KATRINA FOX catches up with the extraordinary Annie Sprinkle

For the past 30 years, she worked as a stripper, porn star and hooker, and had sex with thousands of people, including dwarves, amputees and hermaphrodites. But for the past three years, Annie Sprinkle, the American 'post-porn modernist' performance artist has been in a monogamous lesbian relationship and is creating work on the theme of love. After years of preferring men sexually, Annie Sprinkle, whose performance art projects include her infamous Public Cervix Announcement where audience members could view her cervix with the help of a speculum and torch and which culminated in a masturbation ritual, fell in love with trans-media artist and art professor Elizabeth Stephens. "We were friends since 1990 but didn't go to bed together, and I ran into her and asked her for a date three years ago, and we've been together since then which was the first kiss, lovemaking and falling in love - it was love at first kiss," Sprinkle says.

Last year the couple committed to exploring love as art through various projects, including The Wedding, in which the two women will get married once a year for seven years. The weddings are performance art events, where the brides and the guests co-create the ceremonies and art. Each year is based on the body's chakras and their corresponding themes and colours. The first wedding with a 'red' theme of security was held in New York in December last year. "We'd made an appointment to get married here in San Francisco at City Hall," Stephens explains. "One day before our appointment, the wedding was cancelled by the California Supreme Court. That really upset us, so we thought 'what can we do about this?' Then simultaneously a friend of Annie's - performance artist Linda Montano - had sent out a call for people to collaborate with her on her Seven Years as Living Art project. We're trying to fight repressive politics and the way people see alternative relationships. There's always the debate about whether gays and lesbians should be running up to the altar to get married because it's such hetero-normative behaviour but no one has levelled that at us because at our first wedding we had an anti-wedding lap-dancing fairy there and we encourage that - we're trying to be all-inclusive of community viewpoints."

The pair are also trying to generate more love into the world. "We're lovers, not fighters," Sprinkle says. "Well, we are fighters but we fight with love. We're love warriors. We got rings and took the wedding seriously and made a commitment to love, honour and cherish each other as girlfriends, life partners and also as love art collaborators."
Other pieces in the project, called the Love Art Laboratory, are Cuddle, in which people are invited to sit for several minutes in a bed with Stephens and Sprinkle and be cuddled, and Xtreme Kiss, where the couple kiss passionately non-stop for three hours. "The hardest part was not having sex because it's so erotic and hot," Sprinkle laughs. "I'd recommend it for anyone. We also have a show called Post Porn Love and we'd love to bring it to Australia - it's about love, sex, death and art."

In addition, Sprinkle, who gained a PhD in Human Sexuality in 2002, has written a new book, Dr Sprinkle's Spectacular Sex-Make Over Your Love Life - something she has found therapeutic for her own sex life, especially after being diagnosed recently with breast cancer and undergoing a lumpectomy and chemotherapy. "The chemo definitely zaps a lot of sexual energy," she says. "But the love has been enormous. Beth and I have maintained our sex life and sex is really important to us, so my energy is low but we make an effort to do it anyway, and I'm glad we do because it's a huge stress reliever. When I'm being poked by needles and feeling uncomfortable and nauseous, it's nice to feel some pleasure in my body. We've slowed down but we'll get back to it. Doing my book really helped me with my own sex life because I learned a lot writing it. I don't feel my sex life has suffered - it's changed right now because my energy is lower but I feel I have all the tools to maintain a spectacular sex life. We've agreed on no lesbian bed death."

For someone whose trademark has been a sexy and feminine image, the cancer diagnosis and treatments have been a challenge, Sprinkle admits, but she is facing the situation with her usual upbeat approach - dressing in bright colours to attend chemotherapy sessions, making the doctors wear party hats, and turning it into an art project, the Breast Cancer Ballet. "It's a lot about self-love and attitude," she explains. "It's an adventure, a whole new world and we're meeting new people and learning new things, so I can't complain and I'm going to be fine too. According to statistics I have only 3% chance of it reoccurring. There's been a study showing that women who are creative have less recurrence and I feel very lucky because I've done so much work about breasts - a lot of tit art, tit prints, so I feel lucky that if I was going to get a disease I'm so glad it was breast cancer because it fits perfectly with everything and I'm not surprised. So I'm grateful for the fact that I'm inspired and I think it's going to deepen my work."

Meanwhile, the self-proclaimed 'metamorphosexual' (sexuality is in a constant state of change), who was one of the key figures of the sex positive feminist movement of the 1990s, is enjoying a new-found pleasure and freedom in lesbian love and monogamy. "I was really promiscuous, I had sex with thousands of people over the years but in the past 10 years I've had sex with less than 10. Right now Beth and I say we're adventurous monogamists. We go to sex parties and live sex shows, and have lots of erotic adventures, but as far as full-on sex, we're just into each other. It's not about excluding anyone else, it's about being so in love that no one else can compare. I find a lot of freedom in monogamy - I find it very exciting."

Order Annie's book and other stuff from www.anniesprinkle.org. More information on the Love Art Laboratory is at www.loveartlab.org

Lesbians on the Loose (LOTL) is Australia's national lesbian magazine. For more information visit the magazine's website at www.lotl.com