Mark DeViate

Mark DeViate, also written Mark De Viate, is a rope educator, performer and community organizer in Sydney and one of the founders of Studio Kink, a kink education studio that has operated since 2015. The studio’s team page names Lani DeViate and Aleni DeViate as his fellow co-founders.

Lineage

Studio Kink’s team page says his rope developed through mentorship with Osada Steve in Japan and that it draws on the tradition of Akechi Denki. In a 2017 interview with the Sydney magazine Ciao, DeViate described his aim as staying true to the Akechi Denki tradition, which he called the origin of the line of shibari he follows and teaches.

Teaching

According to the team page, he co-founded DV8House in Sydney in 2001 with Aleni DeViate, a private house that became an early meeting point for the city’s BDSM scene, and by 2005 he was teaching at the Austin Ropecraft Symposium in Texas. The page also describes him as a regular educator at ShibariCon in Chicago. Archived copies of the convention’s website bear this out: “Mark of DV8House” appears among the ShibariCon instructors for 2006, 2007 and 2008, and “Mark DV8 (De Viate)” among the presenters listed for 2014. The archived pages of ROPECRAFT, a later rope convention, list him among the presenters at its Austin event in February 2016, and at ROPECRAFT Chicago in May 2017, the convention’s first Chicago edition, the program billed an intensive by him and Lani DeViate called “All the Hishi!”, covering four hishi ties in the Akechi Denki style. His teaching covers rope suspension as well as broader kink and consent topics, and he has spoken about kink and consent at university Sex Week events in Sydney and the Australian Capital Territory. The page presents his classes as easy to follow and built around safety.

At Studio Kink he leads a monthly hishi intensive in St Peters. The studio’s online program, most of which he teaches, runs from an introductory course and a fundamentals course on the takate kote to a series of hishi variations built on a two-rope takate kote in the studio’s own style, including variations made with hojō cuffs. One course listing credits him with more than twenty years in the kink community.

Asked by Ciao why he teaches both the person tying and the person being tied, he said the craft’s small details and the erotic energy between partners have to be handed on; otherwise newcomers only imitate photos and end up with bondage that holds but lacks substance.

Performance and community work

The team page says he performed with Lani DeViate at Sydney’s Hellfire Club from 2006 until their last show there in 2019; in her own biography on the same page, Lani recalls that the partnership began at Hellfire in 2006, when she asked him to tie her. Their group DV8House also performed abroad: the Tokyo Kink Society announced a rope bondage, rigging and suspension show by DV8House at the 2009 Japan Fetish Ball in Tokyo and afterwards described it as the group’s Japan debut. The team page adds that he provided the shibari for Opera Australia’s 2019 production of Madama Butterfly and has coordinated floats for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras since 2002. Studio Kink’s 2024 float, “KINK: Unchain Your Future”, was awarded Best Float Design, according to Lani’s biography.