289: Xanadu
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Fellow patrons,
I begin with some housekeeping notes: I will postpone the mailing list approach to yet another month as I am still working on the technical aspects of this and rather not delay on the updates.
As we head deep into the heat of summer, it makes me revisit a past project I’d started where the clientele of rare fine dining pick a spot which would later be left abandoned, with nobody none the wiser. A dead mall. An abandoned motel. A decrepit warehouse. Once filled with life, if only for a fleeting evening, the Circle Elite has turned the venue into a festival of the day only to be later abandoned, and possibly demolished, destroyed forever and replaced with something new. Any evidence of dark deeds forever destroyed.
With this project, I’d played around different names. DEAD MALL? MOVEABLE FEAST? I’ve used AMERICAN NIGHTMARE, a twisted play on the American Dream. In the end, I’ve decided to land on the project title “XANADU” a name that loosely derived from the ancient city of splendor built by Kublai Khan as the Oriental version of that golden shining city on that hill, of lost dreams, an oriental Camelot, to slowly be lost to the sands of time.
An early description by Marco Polo of that said place is rather prophetic:
In Xanadu, did Kublai Khan build a stately Palace, encompassing sixteen miles of plain ground with a wall wherein are fertile meadows, pleasant springs, delightful streams and all sorts of beasts of chase and game, and in the middest thereof a sumptuous house of pleasure which may be moved from place to place.
Welcome to XANADU.
May Day, or perhaps, Memorial Day marks the start of this season. Kids on their summer break. Shopping malls, beach goers on roller blades, ice cream and candy floss at boardwalk amusement parks, hot girls wearing short shorts at the arcade. These days, this dream has slowly made way to decay, mold and curious respirator-clad urban explorers through increasingly frequent shopping mall and movie theater closures. More and more abandoned strip malls of failed and failing business become increasingly frequent. Like rats and the bats, these locations serve as prime real estate for this shadowy organization to conduct their with unholy festivities.
Thanks to one of my higher tiered Patron who helped sponsor this project, I will be keeping this project active until one day many works will be produced enough to complete this story.
And thus following this theme, I hit you with the first vignette of this story series which I’ve already hinted at in previous Carte du Jours previously known as AMERICAN NIGHTMARE as shown in Carte du Jour 259, Carte du Jour 262, and Carte du Jour 260, a story I call XANADU: MEALS ON HEELS.
Bon appétit!
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I. XANADU: MEALS ON HEELS (2 full color artworks + 2 alternate versions of a similar scene for DISCIPLE members or higher)
There is the before, where the lady is alive and vibrant, struggling to survive against that inevitability of her demise.
And there is the after, the aftermath with a focus on the eating where one her killers are enjoying the fruits of their labor along with a reminder of who she once was.
And here are some variations/work in progress of the previous scene.
II. WORKS IN PROGRESS (2 work-in-progress artworks and 1 alternate version of a similar scene for DISCIPLE members or higher)
The first is of a column cut, hanging suspended at a bizarre bazaar.
The second is of a past project that began as a commission years ago which I've decided to revisit due to its timeliness. I'll have more details for you in the future on this idea.
III. SKETCHES (2 black & white sketches with 1 variation of a similar scene for DISCIPLE members or higher)
The first is a pair of scene in an abattoir of a very slim carcass. The second is a grotesque nyotaimori presentation sketch that is currently planned as part of the XANADU: MEALS ON HEELS project.