Neo-Decadence: 12 Manifestos

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Considering "catastrophe" in the literary sense as the unraveling or denouement of a drama, what is distinctive about the endings of Decadent texts, Decadent events, Decadent careers, Decadent lives, or Decadent civilizations? What is or was modern or modernist about Decadent conclusions? The hotel hasn’t changed. Same tired-looking woman behind a reception desk cluttered with paperwork. Same outdated optics behind the bar. Same obscure, faded pattern on the carpet. Same feeling that not only the air but the light has gone stale. I remember Nathan standing there, uttering to me: ‘This is a place where people come to die.’ You are also here as press. You’re freelancing with Beat It Brooklyn. You live and write in New York City, so you are of course not being paid enough. You have a day job as a barista, which also does not pay enough. You have a tattoo of The Giving Tree on your right bicep, which you got as a freshman in art school and which now vaguely embarrasses you. Your septum ring is small and unobtrusive. The image of a field of flowers in a poem alone isn’t Decadent simply because it is an image containing many flowers. There has to be too many of them. An obscene number. One must consider them a nuisance. A threat to Taste. Threateningly kitschy. Too much. From Susan Sontag’s ‘camp’ to the notorious Decadent Handbook for the Modern Libertine (2006), from manga renderings of fin-de-siècle themes to Gyles Brandreth’s Oscar Wilde’s murder mysteries, this interdisciplinary conference aims at investigating Neo-Victorian manifestations of Decadence. By looking at fiction, poetry, film, and other media from the Interwar period to the present day, this event hopes not only to expand our understanding of Decadence but interrogate and offer fresh insights into the nature of Neo-Victorianism itself.

Hints are dropped that this is not just a tale commemorating a doomed affair, but there’s a surprising concluding event and reveal. Time and space died a long time ago, leaving behind fossilized remains ripe for excavation and creative reassembly. Fashion strata of the past must yield fanciful chimeras, with entire time periods sampled in light of each other, suggesting new relationships appropriate to our novel sensibilities (if necessary, grist garments may be renamed, the better to remove their tired cultural baggage. Clothes, like words, are filthy with associative detritus: to reinstate spontaneity demands some surgical measure of sartorial neologism). The outline of an Edwardian golfing costume may find itself accented with a head scarf and assorted plastic raver accessories, while a bridal train heavy with beads may be repurposed for use on the subway. Kimono-hijab hybrids in bright primary colors may be printed with the texts of entire poems and stories. A humble soutane, recolored a poisonous cobalt yellow and ornamented with metallic spikes and pauldrons, would present appropriate morning wear for a young woman heading to work, suggesting a faithful, predatory centipede lured by the light of the sun rising through polluted clouds; the evocations of youthful vigor, plasmic haze and indescribably beautiful envenomed fangs would all create a unified impression in the mind of an admiring observer.” I was talking to Colby Smith about this on the phone the other day, and I told him one thing I like about the group/movement is that “dissent” is allowed and even encouraged. Batting things around, discussing things, having different ideas and perspectives. All of that is welcome. No toe the line or get out stuff. I mean, hell, they accept me, that’s evidence enough, no? The Neo-Decadents, those Post-Naturalist culture sluts of the 21st Century Empire of Ruins, present eleven new international tales of Altermodern dissipation: the rot, rutting, riots and resignation linking India, Japan, Iran, Romania, Italy, England and other glittering jewels of our tedious global capitalist hegemony, all detailed in prose with more convolutions than the shell of a venomous marine snail. Lull yourself into a synthetic opioid stupor of the literary consciousness with these stories of fashion, self-absorption, drugs, murder, Internet anomie and excessive retro gaming, penned by some of today’s most attractive, well-dressed and impolite young authors. I saw him again — the old man, that is — a few weeks later. By then it was autumn, and a bitter wind was blowing in from the iron sea. He and a younger man were walking towards the harbor. As they passed me, deep in conversation, I avoided catching the old man’s eye. I didn’t want to interrupt his work. Or make him think I was jealous. Or, to be honest, know him.I’m fine. The Viennese apartment is a sure thing now, and we’re moving in about a month. I’m a little bit all over the place with planning and all that, but that’s not a bad thing. When I have some time, I’m reading “White Jazz” by James Ellroy, and my BJD boy, Julian, is finally in his full glory too (I sent you two photos on Facebook as promised). So, I’d say, all good. Photographer and filmmaker Antoine d’Agata explores the world of prostitution across the globe from his singular viewpoint through 25 monologues and encounters with sex workers.’ Now, in quarantine, our only future is the present. “Decadence” – decay – decline – a declyining – cadēre – a fall. When Dorian Gray heaved a French sigh over not merely the fin de siècle, but also the end of the planet, could he truly imagine it or the way his own culture was already causing it? When Baudelaire describes his readers' laying waste to the world with an opiated yawn, how do we take up now his invitation to recognize ourselves in this monstre délicat? What does it mean for us now to enjoy, teach, and even create Decadent literature, Decadent visual arts, criticism about Decadence, in an age when global warming and climate catastrophes have become our most urgent political crisis? What are the Decadent art forms and theories that speak to the current century and its numerous catastrophes? How does Decadence signify differently now, along with other related terms of the fin de siècle such as Aestheticism, Symbolism, Impressionism, and Modernism, as we contemplate our own fin du globe? How has Decadence figured globally in the political crises and aesthetic migrations of the past two centuries? This conference will consider the phenomenon of Decadence from its emergence as a social theory and an aesthetic movement in the nineteenth century to its current resurgence and refiguration in the art and criticism of our present moment and environment. The small supernatural intrusions just add to the overall melancholy. What the narrator is seeking is never explicitly stated, and we have another beautiful ending with no answers:

