POLYAMORY: Married and Dating – May This Show Bring More Love to the Better Worlds We Desire

While living here in the Portland area, I’ve finally had a chance to watch the two full seasons of Polyamory: Married and Dating, the show that brings the spotlight on three polyamorous families and their beautiful, adventurous, explorative, and sometimes challenging lives.

It’s been a real pleasure to watch the show in the company of my housemates, who are also involved in the local sex-positive culture. We’ve had time to compare notes, discuss, and reflect on how the experiences of these models compare to the experiences of each of our lives. What kind of dynamics are likely to occur when one engages in styles of love that are beyond binaries, that are more expansive in the ways they engage with inclusiveness in our amorous lives?

Personally, I’ve enjoyed many aspects of this series, in both seasons. Including the settings in two areas of Southern California where I’ve lived very significant chapters of my life. Riverside, where I did my graduate studies in the 1980s at UCR, while i held the job of teaching basic Italian that one of the Season #1 protagonists also holds (coincidence?!) And San Diego, where in the 1990s I actively participated in the Bisexual Forum founded by two avatars of bisexuality, Fritz Klein and Regina Reinhardt. In my experience, San Diego is a city of community, cafe life, holistic health, and warm jacuzzis where people become soft, mellow and amorous as to almost seem to melt into one another.

I’m not at all surprised that it’s been home to the four people in the quad whose interlocking lives are at the center of the show’s narrative. I also like the sense of expanded tribe that emanates from this narrative, especially in Season # 2, where one can also observe characters evolve and even switch roles at times. It’s amazing how places, locations, and one’s experiences in them, are powerful in shaping the narratives of our lives. And in creating legacies, traditions, seeds that eventually evolve, have a life of their own, and expand. West Hollywood is the setting for the Season # 2 triad, and it’s also well rendered as an ecosystem that really holds the characters. I do realize that any reality show, when well done, is also, to some extent, fictionalized. And yet, I feel very strongly that there is authenticity in the narratives, settings, and characters. I feel that people have really put themselves on the line to be who they are, at least to the extent that that’s possible when one invites a Hollywood camera into one’s private life.

One aspect I’ve really appreciated in the show’s structure is the quick asides that interrupt the narrative sequence to help viewers pry into the inner life of each character. What is this person feeling at this moment? What desire, anxiety, motivation, concern is motivating their action? How is their mind, their heart responding to the reality they are experiencing at this time. These asides are quick enough that one returns easily to the narrative. And they are also poignant enough that they provide, with the insights into the characters, also a beautiful way to get a sense of the philosophical gist of polyamory, of what reflections, principles, and intellectual awareness characterize this lifestyle and the communities where it is practiced. The decision to use asides this way has a long tradition in literature, especially in the English language, where of course it was widely used by the Bard, another voice whose tones resonate strongly with sexual fluidity and amorous inclusiveness alike.

Another aspect I’ve appreciated is the integration of sensual, erotic, and sexual scenes into the overarching narrative. Yes. That’s the way life is, right? “Life” is not divided in “genres” (as in erotica vs fiction), as some entertainment production systems would have us believe. “Life,” real life I mean, is actually one integrated narrative. There our minds, our hearts, our yonis, our lingams, and all the different symbiotic parts that make up our beings speak their truth, and manifest the reality we co-create with others. So, yes, I do appreciate that in this show we are taken into the bedrooms, the jacuzzis, the retreats, the play parties where people who love each other experience amorous existence. And where, from this experience they evolve and transform as partners in their relational lives.

This was exactly one of my goals when told the story of a very significant period in my life, especially my San Diego years, in the 1990s. I wanted the intellectual, the emotional, and the erotic aspects of my experience at that time to be synergized into one narrative. it was a way to offer a story that made sense and was beautiful and empowering to those wishing to be brave enough to read and be inspired. This memoir, Eros, was a Lambda finalist in 2006, when fist published with the subtitle A Journey of Multiple Loves. A new edition is now in the works, in both English and Italian, with the new subtitle, The Wisdom of Love. There I’ve fast forwarded to 2020 to really celebrate more fully the experiences in my life that make it part of the communities where amorous inclusiveness and sexual fluidity are practiced. Yes, love is good for you when practiced as an art, and the more you practice the more you learn about it and can share with others.

And this can happen over the arch of one’s entire life! One thing I wish to see more of when Polyamory or other reality shows of this kind resume, is a wider diversity in the age of the story’s protagonists. What about sexy grandmothers? Perhaps that’s another taboo to break up?

Here I really want to congratulate the brave director and the whole very brave and generous cast for this gift to the world. A gift that empowers people to practice love more expansively and evolve as their ability to generate this energy and channel it also expands. I do wish for a world where these gifts are appreciated and where they do their job of opening up options for others. I feel happy and proud of my part in co-creating this world with my own small contributions. And I wish everyone in the show a beautiful future of many decades where the magic of love manifests in many forms to bring health, happiness, and abundance to their lives.

Thanks Michael McClure​, KamalaDevi McClure​, Reclaiming Walker O’Rourke​, Roxanne DePalma​, Rachel Rickards​, and many others. May your generosity to the better world we all want and imagine be rewarded. You are wonderful and i love you!

