Ann Antidote is a performer, teacher, and an insiprational person to be around. She and her partner Lun Ário teach bondage classes once a month (contact them here in interested), and also do private tutoring. They also perform "noise and rope" as performances and installations, for which you can read more below. I have known them for more than a year now, and have been regularly going to their classes. From the first time I went to a class at their home, I felt included, at home and at ease. Ann has a lot to say about inclusivity in art, society, and politics, the nature of time as our most valuable resource, and of course rope and music - read on for more.

How did you get into rope?

I remember when I was a kid I would play at tying up my neighbor (of the same age), because it was nice and I can recall there was also this feeling - feeling edgy about it, like dominating and restraining somebody or somebody restraining me because he was also sometimes tying me. But there was already also this technical aspect, this very geeky aspect of doing knots, and see what is coming next. Which might be seen as egoistic - a lot of people speak about this all-sacred connection. But sometimes I think it can be very pleasurable to share a space where you just start doing some knots and see where it goes.

So that's maybe when I was 10 years old. Then later I started playing with it, with partners. Later on, I was a bondage model learning at Osada studio 6 in Berlin. When I came to Berlin I met Dasniya (Sommer) of course. Meeting her was a very big eye-opener because she was not doing all these very strict things, such as "this is supposed to be BDSM and it should be about domination and you should be like this, it should be like that". It was basically "yeah, as long as it's safe and as long as you have some idea, then you can do whatever you want, just follow some idea, forget the dogmas".

I found the way she does that interesting, also as a choreographer - the mixture of something that is typically an erotic expression with other varied forms of art.

Is this why in the performances you do, you incorporate rope in some way with music?

Yeah. First, because it was an opportunity - I got to be very comfortable with rope as a method and I also was performing in other aspects. Actually back then I was doing a lot of burlesque and queer burlesque and sex-positive burlesque, so I was trying to give an emancipated and a reflected aspect to this rope play, give it some new dimension beyond the "pure bondage" aspect of it.

Music has always been on the back of my mind, but back then I was telling myself that music was not something I could competently do. This has changed recently because I just said " fuck it" and I started to not only do sound and music installations in an art context but also to combine rope with noise music and other forms of improvisation with sound. Before that, I did some installations where you use sound and rope. I was using either the ropes, like using the interaction of people and detectors to react to this and using the ropes to make sound or just using typical sound installations that also had to be connected with the symbolism of rope and the visual aspect of it.

Ann Antidote and Lun Ário in their home

You said you were combining burlesque with rope ...

It's not that I wanted to tell a story. I was never a person who tells a story, but I like to play with symbols and just make people and myself figure out if there's a story, if there's a leitmotif or tree of four or something. Basically, everybody around me was doing a lot of burlesque or just impromptu performances. So I started naturally to do that as well and then started to tell my own, let's say political or symbolic story, and rope is very rich for this because it is a symbol for many things. And not only it's a symbol for many things, but it's also a very accessible and universal means of production. Basically, everybody can afford to have some rope.

What kind of political opinions were you expressing?

I was playing a lot with religion and the roles of gender and roles of genders that don't belong to the binary norm. Also precarity actually, like that there is not only a very unequal distribution of resources in our society, but also there's a social pressure that you have to work and you have to be successful and live in certain ways (ex. in a sedentary house, with a job, with electricity, using money … all things that IMHO can be optional instead of mandatory, and are as valid as others). I also would say there were some collaborations where we addressed the topic of racism and other discriminations and exclusions. We also had something about age and we had something about ableism. Yeah basically, it depended sometimes on the people I was working with, but these are basically the topics that I quite like to address. I hate this word because it's a bit too overused, but I used to do some type of lobby and activism work for polyamory and I always insisted that activism or any type of political movements should be more (again, another very loaded word) inter-sectional, you cannot be doing feminism or you can not do poly activism or you can not do kink positive activism without looking at other forms or concepts of lifestyles which have been discriminated or look at other people who are just being oppressed and discriminated. Either we are all free or we aren't. So basically it was automatic that you start incorporating this into your creation and your development.

Do politics play a role in your teaching?

Sure, but maybe I just tell you something about how I/we started or why I/we started. The world around me changed and when I started teaching I did not feel very competent or very comfortable, but I wanted to offer a space - alternative! - where people could tie and learn without a lot of normativity. And I don't mean only gender normativity of BDSM normativity. I meant having a non-hierarchical, safeR, and stimulating state of mind.

It was also about different ages, body types, financial access, residence status etc, and people being respectful about all that, and let's say inter-sectional topics like discrimination and migration and so on and so on.

