Beyond Virtuosity - Crowdsourcing Knowledge
Part two of a two-part reflection on bondage performances beyond virtuosity. This second part reflects on the experience of NARiX and the format of an unconference.
January 21, 2025: I am writing from the blistering cold of New York City, wrapped in a warm quilt with a space heater at my feet. I recently returned from a two-week trip to Asia, where I visited family in Singapore and spent time with friends in Bangkok, including catching up with Oat Montien, whom I wrote about in the first part of this reflection.
The shift from tropical humidity to a snowstorm has been quite a shock to the system, in addition to the brutal jetlag. Tomorrow, I head to the outskirts of Paris for my second shoot with Himeros.tv, an experience I hope to write about in time to come. After that, I return to the Bay Area to prepare for the Spring semester of classes.
This piece is the second of a two-part series thinking about “virtuosity” in rope bondage performances, but I am also using it as an opportunity to reconsider what we define as “virtuosic” when it comes to rope bondage. Similar to questions raised in academia around the critique of rigor - who gets to claim rigor, and what are the consequences of subjecting subjugated knowledges to academic and critical rigor1 - I am interested in unpacking what happens when we attempt to reshape the experience of rope bondage into a frame of a performance event. What do we gain in the process? And what do we lose in the essence of what makes rope bondage interesting for its practitioners? Do we sanitize its eroticism for respectability politics? Have we become overly sensitive about issues of cultural appropriation in this political milieu?
These are questions that I have considered since getting tied up in the practice, but have mostly wrestled with these questions in siloed conversations with my partner. In 2024, we wanted to branch out and participate in more rope bondage events and conferences beyond the gay kink and rope community, hoping to be in conversation with other practitioners that might support or challenge our practice. The North American Rope Innovation Exchange, or NARiX, is one such conference we attended in December which took place in Austin, Texas.
The Application Process
I first heard about NARiX from rope friends in the non-gay kink scene. The event’s reputation is slightly contentious, depending on whom you speak to, with a patchy presence preceding 2023. Some view it as an exclusive event with an intimidating application process, while others describe it as a transformative experience that fundamentally reshapes their approach to rope education.2
Whether people support or criticize its exclusivity, there is a common consensus among rope bondage practitioners that NARiX has a rigorous and competitive application process. This ensures a gathering of individuals who are deeply specialized and passionate about rope bondage. The vetting process appears necessary and logical due to the unconference format, which emphasizes peer-sharing and participant-driven learning. The success of this format relies on a group of subject-matter experts who can effectively share and receive knowledge. The process also ensures that a diverse group of participants are able to get a seat at the table.3
The current steering committee has been relatively transparent, releasing information and data about their process. If you are interested in learning more, they maintain a blog that provides a meticulous breakdown of recent attendance numbers, the demographics of attendees, and various initiatives, including a commitment to antiracism. This transparency with data seems to point to some past traumatic fissure in the event's history that I am not privy to. It signals the gravity of the transgression; much like gauging the strength of a storm by the wreckage it leaves in its wake, and observing how folks choose to rebuild their infrastructure differently.
My partner and I submitted our application in August and received a follow-up email a few days after submissions closed, asking for clarification regarding the definition of antiracism in our application. Apparently, several applicants were asked to clarify their responses, and some chose to withdraw their applications in reaction. This prompted the steering committee to release a statement clarifying their position on the matter.
In September, we were notified that both our applications had been accepted. In addition to the acceptance, I received a scholarship to attend the event at no cost. I reciprocated by volunteering for the event, as I often do at other kink conferences. Later, when the committee released their data, we learned that both of us were auto-accepted because we fell into under-represented categories. Tom was over the age-bracket of 55, and I was considered a racial minority. We were grateful for the auto-acceptance and excited to attend the event, but I have to admit that this process did give us some pause. It encouraged us, as first-time attendees, to deliberate if this was the right event for us. What does it mean to be bumped to the front of the line because of identity markers, and what expectations does this raise for the event? Perhaps this is also the intention of this application process, functioning as a self-selecting mechanism to gauge commitment, interest, and ultimately - openness.