SACRED ECOSEX: Teorema, Il Sessantotto and Pasolini’s Math/Map of Sexual Fluidity and Amorous Inclusiveness

Dear Fellow Earthlings–

Here’s one more event coming up for me.  Sacred Ecosex.  Wonder what it is?  Join us!  It will be fun.  And you’ll get a sense of what that famous year of 1968 really represented for Italy and Europe, from one of the most unconventional film directors of Italy, Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Where:  UPRM, Celis 116

When: Tuesday, March 28, 2017, Hora Universal-10:30-11:45 AM

Title:

SACRED ECOSEX: Teorema, Il Sessantotto and Pasolini’s Math/Map of Sexual Fluidity and Amorous Inclusiveness

Abstract:

This study applies the art of analytical observation to Teorema, by Pierpaolo Pasolini.  This classic of Italian cinema was released in 1968.  This year of paradigm shift, also known as il sessantotto in Italy, beheld a cultural revolution that attacked the malady of the Oedipal Syndrome.  The film captures the zeitgeist of the new era and connects the pervasive effects of this syndrome to the abuse of the partner we all share by the extractive industries.  The movie places a bisexual, polyamorous visitor at the center of the diegetic structure, where he initates members of a nuclear family who are victims of the Oedipal Syndrome into the practices of ecosexual love.  With this prophetic movie, education to sacred ecosex begins.  The film taps into the director’s familiarity with the Roman male sex-trade scene to sacralize sex as the magic encounter of two human ecosystems.  When Pasolini moved to Rome from his native Friuli, his sexual life became organized around this scene.  The film maps the way the sessantotto experience flipped both the filmmaker’s consciousness and the conventions of amorous expression of the era.  The desert represents the force of ecosexual love: the Earth appears naked in the segments that suture the different consciousness explored in the film.  Paolo, the father, connects with the Earth’s metabolism when his heart beats next to it.  Emilia, the housemaid, occupies the soil of the periferia to save its fertility from pervasive concrete.  As “desert,” the partner we all share enters the equation of Pasolini’s theorem.

The Presenter:

Dr. SerenaGaia, aka Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD, is a cultural theorist and founder of 3WayKiss.  Her prophetic books have inspired readers around the world, including Gaia (2009), Eros (2006), and Ecosexuality (2015), the first collection on this topic.  Dr. SerenaGaia is a professor of humanities and cinema at UPRM, a renown scholar and public speaker.  This presentation comes from Amorous Visions, her book-in-progress on ecosexuality and Italian cinema.  The research for this study has been externally funded by UCHI, and has been generously supported by Arts and Sciences at UPRM.

It will be a 40-minute presentation with film stills and clips.  Followed by an open active learning session with Questions and Answer.  Many students will be in attendance, including groups from courses in cinema, humanities, and literature.  Everyone is welcome to join from the campus, area, and communities.  To download a flier, go to this link.  We look forward to welcoming you!

Thank you!

drserenagaia

aka Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

header-per-serena
Professor of Humanities and Cinema
Convenor of Practices of Ecosexuality: A Symposium
Fellow at the Humanities Institute, University of Connecticut, Storrs (2012-13)
Project: “Amorous Visions: Ecosexual Perspectives on Italian Cinema”

Playa Azul I Love You: Together in Ecosexual Love – Film/Documentary

The film

This 30-minute documentary is the story of a 16-year love affair with a beach that culminates in a Plural Wedding of Ecosexual Love.

What is an ecosystem? When we practice Ecosexual Love, an ecosystem is a companion, a partner, a lover: much more than an object of scientific study.  Falling in love with an ecosystem–recognizing the love and health it can bring to people’s lives–is what this film is about. Interpreting the Earth as a lover is the shift in metaphors that has galvanized the Ecosexual Movement. We need to love the Earth we make love on, so as to mark a common path for the sex-positive movement and the global ecology movement. For an adult, responsible behavior of humankind toward nature.

This movement manifests locally as well.  A liminal space for dwellers and lovers, Playa Azul is a beach located on the south side of the shore of Western Puerto Rico.  It is being stewarded with love by a team of dwellers who love to share it with nature lovers. It is now a very hospitable to diverse lovers and conducive of inclusive forms of amorous behavior.

We the co-directors made this film to celebrate the beauty of this ecosystem and the spontaneous behavior it inspires in people when living close to nature and the Caribbean shore.  We extended our invitation to a Plural Wedding of Ecosexual Love, and a community came together for this inclusive and fluid symbolic ceremony. When participants married the beach, a radical form of “marriage equality” was practiced. Everyone became a “spouse” to the ecosystem, which acquired much “spice” by effect of the sacred wedding to this particular piece of Lover Earth.

When we recognize the Earth as the partner we all share, we become “metamours” to one another, namely people who consciously share a beloved. This is one of the powers of practicing Ecosexual Love.

The film documents this coming together and its transformative effects for the community and the beach itself.

Playa Azul I Love You is a coproduction of 3WayKiss, Veritas Productions, and SecondTake Media.

The Directors

Dr. Serena Gaia

Writer, activist, scholar, filmmaker, cultural theorist, and professor of humanities at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio believes that “a world where it is safe to love is a world where it is safe to live.” Anderlini-D’Onofrio is the author, editor and co-editor of the books Women and Bisexuality: A Global Perspective (2003), Plural Loves: Designs for Bi and Poly Living (2005), Eros: A Journey of Multiple Loves (2006), a memoir and a 2007 Lambda finalist, Bisexuality and Queer Theory (2010), with Jonathan Alexander, and BiTopia (2011). She is also the author of The ‘Weak’ Subject: On Modernity, Eros, and Women’s Playwriting (1998), a study of modern drama and women’s authorship.

