Saint Petersburg-based Russian bondage artist, RopeFest performer and rope maker. Nawapedia.ru identifies Maxim Kalahari as a Saint Petersburg bondage artist. Shibari.Guru preserves Kalahari RopeFest Peterburg traces from 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2019, plus a RopeFest Moscow 2019 trace and Bondage Cafe SPb 2019 listing. RopeFest Peterburg 2026 later lists Maksim Kalahari as a fair participant selling author-treated natural-color jute ropes for shibari.
School: Independent
Associated venues, magazines, films and performances: RopeFest 2010s.
Bakushi Map BETA
An interactive genealogy of bakushi and kinbaku —
the Japanese rope traditions that grew from Edo-period hojōjutsu
through twentieth-century SM magazines into today's global
shibari scene.
The map currently holds 320 people,
238 studios, events, works and context nodes
and 1394 documented connections across
9 eras. Each record is sourced
from public material — Nawapedia, ShibariStudy, festival
rosters, interviews, archived studio pages — and curated by a
single researcher.
This is a beta version: the structure, sources
and interface are public enough to explore, but the map is still
being expanded and corrected.
How to read it
Vertical position is time: the 1800s at the
top, the 2020s at the bottom. Cards are coloured by
school or lineage; lines between them carry
the relationship type — solid amber for direct apprenticeship
(deshi), dashed for influence or peer study, thinner
coloured lines for venues, magazines, or productions. Click a
card to open its bio, antecedents and descendants. Filters in
the top bar narrow by era, entity type, or relationship.
Caveats
Inclusion is selective: a person or studio appears only when
there's enough public evidence to anchor them meaningfully.
Missing birth years are deliberate — many practitioners don't
publicise them. Errors and gaps will exist; corrections
welcome at pussynawa@proton.me.