I went into detail about the application process because I consider it an integral part of our experience at the event. It reflects my initial questions of rigor, virtuosity, and skill and how they are (or are not) measured within the rope bondage community. Some of the decisions made by the current steering committee may reflect a recalibration of how the event was organized in the past, that frames how participants engage with NARiX in the present.
Rule of Two Feet
It was the first time Tom and I visited Austin, and we both found it surprisingly vibrant. We followed the recommendations of various friends on social media who have lived and worked in Austin before. We landed and headed to the James Turrell Sky Space on UT Austin campus, experiencing the work as the light transitions from day to night, and we snuggled on the floor in felt blankets with strangers. It was the perfect introduction to the city, and a calm meditative experience that prepared us for the intensity of the event ahead. We also spent some time cycling along the Colorado River that meanders through the city, ending our ride near the unique Barton Springs.
Amidst this vibrant, rapidly gentrifying liberal city, the conference in NARiX was held over three days at an aerial circus arts studio in East Austin, with high ceilings and various rooms with padded floors, which made it very friendly for rope bondage. The studio itself is housed within a larger wood-paneled chic complex, with trendy stationery shops, tea stores and a great Austin-based coffee chain named after the Italian renaissance art patrons - the Medici family. All meals during the event were catered, and I was volunteering as a kitchen crew to help with the setup and takedown.
On Friday the 13th, a fittingly auspicious start, we began with introductions. To streamline the process, the approximately 100 attendees were divided into three groups before gathering for a general introduction, which included an explanation of the unconference process.
A detailed breakdown of the process is available here, but in summary, anyone can propose sessions. These proposals are written on slips of paper, specifying whether the session is discussion-based and theoretical or practice-based and focused on tying. The proposals are then posted on a wall, where attendees can vote to indicate their interest. A “board fairy”, typically a member of the steering committee, organizes the selected proposals into a schedule. Sessions are allocated 45 to 75 minutes and assigned to appropriate rooms. While votes help gauge interest, the board fairy also ensures a balanced distribution of topics, prioritizing a diverse range of sessions for attendees that caters to various roles, skills, and interests. The responsibility of the board fairy in shaping the arc of the event becomes a significant opaque part of an otherwise transparent process.
There were five sessions on Friday, six sessions on Saturday, and two on Sunday morning, culminating in a closing circle on Sunday afternoon to conclude the event. On Friday and Saturday evenings, open play and practice sessions run late into the night.
The unconference format incorporates the “Rule of Two Feet”, which encourages participants to leave a session if it does not meet their learning needs. While this principle values self-determination and autonomy, it assumes that everyone feels comfortable asserting their preferences. In practice, it can occasionally create disruptions or fragment the energy of a session. Moreover, it may encourage participants to prioritize appealing to a common populist denominator to attract and retain attendees, stifling the potential for more nuanced, intricate, or uncomfortable conversations.
A broader critique of the unconference format is its reliance on an improvised structure. This can place a disproportionate burden on the same few capable volunteers or experienced participants who take on the labor of moderating sessions, determining the quality of the experience. This issue is particularly evident in practice-based, non-discussion sessions, where the format can easily default into a “show and tell” dominated by a confident, outspoken few, limiting opportunities for a more distributed participation and learning experience.
In accordance with the Chatham House Rule mentioned briefly at the start of the conference, I will not identify individual participants without their explicit permission. However, I would like to share several key takeaways from my experience at NARiX.
Beyond Virtuosity
As fate will have it, I proposed the discussion session of Rope Performance Beyond Virtuosity and it was selected by the board fairy to be the first session of the very first day. It was comparatively sparsely attended to other sessions, which I speculate might be due to several reasons. As a newcomer to the conference, I was relatively unknown, and many attendees appeared to choose sessions based on whether they recognized friends in the room. I guess the relatively esoteric title also threw folks off, and most appeared to prefer starting the conference with hands-on practical activity rather than a discussion-based session.