Anderlini-D’Onofrio has spoken about polyamory on Italian public television, and she gave the keynote address at the 2007 Loving More and World Polyamory Association conferences.

More recently, Anderlini-D’Onofrio has adopted the sacred name of Dr. Serena Gaia. She has been at the helm of the ecosexual movement, with various keynotes and the book Ecosexuality: When Nature Inspires the Arts of Love (2015), the first collection on this topic edited with Lindsay Hagamen. She has learned that “love is the ecology of life.” She is at work on new titles, including a study of Italian cinema from an ecosexual perspective, and a series of dialogs of the ecology of love. She is the convenor of Practices of Ecosexuality: A Symposium. News and project updates are available at www.serenagaia.org, also www.ecosexbook.com

Links:
Amazon.com Author’s page: https://www.amazon.com/Serena-Anderlini-DOnofrio/e/B001JS1VKA/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_2?qid=1477282388&sr=8-2
Facebook Profile: https://www.facebook.com/serena.anderlini
Academia.edu Profile https://uprm.academia.edu/SerenaAnderlini
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Serena_Anderlini
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/serena-anderlini-8962038?trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile

Shaison P. Ouseph

Shaison P. Ouseph is an internationally acclaimed filmmaker, editor, and cameraman, with credits ranging from director of photography to art director on many documentaries and independent feature projects.  His public service campaigns promoting literacy, the empowerment of women, and against child exploitation have won him many national and international accolades.  Esteemed organizations such as the United National, the International Labour Organization, the US Embassy, have bestowed him with awards and certificates for his work on social issues.  His work as a director has been well recognized and appreciated.

Jimmy Garcia

Jimmy Garcia is a video-maker and a student at UPRM.  He is working on several videos and is the founder of SecondTake Media.

Director Statement

Dr. Serena Gaia:  “We did Playa Azul I Love You to practice #EcosexualLove. We came together to marry the partner we all share, the Earth, and become “spice” for one of her beautiful ecosystems, Playa Azul. We learned to consider each other “metamours.” And we model the world where ‘it is safe to live because it is safe to love.’  I am especially grateful to all those who initiated, believed in, participated, and contributed to completing this project.”

Playa Azul I Love You will be screened at the Symposium Practices of Ecosexuality and Sex-Positive Education, February 3, 2017, at UPRM.

The film has been uploaded as a project in Film Freeway will be submitted to appropriate Film Festivals.  It will be distributed by CreateSpace and Amazon.com

Contact us if you’d like to screen the film or ask for more information.

Thank you!

drserenagaia

aka Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

header-per-serena
Professor of Humanities and Cinema
Convenor of Practices of Ecosexuality: A Symposium
Fellow at the Humanities Institute, University of Connecticut, Storrs (2012-13)
Project: “Amorous Visions: Ecosexual Perspectives on Italian Cinema”

 

FRIDAY NOON COLLOQUIUM Presents “AMOROUS VISIONS” – Oct 28 – 12 Noon @ OF, UPRM

Dear fellow educators, colleagues, students, film buffs, lovers of cinema:

Friday Noon Colloquium is the new research-in-progress series hosted by Michael Huffmaster, in the German Studies program, Humanities at UPRM.

The series begins at noon on Friday, October 18 in the lobby area (Sala de Conferencias) of the OF-Edificio de Profesores building at UPRM.  It’s wonderful to have this space to share for those of us active in the humanistic and cultural studies research arena.  Check the series flier here.

What’s the topic of this inaugural event, you may ask?

The presentation of Amorous Visions, a book proposal for a study of Italian cinema from an ecosexual and Deleuzian perspective.  Look above or download the descriptive flier here.

Yes.

This is the project that took me to Connecticut some years ago, when I won the external fellowship of the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute and also received support from the College of Arts and Sciences at UPRM to use it.

This is ALSO, and very significantly, a project that has emanated from the course in Italian cinema that I have been teaching at UPRM over the years, beginning in and around the year 2000.  This course has been an inspiration to me and to many groups of students over  the years.   What does it mean to appreciate, participate, enjoy, observe, learn from, and think about the art of the 20th century that studies the relation of “time, space and movement,” as Gilles Deleuze put it?   Students have been my most valuable teachers.  From them I’ve learned to look at cinema anew.  My study of ecosexual perspectives on Italian cinema is a direct emanation from this experience.  It is time to share about it with our local and regional intellectual community.

What is an ecosexual perspective in the study, practice, creation, and appreciation of cinema?  How can this kind of perspective relate to Deleuze’s cinema theories?  Italian cinema is a particularly fertile terrain for this epistemic inquiry.  So many “sheets of the past” emerge from the mise-en-scene of art cinema from Italy.  So many personal, intimate scenes invite a reflection on how our amorous lives are impacted by the ecosystems that we live in.

My project has evolved alongside with my contributions to the vibrant ecosexuality movement.  In estedadele2015 i was privileged in c-editing the first collection of writings on this topic, an arena of emerging knowledges where nature inspires humans to practice the arts of love.  It encourages our amorous expressions to sustain the health and well being of our own and our surrounding ecosystems.  A change in metaphors is due.  When we treat the Earth as a lover, we become aware of how much we need the blessings of this partner we all share.

We have successfully hosted the first symposium on this topic in the Caribbean last year, and plan a new edition in 2017.

In this presentation, I will outline how my book project on Italian cinema evolved alongside my participation in the ecosexual movement while I also evolved as a a professor and scholar of cinema.

