Bob Roos / RopeMarks
Kinbaku artist, teacher and performer based in Amsterdam.
Japanese rope bondage since 1999.
RopeMarks today
RopeMarks is the name under which I have worked with Japanese rope bondage since 1999. Based in Amsterdam, I work as a kinbaku artist, teacher and performer, exploring rope as a combination of technique, aesthetics, eroticism and interaction.
My work ranges from teaching through RopeMarks Ryū and private tuition to performances, collaborations and a diverse range of projects. While my work is rooted in Japanese kinbaku and years of study, I am not interested in simply reproducing what came before. Technique provides the foundation, but what makes kinbaku interesting to me is what happens between the people in the rope.
My approach to Kinbaku
For me, kinbaku starts with technique, but it does not end there. A solid technical foundation creates the freedom to focus on the person in the rope, the interaction between us, and the atmosphere we create together.
I am drawn to rope that has intention. It can be beautiful, erotic, intense, playful, uncomfortable or deeply intimate. Sometimes several of those things exist at the same time. What interests me is not simply the shape of a tie, but what that tie does to the person, and what happens between us because of it.
My work is rooted in Japanese kinbaku and shaped by the people I have studied with, but I believe that study should eventually lead to your own voice. I want to understand where things come from, learn them properly, and then allow that knowledge to become part of my own way of tying.
Be a voice, not an echo.
Study & influences
My approach to kinbaku has developed through more than 25 years of practice, study and exchange. Over the years I have studied in Japan and Europe, with Japanese teachers whose work has had a lasting influence on the way I tie and teach, including Akechi Denki and Naka Akira.
I see study as something ongoing rather than something completed. Techniques, traditions and ideas are worth understanding in their original context, but they also need time, practice and experience before they become part of your own work.
What I do
Teach
I teach kinbaku through RopeMarks Ryū workshops and private tuition, combining a strong technical foundation with an understanding of how rope affects and connects the people involved.
Perform
Live performance gives me a different space to explore kinbaku: creating something intimate, intense and visually compelling while sharing that interaction with an audience.
Create
Rope is part of a wider creative practice that includes photography, video, collaborations and projects that sometimes move beyond rope altogether.
Selected media & appearances
Over the years, RopeMarks has appeared in magazines, film and television in the Netherlands, Japan and internationally. These are a few moments from that history.
How RopeMarks began
I can trace my fascination with bondage imagery back surprisingly far. I remember being around eight years old and already being fascinated by images of bound women. At that age I obviously had no language for why it caught my attention, but something about restraint and the way it changed the shape of the body stayed with me.
As I grew older, that fascination did not disappear. I collected images and looked for bondage wherever I could find it, but for a long time rope itself was mostly functional to me: something used to bind someone.
That changed when the internet began opening up access to Japanese bondage. What I saw there felt fundamentally different. The rope was no longer just a means of restraint. It had structure, rhythm and beauty of its own, and the interaction between the people involved seemed just as important as the finished tie.
I started experimenting with rope in my own relationships, first by copying what I could see and gradually by trying to understand why things were done in a particular way. Looking became practising, practising became studying, and the fascination became something much more serious.
In 1999, when I was thirty, that journey became RopeMarks.
More than twenty-five years later, the thing that first pulled me toward rope is still recognizable. I still care about how rope transforms the body, but what has become far more important is what happens to the people involved while it is happening.
Short biography
For events, publications and introductions
Bob Roos, known as RopeMarks, is an Amsterdam-based kinbaku artist, teacher and performer who has worked with Japanese rope bondage since 1999. His work is rooted in more than 25 years of practice and study, including study in Japan and Europe and influences from Akechi Denki and Naka Akira.
Through workshops, private tuition, performances and creative projects, he approaches kinbaku as both a technical discipline and an interaction between people, with an emphasis on intention, aesthetics and developing an individual voice.