I felt a sense of responsibility in introducing the topic, as I was the one who proposed it. To set the stage, I shared an excerpt from my previous Substack post, describing a conventional rope bondage performance scene. Early on, another participant - perhaps assuming the discussion would focus on a critique of cultural appropriation or technical skill - exercised the “Rule of Two Feet” and left the room. This departure made the group even more intimate and created space for a deeper discussion.
I clarified that the session was not about rejecting skill but rather about exploring what lies beyond skill and virtuosity in performance. This perspective allowed us to consider often-overlooked aspects of performance, such as the politics of representation, the kinds of emotions or desires we invoke in the audience, and how to incorporate unconventional emotions like humor, absurdity, or even joy into a rope bondage scene. While everyone present engaged enthusiastically, we also felt slightly out of sync collectively. The participants were still acclimatizing to each other, the space, and the unique mode of knowledge circulation that the unconference encouraged. The open format demands a different level of critical adjustment to the pedagogical space that takes time to hone.
Fortunately, one of the benefits of the unconference format is its flexibility - if an initial session does not meet expectations, there is often an opportunity to revisit the topic later. Conversations often continue between sessions, and an informal stream forms as participants with shared affinities gravitate toward similar discussions. On the second day, another proposed session revisited and expanded on the earlier conversation, this time focusing on more concrete and pragmatic aspects of “performance tips”. This shift toward practical advice created space for more participants to engage and contribute. Attendees shared personal anecdotes and experiences, such as how they prepare for a performance, build a narrative, and guide the audience’s experience.
It was also telling that at the end of this session, I posed the question to the group, asking if they have considered their rope bondage performance as political, or the politics of their bodies onstage. This was in part a delayed response to a trans-identifying participant sharing in the first session that representation was something they consider when they are invited to perform rope bondage. Some in the group admitted to not having considered this before, while others reinforced that this is what they have to consistently navigate - reckoning with how their body is being beheld.
(De)colonizing Rope Practice
This topic intertwined with another recurring thread at the NARiX Austin conference: the relationship between rope bondage and colonization. This includes the historical colonization of the concrete - such as land and property - as well as the abstract, including culture, knowledge, and the mind. It also extends to the metaphorical colonization of bodies through conquering and possession that is explored as part of rope practice.
During lunch breaks at NARiX, small affinity-based groups held closed-door discussions. Affinity was self-determined, and these groups include the Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) discussion, the trans-masc and gay men discussion, the folks-over-40 discussion, and others. The topic of rope bondage and its connection to colonization first emerged in the BIPOC lunch discussion group. We discussed the lack of acknowledgment of the roots of rope bondage within the conference and emphasized the importance of reiterating its Japanese origins and the historical influences that shape our rope practices, while also highlighting the need to address orientalist engagement with Asia and its cultures.
This conversation was further complicated in another session on Saturday, the second day of the conference, titled (De)colonizing Rope Practice. In this mixed group, where Tom and I were both in attendance, I shared the tension of grappling with rope bondage as a practice while being a rope-submissive in an interracial relationship where my partner is an older, white, cis-male. How do I acknowledge my erotic pleasure from this arrangement while remaining cognizant about the history and acts of violence that are structurally necessary to support the thing we think we love?
It is also in this session, partly because we established a solid critical foundation and trust in an earlier session, that we were able to delve deeper into the complexity of desire, ones where rope bondage or kink might provide the space for one to experiment with forms of limit consent and exigent sadism that theorist Avgi Saketepoulou writes about.4 In brief, Saketepoulou’s writings provide critical language around the politically fraught terrain of race play - particularly around assumptions on the integrity of one’s personhood, and opacity to oneself. Saketepoulou reminds us from a psychoanalytic perspective, that we are not entirely transparent and clear about what we desire, and this includes the porous desire to inhabit states of overwhelm in kink-play, to give yourself up to the unknown, and derive pleasure from the risk of negotiating with trauma (instead of avoiding or fearing it).
