Too Weird To Be True: 'Green Sex'

I found this on Anthony Watts‘ site and couldn’t stop laughing.

A group that calls itself “F*ck For Forest” makes porno tapes and sells them to raise money for rainforest projects in South America.

And, of course, only the Guardian would be far left enough to actually cover it:

Few people would imagine any overlap exists between pornography and environmentalism, but FFF smash the two concepts together right there in their brutally blunt name. It’s a concise signifier of what they do and how little they care about what you think of it. The live displays are a sideline; funds are primarily raised via their website, which has images and videos of its core staff members and whatever volunteers they pick up on the street in myriad sexual permutations, from naked people up trees to chaotic orgies. Subscribers pay about £10 a month, and the proceeds go towards rainforest conservation projects in South America.

It’s difficult to know how to categorise such an enterprise. Is it kinky eco-activism? Porn for foliage fetishists? Exhibitionism with the fig-leaf of a good cause? FFF have a better question: What is more obscene, they ask, the depiction of people enjoying their sexuality or the destruction of our natural environment?

“Sex is often shown to attract us to buy all kinds of bullsh*t products and ideas, so why not for a good cause?,” says Tommy Hol Ellingsen, FFF’s Norwegian co-founder. “The human body is considered more offensive and threatening than most things in the industrial world around us, like cars, but I don’t see the naked body in itself as a threat to the morals or values of modern society. I think it’s more a mass psychosis people have. Why we are destroying the planet may be somehow connected to the values modern humans have created for themselves.”

Tommy and his Swedish partner Leona Johansson can talk at great length about the ills of western society, freedom of expression, the sanctity of nature and nobility of indigenous tribal life, but in the documentary their philosophy is put to the test. The first half details their eco-hippy existence, wandering the streets of Berlin, propositioning strangers to contribute to the website, getting stoned, having sex, and subjecting audiences to their performance art (if the “blood and sperm” part sounds shocking, wait for their terrible folk songs). But then FFF’s dreams are confronted with reality, in the form of a journey to their much-idolised Amazon rainforest, at the request of a threatened Peruvian tribe. It would spoil things to reveal what happens when they get there, but let’s just say it’s not quite the tribal connection they hoped for.

You have to read that article to get a sense of how truly bizarre — and stupid — FFF really is. When they went to Peru to film with the tribe of indigenous people, they were amazed that “…they live in a little fairytale wonderland, according to their own rules. They never plan anything, even what they’re going to do the next day. There are no rules. That’s what intrigued me about them.”

The FFF people thought that the tribes would be just as gung ho about saving the rainforest as they were. Alas, the indigenous folk had far less important things on their minds, like eating and trying to stay alive in the jungle.

F*ck For Forest actually got started with a grant from the Norwegian government — something the bureaucrats instantly regretted when they realized what the founders were up to. Their first public act was the founders of the group having sex on stage while a band called “Cumshots” played.

No, seriously. They’ve spent about $85,000 on rainforest projects like buying up land and promoting “indigenous lifestyles” in various South and Central American countries. They also live what is referred to as a “frugal” lifestyle, “wearing clothes and eating food they find in rubbish bins, rather than spending the charity’s money.” And rather than using a middleman or go-between to manage their projects, they do so directly so that most of the cash goes where it was intended.

Of course, the major reason for this is that none of the big time NGOs will have anything to do with them. Both the Rainforest Foundation and the Norwegian World Wildlife Fund  “turned down their donations once they discovered what they did, claiming that other donors would disapprove of their fundraising methods.”

What’s not to like about these guys? Sounds like fun, right?

Not according to the co-founder:

We have so much responsibility. We have so much to do with these projects. It’s a really heavy subject to work with sexual repression and ecology. With the website, all the uploading and emailing, we’re a small group keeping it together and it’s an incredible amount of work. But we’re subject to so much suspicion, and we have to answer for so much of what we’re doing. We’re giving so much of ourselves to this.

Above and beyond, man. Above and beyond.