Join us in animating the event.  Participate and invite your own students.  Below please find more information about the event.

Thank you!

# # # # # # #

Title:

Amorous Visions: Ecosexual Perspectives on Italian Cinema

Presenting a Book Proposal

This presentation traces the evolution of the book proposal Amorous Visions from the idea of teaching a course in Italian cinema from a philosophical perspective while attending the desire of UPRM students to explore the direct connections between a film’s mise-en-scène and its erotic/amorous scenes.  The proposal is organized around the philosophy of Deleuze and his study of cinema, as well as the cultural discourses of sexual fluidity and amorous inclusiveness.  The proposal benefits from the in-depth study made possible by externally funded research also sponsored by Arts and Sciences at the RUM.

The presentation will be a 20-minute plus 10 minutes for a Q & A session.

It will be done on a laptop with stills and clips.

The format is suitable for a small audience.

About the Author

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD, is the author, editor and co-editor of Women and Bisexuality (2003), Plural Loves (2005), Eros (2006), Gaia (2009), Bisexuality and Queer Theory (2010), and BiTopia (2011).  Her articles have appeared in DisClosure, New Cinemas, Rhizomes, Nebula, WSIF, and VIA.  She is the author of The ‘Weak’ Subject (1998), and the co-translator of In Spite of Plato, by Adriana Cavarero (1995).  Anderlini-D’Onofrio has spoken about polyamory on Italian public television.

More recently, Anderlini-D’Onofrio has adopted the sacred name of Dr. SerenaGaia.  At the helm of the ecosexual movement, she has keynoted at various symposia, and is co-editor of  Ecosexuality: When Nature Inspires the Arts of Love (2015), the first collection on this topic.  Dr. SerenaGaia is the convenor of Practices of Ecosexuality: A Symposium at UPRM, and is at work Amorous Visions, a study of Italian cinema from an ecosexual perspective.

News and project updates at www.serenagaia.org

Thank you!

drserenagaia

header-per-serena

CLASE ABIERTA: Italian Cinema Presents “ECOLOGIES of LOVE and TOXIC ECOSYSTEMS”

Dear fellow educators, colleagues, students, film buffs, lovers of cinema:

In the spirit of challenge and renewal at UPRM and in Puerto Rico, the current course in Italian Cinema opens its doors to invite you for a CLASE ABIERTA event.

Please join us on Tuesday, November 1st at 5:30-7:00 PM in Chardon 226, for a presentation from the research project Amorous Visions, followed by a bilingual Questions and Answers period.  Look above or download the descriptive flier here.

The course in Italian cinema has been an inspiration to me and to many groups of students over  pazzathe years.   What does it mean to appreciate, participate, enjoy, observe, learn from, and think about the art of the 20th century that studies the relation of “time, space and movement,” as Gilles Deleuze put it?   Students have been my most valuable teachers.  From them I’ve learned to look at cinema anew.  My study of ecosexual perspectives on Italian cinema is a direct emanation from this experience, and has evolved with multiple support from internal and external sources.  It is time to share about it with our local and regional intellectual community.

Italian cinema is a particularly fertile terrain for this epistemic inquiry.  So many “sheets of the past” emerge from the mise-en-scene of art cinema from Italy.  So many personal, intimate scenes invite a reflection on how our amorous lives are impacted by the ecosystems that we live in.

pinkdressIn this invitation, we will present a study of two classics of Italian cinema from the 1970s.  Remember The Conformist and The Night Porter?  Very ecosexual.  Very Deleuzian.  Right?  If you’re a cinephile, you cannot have missed them.  If not, this is a perfect time to meet these two majestic films.  Students in the current Italian Cinema group are quite advanced in Deleuzian and ecosexual approaches to cinema.  They are excited to welcome visitors and other participants for this special CLASE ABIERTA EVENING.   Many of them will surprise you with their participatory questions and observations.

Join us in animating the evening.  Participate and invite your own students.  Below please find more information about the event.

Thank you!

# # # # # # #

Title:

Ecologies of Love and Toxic Ecosystems:

Lessons from the Holocaust in Cavani and Bertolucci

Abstract

This study analyzes two classics of Italian cinema from an ecosexual perspective.  Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970) and Cavani’s The Night Porter (1974) share a theme:  the 20th century Holocaust in Europe where circumstances are extreme and the ecosystems that host people’s lives are replete with toxicity.  The study integrates elements of Deleuzian and film theory, political history, the history of cinema, and cultural discourses about fluid and inclusive practices of love like bisexuality and polyamory.  It focuses on the relationship between mise-en-scène, or representation of the physical, emotional, interpersonal, and political ecosystems where characters’ lives unfold, and the styles of sexual and amorous expression they deploy in their intimate scenes.  Its approach is unique.  It empowers a vision of how the energy of love behaves in toxic ecosystems, surviving as love for love or erotophilia.  When the auteurs explore the inner landscapes of the films’ protagonists via Deleuzian time-image sequences, the sexual fluidity and amorous inclusiveness present therein become visible as a way to save love for love in the midst of extreme ecological toxicity.  In Bertolucci the fear of love prevails:  Marcello kills the woman who inspired love in him.  In Cavani this expansive sense of love manifests the imagination of a world where “it is safe to live because it is safe to love.”  The author claims that Cavani succeeds because her diegetic structure is organized rhizomatically.   The inner landscapes of multiple interconnected consciousnesses are made visible in the interlocked time-image sequences of her dyad Max and Lucia.

