Buenos Aires

The Buenos Aires scene

In a 2024 paper presented at a performing-arts research conference at the National University of La Plata, the researchers and practitioners Karen Dayanna Medina Díaz and Julio Martín Pavón name the start of group classes at Kinbakumania Dojo in Buenos Aires in 2014 as one of the founding experiences of shibari in Latin America. Its teacher, Haru Tsubaki, also known as Camelia, passed on what she had studied since 2010 with teachers in Europe and Japan, above all Yukimura Haruki, Yukinaga Max and Osada Steve. Because Osada Steve was a student of Osada Eikichi, the authors write, the school treats the onlooker’s point of view as central: ties are made so that they can be seen, and the person in rope is always shown to the audience, even when no one else is present.

The same paper traces a rope community in La Plata back to this school. Its performance cycle Kinbaku Íntimo, in which practitioners tie in front of a small audience at a cultural center, had held twelve editions since 2019. A circle of friends, students, models and artists around the dojo also started Shibari Attack, spontaneous rope art in places the group had talked about tying in. According to the dojo’s own video page, the first one took place in the early hours of 22 November 2015 in a venue whose owner had given permission, and a filmed one followed in the city on 11 March 2016.

Community nights and park jams

Much of today’s public rope activity is announced on the calendar of KinkyVibe, which calls itself a dissident outreach and support project working from a pro-sex, kinky perspective. Its shop is its main source of income, and it also keeps a library of texts that includes a basic shibari guide, recorded workshops and a directory of allied people and businesses. With the rope collective Club de Cuerdas it runs the Matiné de Cuerdas, a paid community evening for the curious, learners and practitioners with mate, tatami and a rope jam alongside a live rope session; the third edition took place in June 2026. Its free Rancheadita Kinky en el Parque brings kinky and queer people together in Parque Centenario to talk, eat and tie, paid for by passing the hat; for the January 2026 edition, with a jam, it asked participants to bring rings or carabiners for suspension.

Workshops

Teaching mostly comes in short courses. Sogui of Soga Shibari teaches an intensive introduction over two four-hour days at Club Soguita Shibari in Almagro, for eight to twelve people who take turns tying and being tied. It covers a short history of shibari, risk, body awareness, anatomy and body checks, and ties such as the single column and double column. Ritual Kinbaku hosted a workshop on risk profiles in shibari in August 2026, organized with KinkyVibe and two other projects, on harm reduction and on managing risk and pleasure in BDSM.

Finding your way in

The calendar, the workshop pages and the paper are in Spanish. How Japanese rope spread beyond Japan is told in Kinbaku goes global, and the difference between a jam and a class is explained in Rope jams, munches and salons.