Most people acquire enemies haphazardly—if they acquire them at all. Petty antipathies result in grudges, which are often barely sustained past the initial infatuation or bloom of negative passion. With the abolition of public duels, we have lost not only the necessity of taking our convictions and actions seriously (lest there be immediate mortal consequences), but any real conception of enmity itself. As a result, we muddle about, secretly trying to defeat ourselves, or else fixate on perceived foes who are usually little more than fantasy figures (televised phantoms of politicians and celebrities). Fad philosophies of mindfulness and non-attachment starve our honest antagonism to a miserable, childish spite. Ah, my dear," cried Lady Narborough, putting on her gloves, "don't tell me that you have exhausted life. When a man says that one knows that life has exhausted him . . . .” --- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray The verse-chorus form: an archaic relic as despicable as the three-arc story structure. Existing between the simplicity of minimalism and the complex intricacies of a modernist concert work, our music structures will be culled from the inscrutable logic of dreams, weather patterns in foreign regions, a series of scents we pass on the street, the architecture of foreign temples, the folds in the clothes of our beloved… Repetition legitimises, but discontinuance can reinforce too.” Audrey Szasz (aka Zutka) is a London-based writer. She is the author of the novels ‘Counterillumination’ (2023), ‘Zealous Immaculate’ (2022), and ‘Tears of a Komsomol Girl’ (2020). Infinity Land Press published her debut in print, ‘Plan for the Abduction of J.G. Ballard’ (a collaboration with Jeremy Reed) in 2019, which was followed by her first novella ‘Invisibility: A Manifesto’ (2020) released by Amphetamine Sulphate.Late Style: Formal considerations of style when time has run out: Baudelaire or Verlaine or Huysmans on the style d'orat the end of empires, the crepuscular Debussy, late James, Wilde after the trials, Aschenbach at the beach, Don Fabrizio at the ball, time regained in Proust, final cigarettes in film noir, Djuna Barnes or Jean Rhys or Lawrence Durrell or Tennessee Williams or Thomas Pynchon or Martin Amis after the lover has left in a taxi, you see where this is going. THIS ANTHOLOGY INCLUDES: at least 60% more sex and violence than earlier editions, making it especially appropriate for younger readers.” The perfect book for your nervous unmarried uncle who can’t stop collecting tweed waistcoats, or your aggressive lesbian sister who is really too into unpopular and historically-inaccurate pagan rituals. In contrast to the drab mediocrity of Dollskill & “dad trainers” & YouTube makeup tutorials, modern Nature has a fresh aesthetic. Forget the dreary old woman of the past, the New Nature is all grand gestures & pathetic fallacy.