Note:

The article that corresponds to this presentation will be published in Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledges, an open-source peer-reviewed journal.   It uses numerous series of stills from both films.  The conference presentation uses a series of clips.  The latter will be presented in a 60-minute format, followed by Q & A sessions.

rhizomes

Stay tuned:  In the Spring of 2017 we also plan a more formally organized event about Amorous Visions.  It will be widely announced and open to the wider Arts and Sciences community at UPRM, and beyond.

About the Author

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD, is the author, editor and co-editor of Women and Bisexuality (2003), Plural Loves (2005), Eros (2006), Gaia (2009), Bisexuality and Queer Theory (2010), and BiTopia (2011).  Her articles have appeared in DisClosure, New Cinemas, Rhizomes, Nebula, WSIF, and VIA.  She is the author of The ‘Weak’ Subject (1998), and the co-translator of In Spite of Plato, by Adriana Cavarero (1995).  Anderlini-D’Onofrio has spoken about polyamory on Italian public television.

More recently, Anderlini-D’Onofrio has adopted the sacred name of Dr. SerenaGaia.  At the helm of the ecosexual movement, she has keynoted at various symposia, and is co-editor of  Ecosexuality: When Nature Inspires the Arts of Love (2015), the first collection on this topic.  Dr. SerenaGaia is the convenor of Practices of Ecosexuality: A Symposium at UPRM, and is at work Amorous Visions, a study of Italian cinema from an ecosexual perspective.

News and project updates at www.serenagaia.org

Essential Filmography and Bibliography

Anapol, Deborah.  Polyamory in the 21st Century.  New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010.

Anapol, Deborah.  Polyamory: The New Love without Limits.  San Rafael, CA.: IntiNet Resource Center, 1997.

Anderlini-D’Onofrio, Serena.  Gaia and the New Politics of Love: Notes for a Poly Planet.  Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2009.

Anderlini-D’Onofrio, SerenaGaia and Lindsay Hagamen, eds.  Ecosexuality: When Nature Inspires the Arts of Love.  Puerto Rico: 3WayKiss, 2015.

Bertolucci, Bernardo.  Il conformista/The Conformist.  Rome: Green Film, 1970.

Cavani, Liliana.  The Night Porter.  Rome, Italy: Ital-Noleggio, 1974

Deleuze, Gilles.  Cinema I: The Movement Image.  (Original appeared in 1983.)  Hugh Tomlinson tr. University of Minnesota Press, 1986.

______  .  Cinema II: The Time-Image.  (Original appeared in 1985.)  Hugh Tomlinson tr.  University of Minnesota Press, 1989.

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari.  A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.  Tr Brian Massumi.  University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

______.  Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.  New York: Penguin, 2009.

Anderlini/Ecologies of Love/Abstract, 3

Diamond, Lisa.  Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire.  Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2008.

Kline, Jefferson.  Bertolucci’s Dream Room: A Psychoanalytic Study of Cinema.  Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1981

Marrone-Puglia, Gaetana.  The Gaze and the Labyrinth: The Cinema of Liliana Cavani.  Princeton University Press, 2000.

Moravia, Alberto.  The Conformist.  London: Steerforth, 1999.  (Originally published as Il conformista in 1951.)

Veaux, Franklin and Eve Rickert.  More than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory. Thorntree Press, 2014.

 

Colorado’s First Black Woman Pot Entrepreneur on Edibles, Incarceration & the Industry’s Whiteness

A big wooow for this plant. Love of plants is a form of ecosexual love. And it’s good to love many plants that heal and bring joy in different ways. I’m so glad the industry is flourishing. It’s great that the shadow of criminality is being lifted.  One sad news is that people who’ve been arrested for pot are now barred from getting into the industry. How could this be fair? These people often gifted others with their pot and took all the risks, including the extra risk of structural racism if they were black. They might have been mentors and initiators. NOW that it’s legal and profitable, the road is closed for them. That’s NOT fair at all!

It’s an interesting industry for one to get involved in.  Where I get my info?  The Democracy Now! segment is available at this link.

Plural Wedding of Ecosexual Love Sets Hearts on Fire – An Amorous Visions Calendar: Feb 22-March 6, 2014 in California

Dear Planet Lovers,

It’s the night before the flight that starts a traveling period of about five months over several countries.  I only have a short time and I don’t want to take off without the promised follow up to my newsletter announcements back in December.


Oh well . . . . where do I start?

The wedding: we did it!  The first plural wedding of ecosexual love in the Caribbean.  It really happened!  iI’s done.  And it was a success. More: it was magic.  With everyone in the group listening to the invocation ministered by Heather Anne Trahan, and taking the vows to be Playa Azul‘s “spice.” Wooow!  We were so amazingly diverse, yet united by this declaration of love for an ecosystem that I sincerely call my nurse, doctor, and lover.  She is very compersive and not at all jealous.  And now that we all share this lover we are all “metamours.”  Lovers of a partner we share.  And since that day the shift in the energetic field all in and around the beach itself, ourselves, and those who come to enjoy nature, is just momentous.  We all share a lover, so we are all collaborative.  We were completely spontaneous and everyone was eager to be on camera. 
For me, and others I hear, emotions were high: to experience a “wedding” as freedom, peace, inclusion. When all feel part of it: more people, more “spice.”  What a turn around!  Marriage? It’s for everyone, ecosexual style.  Puralizing this institution: making it open, fluid, vibrant.  Acknowledging ecosystems as equals: as partners.  Thank you Playa Azul for choosing me 16 years ago and for keeping me safe, healthy, happy, at ease, and vibrant.  As an added bonus, when in the throes of this template production, an amazing team jelled up.  Our director, Shaison Ouseph, was on his first visit to Puerto Rico from Mumbai.  He learned all about us and got really enthralled, as you can see from the trailer he put out.  Many others pitched in, acknowledged with gratitude.  If you like what you see, let us know.  You can also join the conversation on the FB event page.  We are ready for the next episode in the series Hearts on Fire.  And we can bring the Hearts on Fire right where you are.  We we’re taking calls and getting booked up! 
 
