Drowning in Beauty: The Neo-Decadent Anthology

From the ashes of countless decayed Modernities comes Neo-Decadence a profaned cathedral whose broken stained glass windows still glitter irregularly in the harsh light of a Symbolist sun. Behind this marvellously vandalised edifice a motley band of revellers picnic in the graveyard of the Real leaving behind all manner of rotting delicacies and toxic baubles in their wake. During the last eighty years world culture has seen an explosion of popular aesthetics art-forms and the movements associated with them: clothing trends in fashion tattoos recreational drugs musical sub-cultures cosmetics photography--all of which can be the subject of obsessions damnations and salvations. Devices and formats initially vulgar are worshipped only to be forgotten by all but the few initiates who through their maniacal fixations manage to uncover their hidden allure. These twelve stories and their preceding manifestos then arise from a shift in aesthetic consciousness: synaesthesia ecstasy in extremes the Divine and Infernal alike seen through a neurasthenic lens of supreme focus.