Did I really wed these earthly brides?’ THEN, just gaze upon this ring, and you will be sweetly reminded. AND THEN, OH SKY! In exchange for your accepting this ring, your taking it (in your own time), your holding it, your remembering upon it, and your cherishing your brides, THEN, do I, its earthly crafty craftsman, DO HEREBY SOLEMNLY VOW, to regard your doing so, as more than adequate recompense, for this, my labour of love, AND DO I FURTHER SOLEMNLY VOW, NOT to submit a bill to NEITHER you, NOR the brides, NEVER..

Proclamation

LUKE: I now pronounce you MARRIED TO THE SKY!!! You may now kiss the SKY!

Recession

Jimmy Hendrix’s Purple Haze Plays Loud! Brides leave the stage first, then everyone else recesses.

Artists’ Statement

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Artists' Statement

WE ARE THE LOVE ART LABORATORY, an artist couple dedicated to doing art projects that explore, generate, and celebrate love. We orchestrate performance art weddings in collaboration with various international communities. Each wedding is site-specific, interactive, and utilizes a different theme and color based on the seven chakra system (inspired by artist Linda Montano's 14 Years of Living Art.) The Love Art Laboratory grew out of our response to the violence of war, the anti-gay marriage movement, and the corporate greed causing the destruction of our planet. Our projects are symbolic gestures, which aim to instill hope, to be an antidote to fear, and act as a call to action.

THIS PAST YEAR, WE MARRIED the Earth in a magnificent redwood tree grove in California, we married the Sky in Oxford, England, and we had what may have been the first queer wedding in the Balkans, in Zagreb, Croatia. Hundreds of people attended these weddings and helped to create them through their generous collaborations.

FOR OUR SEVENTH WEDDING, AND IN OUR BLUE YEAR we will marry the Sea. We are passionately in love with her and desire to take care of her in order to help save her. We are eco-sexuals, meaning that we find nature incredibly romantic, extraordinarily sensual, and an exquisite lover. Additionally, we are "sexecologists," who combine sexology and ecology, and we intend to make the environmental movement a little sexier.

WHY MARRY THE SEA IN VENICE? During the Renaissance, the Doge (chief magistrate) decreed that, "Venice must marry the sea as a man marries a women and thus become her Lord." So each year the Doge would go out on a boat and drop a ring into the water. But can people really Lord over the Sea? What is perfectly clear is that people do have the power to destroy her, and are rapidly doing so. We will follow the tradition of marrying the Sea in Venice—as two women who have moved beyond the dominant-male and submissive-female dynamic, as seductive eco-sexual artists, and as global citizens who care deeply about the welfare of our planet.

THE FEAR SOCIETY PAVILION IS THE PERFECT PLACE for this wedding as we are afraid of the total destruction of our beautiful environment. The Sea has a fast growing cancer made of islands of plastic the size of Texas. She is suffocating from gases caused by our pollution. Globally, 90% of her large fish have been wiped out. She's overheating. Her reefs have been brutally destroyed. She's being raped and... Need we go on? And we simply can't live without her.

LOVING THE SEA EROTICALLY takes us all deliciously deep, deep, deep inside our primordial selves. Our bodies are made largely of water so in fact we are the Sea. We hope that our guests will take vows to love and protect the Sea along with us. Now let's get wet!

ANNIE M. SPRINKLE & ELIZABETH M. STEPHENS