If you can’t wait to hear more about Hearts on Fire, we have something coming up.  On Saturday, February 22, Hearts on Fire officially invites to a preview of Te Amo Playa Azul I Love You, at the International Conference on the Future of Monogamy and Non-Monogamy.  we start at 4 PM, at the Clark Kerr Center, Building 14, UCB, 2601 Warring St, Berkeley, CA, 94720.  It’s a unique opportunity to preview and discuss the ecosexual art movie that will document the first plural wedding of ecosexual love in the Caribbean.  We’re happy to present the project, share more trailers and photographs, and take questions.  Including: “how do I bring this healthy, and safe, and happy, and easy practice of ecosexual love to my families, my ecosystems, my communities?”  We look forward to being with you there.  Share with friends and invite.  Thank you!

 

This big wave of ecosexual love also helped congeal the energy of “Amorous Visions,” the cinema studies project that brought me to Connecticut last year.  With her warm sunshine, caressing waves, clear waters, and blue horizon, it was easy for Playa Azul to attract, in one
day, some 15 “spice” (plural for the word “spouse,” poly style).  No wonder she’s an ecosystem conducive of such abundance.  We make movies about ecosexual love.  What if we interpret cinema as a study of ecosexual love?  Turns out the motion camera can really find out what happens to the energy of love in ecosystems toxic with fear.  The health and vitality of ecosystems does affect the quality of human relationships.  And yet, even when fear is rampant, love finds a way to survive.  Love for love: the code for this energy encapsulated in a virus, surviving for a better time.  This became the focus for UC Irvine and UC RiversideAmorous Visions: Sex, Genders, and Ecosystems of Love in Bertolucci and Cavani.  Talks are asfo.  Monday, March 3, at 2-3:15 PM at UCR.  Room HMNSS 2212 (English Department Conference Room), hosted by John Ganim for the auspices of the English Department and Queer Lab.  Wednesday, March 5, at 2:30-5:00 PM at UCI.  Room HG 101, hosted by Jonathan Alexander, with auspices from the Writign Center and the Gender and Sexuality Program.  These are al free univrsity event, and they are fun.  I promise.  All details and directions on the FB events page.  Join us.  We want to take your questions and practice inclusive democracy, ecosexuality style.

 

Speaking of which, UCSD choose a talk on Ecosexuality, and that’s happening on Thursday, March 6, at 4:3-6:00 PMEcosexuality: Notes for an Orgasmic Earth, is the title for the in-the-works collection about ecosexuality I’m co-editing with Lindsay Hagamen.  We will be announcing this amazing collection of writings, and introducing the
Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle’s Ecosexual Wedding
online platform for the book launch.  Teamwork here too. Go to www.orgasmicearth.org to find out who all is in the line up.  We will also introduce ecosexuality as the practice, theory, art, and activist that reveres the Earth as a lover and acknowledges her ecosystems as partners with significant and enduring rights.  We will focus on the practice of ecosexual weddings to ecosystems and forces of nature, as initiated by Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens in the seven-year project LoveArtLab.  We will explain the relatednes of ecosexuality and modern Tantra.  A don’t miss.  Room: LGBT Center at UC San Diego.  Hosted by Pasquale Verdicchio, with auspices by the Literature Department and the LGBT Center.  All details and directions on the FB event page.  From wherever you are, this is worth a trip to La Jolla, San Diego.  Join us!

 

Finally, after March 6th, time for a break comes.  Here it’s time for acknowledgements to all those who contribute to this calendar.  My hostess in Oakland, Spring Friedlander, with her

healthy, amorous, and inclusive community house.  My host in San Diego, Adam Paulman, whose inclusive amorous gifts are well recognized.  All the auspices and organizers, 

including my Deans, Manuel Valdez Pizzini and Felix Fernandez.  the administrative assistants at UPR Mayaguez who spent endless hours “comprobando” (=corroborating the evidence for) expenses and funds.  The teams of Te Amo Playa Azul, including film director Shaison Ouspeh, production coordinator Lloyd Sparks, emcee slash translator Maria Virginia Sanchez, liaisons with campus and organic farms Paola Pagan and Ricardo.  High priestess Heather Anne Trahan, who invoked the natural forces on the speaking of the vows.  All the “guests” and participants in the three workshops who were eager to be filmed as spontaneously as they came long.  And who embraced together the shared spouse.  All the inspiring minds in the 2012-13 Fellows group at UCHI, and its Director, Sharon Harris.  The students in Ecosexuality, including Adam Kocurek and Alexandra Mayer, and the WGSS Chair, Nancy Naples.  Please please please help spread word of upcoming events and invite your friends.  Thank you! 
If you want to catch up with me or invite me in and around the West Coast and the Bay Area, April is your chance.  My calendar is open.  Travel plans proceed with visits and rest in May, plus getting to team up more deeply in view of future plans.  Alessio, my oldest grandchild, turns 10 on May 15th.  He’s an amazing student.  Thanks Paola Coda for bringing him up.  And we plan to spend it together with family and friends in Rome.  Visits to Cap d’Agde, France, in late June, and guests from Portland, Oregon, at PostaHouse in early July.  For all these programs, there is a place set at our table, if you choose to join us.  We have extra rooms in the chalets and camping room in the garden.  space is limited so let us know in advance.


