Celebrating XV Years of Decadence party featuring an extreme performance by Aesthetic Meat Front from Berlin.
All men see fires, storms, explosions, or landscapes; but how many feel the flames,
the lightnings, the whirlwinds, or the harmony?
How many have an inner beauty that tinges their melancholy?
It’s been over a period of fifteen years that Carlo Valentine magically is building up love and confidence with Decadence. A unique cultural movement for the Italian alternative scene, radical and edgy yet so open-minded. It all started in Bologna in 2005, passing through some of the most exquisite villas and castles in Italy, arriving to the most transgressive capitals of Europe such as Berlin.
Elegantly mixing alternative subcultures -fetish, electro, post-punk, 80s- with art exhibitions and a highly transversal audience, Decadence provides something outside of your normal party experience: a safe space and a loving reminder to be yourself freely within the environment. So many memorable moments along the years with Visage, Boytronic, Peter Murphy, Lacrimosa, Guerre Froide, Tobias Bernstrup, Skeletal Family, Lebanon Hanover, Suka Off, etc., while this 15th anniversary special event hosted a visceral public ritual by Aesthetic Meat Front.
A-M-F is “a translucent collective of rituals, desires, ideas, philosophies, arts, dreams and nightmares” as stated by its founder Louis Fleischauer; A Body Art Collective that combines in a trance like state of mind a symphony of pain and ecstasy. Our consciousnesses were completely altered by the smell and sight of fresh blood, visceral sonique suspensions, simulated brain wave frequencies, pain hypnotically translated into sound and light.
He who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes, as Jung says. Our views become clear only when we look deep down inside of us. Evolving on practices as Native Americans Sun Dance ritual, Hindu Kavadi Attam piercing rites and Aztec & Norse rituals on this occasion as well A-M-F has put together an intense shamanistic mind-shattering experience of self-awareness where agony was only the first step towards catharsis.
As there’s no coming to awareness without agony. Their defiant and blood tingling experiments took us on a wild ride, an interlude between the primal instincts and the awareness of our own being, while reminding us again how lower life feeds higher life. We all react to what we see and Louis Fleischauer, as the sacred Phoenix, explored new methods of perishing and awakening. A pulse from the inside shaping our reality, leaving us transformed by the acknowledgement that in our fleeting existence we should connect with the eternal.
A-M-F Manifesto:
1. Know thy Self and be always truthful towards your Self. Avoid hypocrisy.
2. Strive for complete Self-awareness.
3. Be fully responsible for your own actions/use of common sense.
4. The only thing to worship is your SELF, -through pleasure, in ecstasy and pain. Work toward your own godhood, why put your self free willingly beneath anything or anyone?
5. Accept no limitations – stagnation is death! Envision your own future.
6. Evolve! Never stop growing! Self development is Self fulfillment. Don’t be afraid of pain and struggle. How can you grow without it? It was not eating the fruit of knowledge that brought downfall toward mankind. It is human laziness! What is the point of existents if you are too lazy to think for your Self?
7. To not live intensely is to not live!
8. Utilize art as therapy to keep your senses sharp against the world media’s barrage of stupidity and mediocrity.
9. Know and fulfill your own Deep Desire.
Decadence XV Anniversary
Credits:
Marco Giuliano / @marcogiulianoph
Anca Macavei / @ancamacavei
Decadence on Instagram: @decadence_official