After her most recent performance, the avant-garde performance artist reflects on her obsession with the shibari
“I love being submissive because I’m so dominating in my day to day life.” Brooke Candy is revelling in her love for fetish, reflecting on her most recent show at the launch of SORT Studio’s latest film DROME – premiered here and scored by Dazed 100er Naked. In collaboration with traditional Japanese rope bondage artist Gestalta, the musician and avant-garde performance artist debuted a series of new tracks from her upcoming album Daddy Issues, all the while being tied to a pillar of an east London basement club.
The performance echoed Candy’s profound duality; deeply submissive while dominating an entire room. Candy was completely restricted by the ropes strapped across her body – the boundary between the stage and crowd was dissolved, as the audience were allowed to be as close to her as they desired. It’s a dual essence which rings throughout Candy’s career, making listeners of her avant-garde pop-punk submissives as she dominates them with her sex-positive performances. Now, Candy turns to shibari as an extension of her sound. “Shibari allows me to feel like the songs I’ve performed over and over and over are brand new. It allows me to shock people and for my body to feel new sensations. Overall, it’s just making me a better performer.”
Consistently searching for new elements to push the boundaries of her work, Candy introduced shibari into her performance at the end of 2018 when she was in Tokyo on the last stop of her Asia tour. “I’m not totally sure what spawned my interest in the art form,” she reflects. “I knew I wanted to add another element to certain shows when I could, and I tend to love pain. There’s almost a pain x pleasure reversal with me so maybe it started there.” Traditionally named kinbaku, shibari is a rope-tying technique birthed from an ancient Japanese method of restraining prisoners called Hojojutsu. By the 19th century, it had become an art form for Japanese eroticism referenced most in the controversial works of photographer Nobuyoshi Araki.
Beyond tradition, shibari has found its way into mainstream culture such as when Araki shot Lady Gaga suspended from the Louvre, or when FKA twigs spent her entire “Pendulum” music video swinging from ropes. For Candy, her first shibari performance was in collaboration with Japanese bondage master and photographer Hajime Kinoko, who made her an entire shibari net to perform her 2013 track “I Wanna Fuck You Right Now”. “I’d say he’s more of an architect and mathematician than anything else,” Candy states. “The sculptures he’s able to create and what’s he’s able to construct with such passion and speed is exhilarating and incredible to watch. Right now he is my favourite shibari artist in the world. We’re in the process of planning something for the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.”
British-born artist Gestalta was the selected collaborator for Candy’s shibari performance at SORT’s event last week and their unification is a strong reclamation of shibari as a form of porn. “Although I see shibari very much as an art form”, reflects Gestalta on her website, “it is also important to me that its roots in pornography are not glossed over; I see it also as a powerful way of reconciling any perceived conflict between art and sex and exploring the relationship between the two.” As is clear with Candy’s entire career, sex positivity is also a powerful force in Candy’s work as she explores the link between pleasure and pain. “Creating music that I think is sexy and fun can almost in a way get me high and then shibari also has such a sexual element and can be so painful that it can make you disassociate and get you quite high. To me the distinction between pain and pleasure is so faint that’s it’s hard for me to differentiate. I’m a bit of a sadomasochist, but at times it brings me bliss. It’s hard to explain.”
Brooke Candy’s latest shibari performance was held at the launch of SORT Zine’s latest film DROME, which you can watch below. SORT ZINE will be launching their next zine on 14 February at LNCC