Specific to the conversation around colonization, we also shared about what it means to negotiate with racial trauma in the wake of colonization, not in reparative ways that might necessarily resolve it (working-through), but as a way of lingering in the wound as a way of approaching a clearer sense of self (acting-out). Rope play, entangled as it is with Orientalist imaginaries, carries a persistent undercurrent of racialized power dynamics. Rather than retreating from this entanglement in a traumatophobic response - one that seeks to evade or suppress discomfort - what if we adopt a traumatophilic approach, engaging with the trauma to dwell in its unresolved complexities?
As an example, let us return to the opening scene I described in the first part of this response around rope bondage performances and virtuosity. A traumatophilic perspective considers that the exoticized, colonized body being tied up derives pleasure from inhabiting this state of disempowered self-objectification and surrender. This sense of disempowerment is heightened when the actions are carried out by a racialized other. In this scenario, are we able to entertain or locate visual pleasure in this form of edge-play? Is there space within a charged political milieu to publicly express such desires?
To concretize this abstraction on a personal level, certain asymmetries in my relationship with my partner Tom remain immutable: our differences in age and race, my preference for submission, and his for dominance. As we explore the possibility of public performance, how might we remain critically attuned to these dynamics - acknowledging the historical discrepancies in power that shape our positions - without defaulting to disavowal or repression of our sexual desires, however they might have been impacted by social structuration? How does this traumatophillic awareness differ from my decision to perform with Oat, one that is immediately perceived as less politically fraught because of the assumed evenness and similarities of our power positions? More significantly, how this awareness also highlights the complex discrepancies beyond superficial affinities in an inter-Asian dynamic between me and Oat, where Thailand and Singapore occupy very different historical positions in relation to the construction of “Asian-ness”.
The (De)colonizing Rope Practice session offered many gifts and thoughtful provocations, including the recognition that the stakes of rope play, when it carries significance, is always already entangled with the conquest of terrain. This includes the mapping of the unknown, the creation of a visceral encounter with the limits of overwhelm. Another participant, negotiating this fraught terrain through an intersectional Black feminist lens, offered the metaphor of a garden: an invitation into a cultivated space, yet one that inevitably summons unexpected ghosts or ancestors as echoes of intergenerational trauma, these uninvited apparitions that might provoke or challenge you in ways that complicate rhetorics of closure, reparation, and healing. Kink and bondage play provide the tools to confront rather than bury what emerges, resisting the impulse to master or vanquish these encounters, a desire often tied to masculinist logics of self-dominion and enlightenment. Instead, kink offers strategies of surrender, of yielding to what cannot be conquered, of dwelling in the tension between submission and resistance. Surrendering, here, as a form of refusal, but also as a form of permitting power to course through oneself. Giving the self up to be an object and conduite of power in a circuit of relationality.
State of Overwhelm
Beyond the heady theoretical engagements of the day, another highly anticipated component of NARiX are the unstructured rope sessions in the evening. These take place after dinner, with the lights dimmed, as one-on-one rope play unfolds under the watchful eyes of safety monitors. Exhausted from the long day, we only returned for these sessions on the second evening. The temptation to stay at our Airbnb and rest was too strong for me and Tom, and we arrived at the venue relatively late - at around ten at night. The play runs from eight till around midnight.
For some participants, these sessions are the highlight of the event, even taking precedence over the conference itself, with sessions arranged way in advance. They offer a rare chance to have sessions with people one might not often encounter due to geographic distance. Given that I attended the event largely alongside my partner, it was also difficult for others to approach us separately for play. As a result, we ended up having sessions with people we already knew - partly to avoid the complexities of interpersonal social negotiation that working with a stranger might entail.