I mean, you go to the majority of BDSM parties and everybody is in very expensive clothes and you have to pay a lot of money to get into a club, and it is this super binary thing and not especially feminist or inclusive of people without much money or migration background, to put it mildly. It doesn't have to be like that, and that is not where I want to be or contribute to. I wanted to create a space where people get rid of this, not only in the material aspect, like in creating events which are accessible and safer, but also that they had a chance to de-construct that in their minds and also my own mind because I, of course, I have also a lot of these biases.

So definitely I will keep promoting workshops, performing and teaching in this type of mentality. I want people to come from all walks of life and that they feel safe and they have an opportunity to get better with rope. But beyond that, that we all, learning together, become decent and better human beings and a better community.

Ann Antidote and Lun Ário in their home

You were a software engineer. But then, at some point you were “Ah fuck it, I don't want this anymore I just really want to go and do my thing”. And you said that was around 10 years ago. What was the switch?

Well, without going too much into details basically at some point you realize: 1) you work more than you need like there's not so much need for so many things and so much material resources. 2) Then you realize time is the most precious thing that you have. You never know how much time do you have. 3) maybe you don't want to give your work and your time to any type of job because you are supporting mostly an unnecessary capitalist system and sometimes very evil forms of oppression and that's not cool: you don't need to necessarily work in a way that you make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

And the (4) fourth thing is also related to time - the more time you have, the more things you discover about yourself and the world around you. Because sometimes you are just busy, with either money work or with your projects, but sometimes just spending some time doing nothing and not having to react to a certain need to earn money is good. You just see more of the world and you see more of certain structures that you did not see before and you make more conscious decisions. Because if you don't have so much time you go after the things that you want, but there are a lot of things that you don't know you want or don't know at all, and to find those out you need time.

There are different intention and context in what you do. Of course, not everybody's going to be automatically more aware of the world just by having time. But I will say that time is one of the biggest limiting factors. And yes, it is difficult to live outside the hamster wheel. But it is possible. I have seen a lot of people doing it, and we are getting to be more and more.

Let's talk more about the performances that you're doing now, can you tell me more about the rope and noise?

One of the things I always had actually, even at the time when I was an engineer and I had a normal life and whatever: I had this thing that everything should be accessible, not only material resources and rights but also art - that it does not have to be restricted to this context or education, or even certain jobs, that you can only do if you learn this or you do that.

But there is sometimes a very rigid way of things to get done in our society. Even outside of money structures because sometimes people argue that it's because of money that you need to have certain competencies. And I always defended that politics, especially politics can be done by everybody and should be done by everybody and independent of you being an anarchist or not, but also art.

Ann Antidote and Lun Ário in their home

Bondage opened for me a possibility of improving further my performance practice and my installations practice by giving me a skill that is very accessible (rope is cheap, and you just need to dedicate a lot of practice time, which was quite obvious for me that I would dedicate it) because I got at some point very comfortable with this technique. But there was this thing about music "ah, maybe I should not go there because I don't know music, and I have no idea about it", even if it's something that I really love to listen to and I've been reading about music theory and music for ages. Suddenly I stumbled into both people that were improvising, like doing a lot of music but in an improvising context, and stumbled into improvisation as a method and into the noise methods. I actually also liked noise, which is a coincidence (and actually quite connected to the story of kinbaku in Japan), but what I appreciate about this whole noise stuff is that it's very equalitarian. Nobody's going to ask you (at least nobody has so far) how competent are you, and how many years have you studied music? Because it's very much about improvising and reacting to the moment and listening to each other. You can know as much music theory as you want, but if you don't listen, you don't respect the other people's music-making, if you are not in the moment, it will not take off. Sorry.

Of course it also then opens the door - you can also do other types of music, (not only noise) using the same approach, but you still have to find people who are willing to accept you with, let's say your lack of formal education about this. Which is again, not always the rule.

So that's how you found out about noise and decided to do it?

I am thankful for the root of it being a joyful and long experience of people who are/were very close in their interaction with me, at a personal level, beyond a performance project. It started in the beginning as a classical bondage performance which I and R. (Lun Ário) were booked to do, something very technical, and I suggested Y. (notorische ruhestoerung), that they would make some noise music maybe with using some samples of very small not penetrating, but present samples of Japanese traditional music. We wanted to break the cliché of, “let's do Japanese bondage performance with Japanese music”. It was meant to start like that and then completely fall to pieces and go to places in the process.