More announcements coming as projects evolve.  They have a life of their own, and I, the “inspiring force,” am only the conduit ever rushing to catch up with them.  So I hope you will forgive if this letter reads a bit rushed.  Oh well, I have a flight to catch.


Sending much love and all good wishes to all of you and your loved ones.  Thanks you for listening and opening up.  Stay tuned for more coming.  With all good wishes for a happy end of winter, spring, and summer.  Thank you!

Namaste,

SerenaGaia

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about love 
Professor of Humanities, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

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UCHI, Feb 28, 4PM – Amorous Visions: The Gaze of Love for Love, or Erotophilia, in Cavani and Bertolucci

Dear Earthlings, 

The presentation of the year is coming up for me soon.   You’re invited.   I can’t wait to see you!
 

The Night Porter
What guides a director’s gaze into the web of memories shared by lovers whose circumstances were extreme?  Does the fear of love dissipate when an auteur looks whose sense of sexuality is fluid and style of love inclusive?  This presentation will discuss cinematic techniques of memory retrieval in two Holocaust-themed art films of the 1970s produced in Italy: Bernardo Bertolucci, in The Conformist (1970), and Liliana Cavani, in The Night Porter(1974).  Each presents a gendered perspective on what happens when a species acts against its own best interest–when it becomes self-destructive.  How can this behavior be exorcised?  Can love for love prevail over the pall of fear? These are, I claim, the main questions the films posit for 21st century viewers.


Amorous Visions:  The Gaze of Love for Love of Erotophilia.   
The Conformist
Presented by Serena Anderlini, PhD, and Research Fellow at U Conn’s Humanities Institute.
Where: UCHI, CLAS/Austin Building # 301.  215 Glenbrook Road, Unit 4234.  Storrs, CT 06269.
When: Thursday, February 28h, at 4:00-5:30 PM.
Free of charge and open to the public.
For more information call: 860 486 9057



Note: The presentation will be enhanced by numerous selected clips from the movies under discussion.

Bernardo Berolucci, director of The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, and many other films, including, recently, The Dreamers.  

Liliana Cavani, director of The Night Porter, Beyond Good and Evil, and The Berlin Affair, known collectively as The European Trilogy, and many other films. 

Note: The presentation will be followed by an open questions and answers period. 


About the Presenter:
Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, Ph.D, is a Professor of Humanities, Italian, and Cinema at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez.  She is a current Research Fellow at UCHI.  A UCR graduate, she is the author and editor of numerous award-winning books, including Gaia (2009), Eros (2006), BiTopia(2011), Bisexuality and Queer Theory(2011), Plural Loves (2005), Women and Bisexuality (2003), and The ‘Weak’ Subject (1998).  She has charted new fields, including ecosexuality and the arts of loving sustainably and inclusively.  Her new work includes a study of sustainable practices of love and a collection of writings on ecosexuality.

Find out more about UCHI’s presentations, programs, and activities:  UCHI

As a comment: I feel an immense gratitude for this Fellowship research year.  My spirit feels rejuvenated and revitalized by the inspiration and creativity that it’s been immersed in.  It has been a wonderful gift to be in the company of fellow Fellows and their projects, and to have access to the abundant research resources of U Conn, Storrs.  Also, it’s lovely to be immersed in discourses across disciplines and a campus abundant with Centers and Institutes where these conversations flourish.  

This is the most important presentation in my Fellowship year.  It’s a public presentation designed to offer the pulse of where my project is at and where it’s headed to.  It’s been a pleasure to prepare it, with abundant technical assistance at the Institute.  And I hope it will be well received and inspire a generous amount of questions and genuine debate.

Thank you, U Conn.  Thank you, UCHI.
Photo by Mina Bast
Education is the heart of democracy, education to love.  
We offer a seminar this summer:  Ecosexuality: Becoming 
a Resource of Love. Join us in Portland, OR, July 17-21, 
for this amazing experience.  It’s still early-bird time for 
those interested.  Register now here!
Come back for more wonders. 


Namaste,
 

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

Gilf Gaia Extraordinaire

Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about love
Professor of Humanities

University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

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Press Release: Senior UPRM Faculty Awarded Humanities Fellowship at U Conn, 2012-13

Press Release: Senior UPRM Faculty Awarded Humanities Fellowship at U Conn, 2012-13
Contact: Serena Anderlini, 787 538 1680

Dear Office of the Press:

It is a pleasure to release the news that the University of Connecticut notified me this week of the offer of a research award of major significance in the humanities, a one-year Fellowship at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, UCHI.  The Institute is one of the few of its kind in the US system, with fellowship awards comparable to the National Humanities Center in North Carolina and the Guggenheim Foundation in New York City. 