I only had one play session, but it was definitely quality over quantity. In fact, the session reinforced much of the theoretical discussion we had during the day. As with other conferences, you cultivate a cohort of folks you encounter repeatedly across various sessions, coalescing into an informal stream of people with shared interests and affinities. Bondagious was one such mentor and friend that I shared many classes with. We have been in contact since the Men Roping Men conference where we both taught at in San Francisco in September, I learnt a lot from him then and picked up where we left off at NARiX. We have deep mutual respect and connection with each other, so it was a pleasure and thrill to finally have the opportunity to be tied by him.
Even after weeks since the conference, my pulse and breath still races as I recount the experience of being suspended by Bondagious. I remember how I felt - that of being held, on display, of vulnerability, and on the precipice of being overwhelmed. I had clarity about the technical precision and transitions only in retrospect, after comparing notes with Tom, who was watching reassuringly from a corner. In the moment, it was about lengthening my breaths, acknowledging the constriction and numbness that sets in from reduced circulation, drifting in and out of a submissive headspace and counting the number of breaths as the adrenaline from the fight-or-flight instinct kicks in.
Given that this was the first time I was tied by him, Bondagious took the time to sit down with me to check in on what I enjoyed from being tied before the session. I mentioned the sense of being in a cocoon, and of being swaddled and wrapped in rope as comforting and pleasurable. I realized in that moment that I have not had a negotiation for a rope session in a long time, given that I am usually tied up by my partner, or playing with friends I have already established kink relationships with - to be asked to verbalize what I value in rope was momentarily uncanny and strange. What is it I really desire from rope bondage? What sort of experience brings me deep pleasure? What does it mean to reiterate these pleasures and desires again?
A central component of Saketopoulou’s writing focuses on the “state of overwhelm”, one she ascribes to not just kink and sexual experiences, but present in aesthetic experiences. When we experience an aesthetic performance, venturing into the unknown, with the potential of having our egos shattered, becoming “engrossed almost to the point of losing oneself” (76). This state of “dysregulation” leads to a moment of “radical unbinding” (76), a sense of being broken open, a moment where conversations around race, gender and sexuality (centered on the ego) are torn asunder, and the body in suspension as a piece of meat, divorced from external signification to both the rigger and the thing being tied. This coincides with conversations I had with kink folks who enjoy objectification, or puppy play, where playing in these states permits them momentary respite from questions around their identity, where one is merely flesh and object - a terrain to be conquered and mapped.
Provoking Hunger
I wrote briefly about this intersection between kink and object oriented ontology aligned with current scholarship around ornamentalism (Anne Cheng), but also critical awareness of the sub-human / non-human / more-than-human categories of ontological being in this substack post on The Human Chandelier. Conversations on the final day of NARiX facilitated by Bondagious, and after the intense experience of the session with him on preceding evening, underscored some of these thoughts around the pleasures of objecthood.
The final day of the conference was a day of exhaustion and exuberance - tinged with sadness in anticipation of the impending event drop that inevitably happens. Bondagious offered up two sessions that are closely coupled and relevant to ongoing conversations that we have shared across various platforms. The first discussion is an open conversation around “better ways to approach humans as “fetish” objects”, and the second is “how does desire show up in your rope practice.” Both sessions were well attended, and the overlap between both classes permitted the conversation to develop in further depth than usual.
I shared my encounter with a “real housewife” on Cherry Grove, Fire Island last summer who complimented me (in an inebriated state) on how my skin is so very smooth, and insistently repeated “I WANT your skin” over the loud disco music, while clawing and touching me. Tom responded then by stating matter-of-factly: “He can’t give you his skin, he needs it to survive and be alive!” It took me a while to process that experience, flattered by the compliment, but also unnerved by being reduced as an object to the quality and texture of my skin, and her desire to possess it. Thoughts that also ran through my mind include: Is she ready to encounter the potential racism from wearing my skin after she procures it? In relation to the conversation around performing as a fetish object, an object of desire, there is pleasure in being in that position of intense desirability, to be coveted and collected for my materiality, to provoke a primal hunger in another being?