I had already some DIY synthesizers and Y. was also playing with other DIY synthesizers. And then suddenly we were playing with the idea of combining a rope improvisation with noise improvisation and see what happens. And it started like this and gained a life of its own, with more people and it became The Rope Meets Noise Ensemble. I usually get the feeling that we are/were rehearsing and close to the performance we still don't know what we're going to do. Because every time is different and we can't resist incorporating new stuff all the time. For instance, at this performance at our event Strings Attach/ed at Maze (which we 3 used to organize), we used some microphones connected to the bamboo and we were basically letting the bamboo tell the musical story of a suspension. Of course, there was some musical element that was being brought to compliment that, but the main voice, the solo-singer, was the bamboo.

Ann Antidote and Lun Ário in their home

And this is what I mean that I don't have to tell a story with my performances.

That's not a real linear story, but there are some elements which have to be there and it's not that I'm just putting a lot of random elements and hope that they look nice (I think there is a lot of laziness in some performances, and that is definitely something I distance myself from). There should be a couple of elements that are connected somehow and then people can make up what story might there be. So, in this case, it was the bamboo telling a story.

Is there anything new that you want to incorporate or is there something that you're excited about musically?

With shibari, music and the performances alike, but especially with shibari and music, I think I still like very much to do the typical technical stuff and I can do that and I want to keep improving on that. And that is a great part of my daily routine: learning, practicing, asking questions, debugging, developing. I still sometimes go to selected shibari workshops and I keep learning music. I mean there's a lot out there to be learned, but what is really in the moment rocking my boat is mixing other elements and innovating and surprising myself.

What would be another form of expression besides music?

Well, there was a time I was doing quite huge and intricate interactive installations. But this is something you need a space, gallery-like, for. So you need to be commissioned for doing them and you need a lot of time and timing also material resources. But I would like to do (again) some type of interactive installation either with sound and/or with image.

I like and have been working very long with the idea of stuff reacting to people’s behavior and also something that has some a stochastic element to it, things happening by chance. Or the audience being a part of the creation process. It's again not only an aesthetical concept, but it's also again a political thing. It will happen when the right time comes. You don't have to be special to do any of these things. You just do because you well, like it, because you want to share it, and ultimately because you actually do it, but you're not a better nor worse person because you do it. you just are, and you just do it. Or not.

For me, for example, I always think, “Oh, I’m not worthy of doing arts, I can't do this because I haven't studied for years and years”

Yeah that is what I was saying, but that's exactly the thought I would like that everybody gets rid of.

Maybe that was why I started calling art something else, I started to call it stuff* because I wanted to get away from this huge word, it's only three letters, but it's huge.

It's about expression and it's not like you have always something concrete to say, but its just something that you do because it's inside of you and maybe sometimes you don't even know that is inside of you, you just start doing it and then it starts pouring out. And if you are doing it with other people, you know even less what is going to come out, and that is amazing.

Ann Antidote and Lun Ário in their home

I tried to roll away from labels like to be an artist or to be a rigger or a scientist or whatever. Or, better example, for other situations and people, a criminal or a perpetrator. Because actually everybody can change and clean up their deeds or improve their deeds. It's what you do that has consequences, but it's not going to be or at least it should not become a part of your identity forever and ever. The difference between doing and being is more than grammar.

You mentioned you have rigger friends who don't perform, female friends who don't perform?

I also mean playing in public spaces, which is not necessarily performance per se, but it's also some type of performative action and there's a lot of women or female-identified people who tie privately, but you don't see them going to rope jams or doing public performances on the stage or something.

Why do you think is that?

I mean some people maybe could say it's because of the socialization, that maybe men are leaning more towards the attention and performance. I think that one is a very simplistic solution. I rather think there are probably 10,000 of other reasons for that, but it's just something that I've been observing. Actually, I think I personally know many more women (and trans+etc folks) who tie than (cis-)men. But maybe it also has to do with the groups I've been in. But I would like to underline that the idea of something like "a scene" makes people jump to conclusions that some things don't exist just because you don't know them. There are a lot of people running small and big events which you will never see in your radar. Just because you don't move in those circles. Nothing wrong about it, but just don't conclude that what you see is the only thing that exists. I heard somebody saying (and writing, and repeating, and writing again...) that there were no bondage events for queer folks in Berlin. Obviously, I have been doing this for 8+ years now, and I am proof against it, but this person did not know.

Was it always like this or was it different when you started?

I think you cannot separate, the accidents in your life from the reality of the world because you never know what is the reality of the world. Again, just because you don't see it, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. But when I started with bondage, it was more than 10 years ago. I started as a model because somebody was taking me to studio 6, and it was very much men tying women, with a very hierarchical structure. From what I remember it was around 10 people and most of them were men tying. With the years and people getting vocal about not only things changed but I also started to organize events with the mindset I wanted.