Here is the project’s basic information: 

Title: Amorous Visions: Fluid Sexual Moments in Italian Cinema
Anna and Giulia in The Conformist, 1970
Summary: This study articulates a new interpretation of pivotal scenes in selected classics of Italian cinema based on the cultural constructs of “amorous inclusiveness” and “sexual fluidity” elaborated in recent cultural analyses of human sexual, erotic, and amorous behavior (Ryan and Jetha 2010, Diamond 2009). These classics include Pasolini’s Teorema (1968), where a mysterious guest awakens the erotic libido of all members in a nuclear family, and Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970), where a charming hostess similarly awakens both members of a newlywed couple. Based on these new interpretive paradigms, these scenes acquire a new meaning that discloses the bisexual and polyamorous content therein. This enables more positive and complete understandings of the films as projects that artistically express love for love, or erotophilia. As an experienced scholar who charted new research fields that study love as the art of crossing beyond sexual divides and exclusivity (BiTopia, 2011), I am uniquely prepared to articulate these interpretations.

I am a senior faculty in the Department of Humanities with many research achievements to my credit, including books that have received prizes and charted new fields of knowledge.  I recognize UPRM as an institution where the originality of my research has been honored and nurtured.  This external funding award is a deserved reward for the many years of internal funding from which my works have benefited. 


I imagine you’d like to publicize the happy news in a online piece.  That would be wonderful!  I’d be happy to send more information and am available to interview.  Please feel free to contact me.  I look forward to hearing from you.  Please let me know if I can answer any questions. 
Namaste,

Namaste,
 

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD
Gilf Gaia Extraordinaire
Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about love
Professor of Humanities

University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

Join Our Mailing List
 GaiaCoverFullSize  
Follow us in the social media
Poly Planet GAIA Blog: 
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/ 

Be Appraised of Ecosex Community Project PostaHouse 

Become a Fan: www.facebook.com/GaiaBlessings 
Author’s Page/Lists all books: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA 
YouTube Uploaded Videos: http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini
 

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Book a vacation at Gateway to Gaia, Playa Azul, Puerto Rico

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Gaia Mother, Hostess, Lover – Keynote – World’s First Ecosexuality Symposium

And finally, the HoneyMoon starts. The brides, now wedded to Gaia’s satellite, invited all of us to share their sacred nuptial time.

Listen to yours truly’s keynote opening remarks:

Notes from the Symposium’s Opening Remarks

“Evil nature: the kind of thinking typical of western mentality, where we want control, and that gets us to global warming. We’re so afraid to let go of our anxiety that we end us causing our own doom and Gaia kicks us out!

Nature as Mother: this is nice, typical of environmentalist culture, nature is a good old woman, we must ‘save’ her, oh well . . .

Earth as ‘lover,’ says Annie Sprinkle, makes ecology sound like fun!

I like to come back to the concept of Gaia, which lives as myth, science, and part of vernacular culture.

It refers to the web of life on the third planet: biosphere, atmosphere, and, I would like to add, noosphere, or the sphere of the interconnected mental/emotional energies of all those who are alive.

What I’d like to propose is that we imagine Gaia as hostess, with us humans as guests among others.

Hostess as mother: we live inside, it’s cozy, and at one point we get kicked
out.

Hostess as lover: someone who welcomes us in their lives, who holds the
space of love for us, who acts as a resource of love for us.

Hosts and guests are ecosystems, they are symbiotic with one another, they exchange
energies and rebalance, they respect each other’s balance, they enhance it, they must not deplete each other too much.

Ecosystemic balance is what we want in our practices of ecosexual love.

These are practices of love that respect, enhance the balance, the vitality of our personal ecosystem and our lovers’s, and our lovers’s lovers, and so on and so forth around the planet.

These are practices of holistic sexual health that enhance the tantric force field across the body of Gaia and activate the material with the sacred energy of love, or Eros as the ancients called it.

The biosphere, the atmosphere, the noosphere become resacralized with this erotic energy of love, the chakra system of each person becomes aligned and the whole body of Gaia becomes integrated and balanced.

In ecosex we are resources of love for each other and we multiply the connectedness among all of us so that we become more respectful guests to our hostess, we become more loving and considerate of her.

How does the noosphere enter the picture, one might ask? Cyberspace is an actualization of the sphere of the mind, it is telepathy on wi-fi. Cyberspace is also a space of the imagination where the very concepts of sex, love, faithfulness, romance, eroticism are being redefined, it is a new space where the emotions travel.

When we become more cognizant of how the sacred (eco) and the material (sex) are one, of how matter and energy are aligned, the noosphere becomes more integrated and active, more creative and imaginative, so that solutions to the current ecosystemic crisis are found.”

And on this hopeful note, yours truly ended her remarks. Many subsequent talks, acts, performances, dances followed. What creativeness! What abundance!

At the end, many participants were inspired to get their own copy of Gaia. This book had finally found its public. Woooooow! Yours truly really felt that all the flack, the adverse reaction, the struggles of last year were rewarded. She felt really proud of her effort and appreciated for her gifts to the world and humanity.

Now that you are preparing to choose your Solstice/Holiday Season gifts, don’t forget to pick one that helps humanity make peace with the third planet. Where would we all be without her hospitality? How would we desire, meet, fall in love with each other? She provides the space for us to thrive and deserves to be treated with reverence and awe. Let’s begin now!

For a list of works where you can begin your education in Ecosexuality, go to the author’s page now! You can download Gaia on Kindle and start reading in the next five minutes! Don’t waste more time!

Wishing a joyful Solstice, and Christmas, and New Year to each and everyone!

Namaste ((-:~

http://polyplanet.blogspot.com