Conversations with Coner - Tying Style

The two distinct styles of tying are mainly Western and Eastern. 

Rather than getting into distinctions between the two, my goal is to tie.

It matters less to me how I identify with the styles. Over time, my style has developed into what I tie today and most people consider me a western rigger.  

Lineage has a lot to do with it; who I learned rope from at the very beginning, even though my style has changed and evolved since then, if someone knows the lineage of my teachers, then they can see the western influence. 

If they know they lineage they can see the western. Also, because I tie with parallel bands and cinches that go across the body or body part, that style aligns more with western ties. 

Secondly, I rig for photographs.

I rig for theatrical events and things like that. In todays time that is often considered western. I do not do performances and I don’t have a desire to. Eastern riggers often tie for performances, to music in front of people and that sort of stuff. My style is designed to create an image for photograph or video. 

I tell stories.

Within the images, there will be tying but rope isn’t necessarily the focal point. For the most part, when I create an image that I consider a serious image it has other elements in it that are about storytelling. 

The most important part of the image is the story. 
The second most important part is the model. 
Finally, rope is at the very end

I will use rope in a way that flatters them, degrades them, makes them look weak or strong. With Eastern photographs, the focus is mostly rope - it is rope art. 

I don’t do rope art, I do bondage.

In my mind, my art totally comes across as bondage so the simpler the rope the better it is. I don’t want the rope to take away from the other subjects in the pictures. 

I use rope in 30ft, 20ft and 10ft sections and create piles of each. The idea is to tie with the rope I need and not have a bunch of rope I have to burn up. I try to minimize burning rope so it doesn’t distract from the model or story I’m telling. 

Between jute and nylon, I use a lot of nylon but I also use jute. It depends on the situation. Again, I’m not a rope guy. I’m a bondage person. My scenes and ties may involve chains, rubber bands or something else. It is about the bondage and not the rope and that is a very Western concept. 

All that being said, I do have some Eastern influence. My biggest reference to Japanese rope comes from photographs. 

I derive a lot of positions/ties from 1940s Japanese rope or even earlier.

Some of the early photographs from just after the war have a huge impact on what I tie. 

As we start to dig deeper into this, in the Eastern photography, the scenes appear to be rigged for photographs. A lot of them tell stories. They didn’t just use rope, they use wire and different types of things. there are a lot of other props, sexual props, and when the viewer starts to look into the details of the image, they tell stories, which seems to be similar to what I do. 

Weirdly enough if you look back over time those time periods had a lot of parallel bands and cinches as well.

Actually, there are many similarities between modern Western rope and early Japanese rope.

They somewhat mirror each other. The way I tie comes from that time period and a lot of my stuff emulates that time period. And of course there are western influences from when I started.