So in general at this point in your life, what do you associate rope with, what is it for you to tie?

It can be so many things, I mean it can be this connection that everybody speaks about, and I share that. Of course, it's there, but I suppose I also like to go away from this main discourse - that it is supposed to be a very big connection between two people. It can also be something playful and superficial (and that can be amazing and valid). It can be something very technical, it can be everything at the same time and I like very much this freedom because rope allows for a very big intimacy if you want it, but it can also be very superficial. Like when I say superficial - it doesn't need to be bad. You can regulate how much proximity you can have with the person and I really liked that. It opens up more possibilities if you open up to feel them.

What about getting tied. I mean, do you enjoy it? Do you do it often?

Yes, I think I would like to get tied more often. But the thing is being public about teaching, is that I need to do other nurturing activities and also there are not so many people who will do that. I mean people get a bit scared or intimidated. And finally my body is not too flexible nor young anymore, so I need a patient and dedicated rope person. If they would show up, I would be happy.

As a switch, I know when getting tied I get high very fast and easy. What is the feeling when tying?

Sometimes you get to what I call an extraordinary state of mind. I don't like to use the word 'trance' because it's very loaded from special circles, but I like sometimes this state where you seem to be either very high or very concentrated or maybe the opposite of it, that you are completely unconcentrated. And it's something that I can experiment with either rope (receiving or giving) and also with music, or dedicated cognitive processes like maths/science. And that's why I sometimes very much like to combine both, this type of trance-like state.

For instance, drone music or ambient music can reflect this very well, or some type of very slow rope, like, you do everything very slow.

Ann Antidote and Lun Ário in their home

For performances, it's different because usually, you have to decide what you're going to do beforehand because it's about the show (there are few things in the world less open in their narrative than bondage performances..). But if I am tying, I don't know what I'm going to do, but I have these two or three pillars that I cannot break in the contract with myself. They are vital rules that I decided I have to follow. The pillars can be like, the ropes cannot be on specific points on the body. It has to be stable. It has to be safe.

And, I just let the time pass and things are starting to happen. It's a very similar state to where there's a part of my brain that is taking care of safety and these three rules, but the rest is not really deciding or very deterministic about what is going to happen. And then I get really very high and very much in the present tense if I'm tying.

In a way, its a flow.

It is. The second one of these voices can become quite unpredictable (for me) and reserve you some surprises, but yes, it's quite flowing. The concentration makes me very high. And when tying for fun, I get high as soon as I start, basically.

But it's happening because I put myself in this state, which is again blowing some cliches of topping and bottoming, and ultra negotiated plays (nothing wrong about them, just not my thing).

I put myself on purpose in this state that I don't know, I don't want to know nor to decide, where it's going. It is about not having plans about the session and just seeing where it's going. Because only you can be vulnerable, then only you can be open and spontaneous. I'm not going to decide, "I'm going to use a flogger and I'm going to use the rope this way." No. It's about being completely, sincerely, in the moment, and this is where I get my high from. And that is not negotiable for me.

So it's almost, it's the way that you described it, it's almost meditative in a way, but meditation that you get high from.

If meditation is about putting one in the present and away from time-travel, yes, it's a very active meditation. But it's also about this thing which is almost ego-dissolving, about "No, I'm putting my vanity and control aside. All the things I know and some things about my insecurities”. I put them on the side, and just say "Okay, let's see where this is going."

It's more difficult, especially with new people because you, me, we all always have a lot of tricks. You have your bag of tricks that you know they work most of the time, and you can always get this tool and that tool and whatever. very tempting.

Actually, Dasniya (Sommer) had this life-changing (for me) exercise, in some workshops. You plan something, and when your turn comes, you do something else. You can cheat, nobody will notice. But if you want to go further in your learning you should not cheat.

You throw this idea out, away, discard it - and you do something, whatever comes to your mind, and it's a great exercise. You're not reacting through your vanity, you're not reacting to your insecurity. You're just in the moment and you see what comes out. And then you surprise yourself.

I'm having issues with being creative and improvising when tying, and I've been trying to challenge this.

I think rope is a very special domain on itself, and it's very performance-oriented, even if you do it privately. And, especially when you're starting and everybody's doing amazing stuff, or apparently amazing stuff, at least on the surface, around you. And it's like you just have this rope in your hand, and it feels lonely and wild. What are you going to do?

But this is exactly the moment that needs to be embraced. It is a moment of absolute ignorance about "Okay, this person is new, and because this person is new, I'm also a new person at this moment. What am I gonna do?"

And it's amazing. It's precious. The first times are amazing because they will never repeat themselves. But you can always go back to this space by being candid and authentic.

*** All photos by me