I probably should have mentioned this a little earlier in the year… as in the beginning of the year… However, this message is in line with how we went through 2015.

For RopeMarks 2015 has been a year where we have taken things slower. If we look back and you see what we ended up doing it doesn’t feel like that at all, but we really did slow down a bit! To me that only goes to show for we have been doing way too much in the years before 2015.  The last 4, perhaps 5, years have been a continues rollercoaster of activities for us and looking back there have been a lot of moments where we wished we could have stopped and smelled the roses, but we felt that really was not an option, there was always the next obligation around the corner; the next event, show, workshop, shoot, party, etc.

This leads me to something I never thought I would say, but we think that currently there is way too much bondage in the world. To nuance this a little; we feel there is way too little inspirational bondage going on in the world. There are activities, munches and events being organized almost every week and a lot, if not most, fruit of this well meant labor is dumped on, mostly, facebook with references to their “out-of-the-box” WordPress site(s).  Which reminds me of a fun, but so true, quote about facebook: “Being famous on facebook is like being rich on Monopoly”. 

With the the wild-spread enthousiasme to organize get-togethers/events/etc. a lot of the rope-activity is happening on a stage (I do not dare to call them demonstrations or shows) and is very often not original and on more than one occasion the entire activity is not original but, to state it bluntly, is downright taken from someone else. For private play this is fine, but for a stage activity this is a big no-no. Unfortunately this has happened on more than one occasion with our own stage productions as well and we get really angry about this. We put a lot of time, effort and props into setting a stage presence – to be different from the now very common “serious rigger” tying a “sack of potatoes”.  Especially in the Netherlands we are part of the few pioneers that helped shape, especially, Japanese rope bondage (kinbaku, shibari) to what it is now; I like to think (and know) RopeMarks has a world-wide influence as well.

With keeping the above in mind the current – polluted – state of bondage worldwide is not entirely to our liking. So we used 2015 to take things slower, to re-think what we want out of the world-wide scene and more importantly, what we want to put in.

Anyway… in the last few years we have collected  a little under 4TB of photo and video material – material we are dying (as a figure of speech) to show you. 

Keep tuned! 🙂
Bob

 

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