Other rope riggers openly expressed their desire to "collect" and "complete" a set of play partners. Even Tom shares this tendency, deriving pleasure from indexing and classifying bodies - an impulse shaped by his background in library and data science. Is it possible to develop an ethical approach to kink that accommodates this kind of “hyper-fixation” or “obsession,” which appears particularly common within cis-male gay communities? These are practices pursued precisely because they are taboo, foregrounding primal, sub-human instincts through acts like anonymous public sex, cruising, or gooning - practices that intentionally blur or compromise the integrity of personhood. Going further, beyond reclaiming an ethics of existing in objecthood, can this deliberate abstraction function as a tactic of illegibility and opaqueness? Could it serve as a gesture of refusal, resisting normative frameworks of identity and recognition?
The conversation around how ‘desire’ shows up in your practice also touched on the darker valences of these desires, and the impulses that drive them. This included the desire for domination, the desire for fear, and the desire for intimidation. Towards the end of this session I am reminded of Foucault, and how he frames sex and desire as part of the larger project of an ‘incitement to discourse’ in his History of Sexuality Volume 1. I consider his theoretical framework in light of what we have experienced over the conference, as we struggle to articulate and “confess” the pleasures of rope within a framework of pedagogical exchange. Emerging from the overwhelming experience of the previous evening, one that exceeds the ability to codify in language, it is perhaps helpful to keep what Foucault cautions in mind. The focus on the articulation of desires resides within the framework of power-knowledge, and that a return to “bodies and pleasures” is necessary to avoid this totalizing deployment of sexuality. Resistance, in this case, is in the pursuit of these impulses, but also remaining cognisant of various forces at play (including knowledge production) that polices bodies and pleasures.
Bondagious has developed this conversation from NARiX into the premise of a class they have titled “Thirst Trap - Fetishistic Objectification in Rope” that they will be offering on February 24, 2025 at Temple in New York City. I highly recommend the class if you are in the vicinity. To quote from their excellent class description:
“to break someone into parts is to take control of how they are perceived and desired. However, to be the source that provokes hunger is to hold sway over those who crave our flesh. Decoupling the flesh from the human that occupies it, we can put down identities and relationships, temporarily suspending our humanity in order to investigate our carnal craving to consume and be consumed.”
The conference wrapped up on Sunday late afternoon with a closing circle, where each participant shared their reflections on the experience. It was an emotional journey, filled with heartfelt responses. I remarked on how the depth of discussions around rope bondage were made possible by the gathering itself - a community of dedicated subject matter experts with years of experience, deeply committed to the practice, generously sharing their knowledge.
Attending NARiX also dispelled some of my initial perceptions about its selection and application process. I now have a deeper understanding of the vetting process for applications and why it might be essential. In an event that relies on crowdsourced knowledge - where each participant shapes the collective experience - it is essential to ensure that folks who share space are open to conversation, and are willing to put their ego momentarily aside in the spirit of generosity.
The Infinity Gate
There were many striking things about Austin, Texas that left an impression, but the one of the most distinctive encounters was an art installation by Janet Zweig at the airport titled Interimaginary Departures that greeted us as we arrived and departed NARiX.
Zweig took over an actual boarding gate and offset it by seven degrees at an angle, creating an off kilter sensation with neoclassical walls and finishings that is reminiscence of the liminal holding space at the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The screens in the space display departure and arrival information for various destinations drawn from fantasy and science fiction literature and popular culture, including Narnia, Shangri-La etc. For science fiction fans (like Tom, and by extension, me), it gave us a lot of pleasure to see these locations rendered as a possibility in our reality. The gate itself replaced its number with an infinity sign, and consists of a pair of double doors, slightly ajar, that reveal a white light behind them - the threshold to the unknown. Visitors also had the opportunity to generate and download a boarding pass that gives them a quote from a book, along with an hypothetical destination.
