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Annie Sprinkle will not be typecast.
She's the first to admit she's a whore. Working as a prostitute and porn star for years, she can accept, even embrace, the term.
But her resume shows that she's also fully capable in the roles of artist, filmmaker and yes, even PhD candidate.
"Annie Sprinkle would say that her feminist mother would come into her room and tell her she was either going to be a whore or an artist," said Linda Williams, professor at the University of California at Berkeley who specializes in film history, pornography and feminist theory. "That's what sets her apart. She is both."
Sprinkle, who holds a master's in Human Sexuality and is currently working toward a PhD at the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco is one of the artists featured in the upcoming exhibition, Peepshow 28.
The exhibition will run at the Lusty Lady men's clubs in Seattle, Washington, Feb. 7-21, and in San Francisco, California, from Feb. 14-28.
Sprinkle's contribution to the exhibit is a digital video titled The Art of the Loop, a collection of 8-millimeter pornographic films from the 1950s to the 1980s. She felt it was important to document "our erotic heritage."
"Porn has had an enormous impact on our culture," Sprinkle said. "But there's no archive, no refrigeration process for these films. And they're self-destructing quickly."
Sprinkle said she liked the old, funky and decomposing quality of the films, but digitized her work for preservation purposes.
Filmmaking talents aside, Sprinkle has combined her interests in sexuality and art through performance art, photography, writing and teaching for almost two decades. Her work has appeared at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of Art and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Her latest book, Hardcore from the Heart: The Pleasures, Profits and Politics of Sex in Performance, explores the tension between feminism and pornography and the power relations that exist in any art that makes use of the female body.
But Sprinkle emphasizes she is not the first artist to demonstrate how the pornography industry and sexuality go hand in hand.
"I think it's widely known that the sex industry is the biggest supporter of artists, not the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts)," Sprinkle said. "Geishas were artists. In the film Dangerous Beauty the prostitute was a poet. Since Burlesque, there's always been a long tradition of art and sex."
Sprinkle said many similarities exist between the porn world and the art world.
"Both have lots of lights, and people buy tickets," she said. "But there are also great people in both industries, as well as a fair share of horrible people."
Sprinkle said she was attracted to Peepshow 28 because this time around, art was being brought into porn.
"I think it's an ambitious project, and I'm all for it," she said.
Williams said she is considering giving extra credit to her film students who go to the exhibit.
"I think there's no question that some pornographic films have artistic value," Williams said. "There are some exceptional porn makers who care about art. And Annie Sprinkle is one of them."
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