I return to the opening questions I started out this writing with, what is considered rigor when it comes to engaging with knowledge about rope bondage? Are we cognisant of our positionality in space and time as we engage with rope bondage as a practice? How do we engage with rope bondage in a way that balances tradition and innovation, intimacy and performance, fantasy and reality?
If we permit ourselves to think through the installation as a metaphor, Interimaginary Departures’ blend of the fantastical and the tangible invites us to reflect on how rope bondage, too, can be such a portal like the exigent sadism of challenging aesthetic encounters - connecting us to others, to ourselves, and to unknown utopias. It encourages us to step beyond the familiar, think beyond existing representations and our reality, place ourselves on an angle, and consider new perspectives. Perhaps the rigor we seek lies not only in technique but also in the willingness to question, to dream, and to connect meaningfully with the worlds we build through our practice. The rigor to be challenged, the rigor to be remade in the practice of critique.
January 31, 2025: As I wrap up this piece, I receive a notice from Stripe - the payment processor for my Substack subscription - informing me that my account has been suspended for allegedly falling under one of their “restricted business categories.”
I attempted to appeal the decision, but without success, and I am now unable to receive further payments via this platform. Since Substack operates exclusively through Stripe, I have paused all paid subscription billing. If you have been a paid supporter, please check to ensure you are no longer being charged as I figure out my next steps.
All of my posts have always been free to access, with paid subscriptions serving only as a way for readers to support my writing if they were able to. Now, even that option is no longer available.
I am deeply grateful to the few of you who have been paid subscribers so far - I truly appreciate your support. If you have any suggestions for a way forward, I would love to hear them. Thank you.
Wendy Brown examines the consequences of the neoliberal institution enforcing standards and rigor in Undoing the Demos, and how it transforms knowledge production and intellectual work. Transnationally, scholars like Dipesh Chakrabarty or Chen Kuan-Hsing have examined the possibilities of foregrounding non-Western intellectual traditions and strategies of knowledge production, as a decolonial strategy to the ongoing colonial project of claiming subjugated knowledges.
The event's current website does not specify when NARiX first began, but it is held twice a year in different cities across North America. Recent locations include Montreal (2022 and 2024), Los Angeles (2023), and Philadelphia (2023). Each event has up to a hundred participants selected via application. Given that the event is run by a volunteer steering committee with a term limit of up to six events, hence limiting its continuity and organizational memory, it is difficult to find concrete records about events that were organized previously, or to verify unsubstantiated claims that might be leveled against versions of NARiX pre-2023.
Adding a note to clarify that this is not an admission or selection process based on merit. The NARiX blog maps out the process quite clearly. There used to be frustration around the opaqueness of the selection criteria, then they decided to transition into a lottery system.
The current model maintains a lottery system, but automatically accepts certain folks, this includes: volunteers, steering committee members (capped at 14), and underrepresented identities in the rope community: “In practice what this means is that we analyze the applicant pool, and look across age, race, and sexual and gender identity, and when any one group reviewed is under represented in the applicant pool, we automatically accept all of those members.”
Received applications are reviewed for completeness and responses to questions are considered to eliminate folks whose responses are inadequate or deemed not aligned with the values of NARiX before the automatic acceptance of under represented participants. The rest of the applicants who qualify are put through a lottery system for the remaining available slots.
Limit consent is an alternative model for consent that moves beyond affirmative or enthusiastic consent. Exigent sadism is a form of sadism that occupies a liminal space between a benign, sensible sadism and destructive, harmful sadism. For further details about her writing, please refer to her excellent book, or the numerous articles that have been written about her work and its impact on the kink scene’s understanding of consent.
Finn Deerhart writes an excellent Substack post unpacking some of Saketepoulou’s concepts. Saketepoulou’s site also provides a comprehensive list of various podcasts and interviews she has given on the subject.