Late Bowie: legacy, mortality and the archival impulse
Organization: Kingston University, Uk
Late Bowie: legacy, mortality and the archival impulse
Call for Papers
Kingston University, Tony Visconti Studio, 11-12 September 2026
David Bowie’s late period represents one of the most compelling and enigmatic ‘eras’ in a career marked by sustained processes of artistic reinvention and strategic self?reconstruction. This period saw a profound re?engagement with questions of identity, ageing, and mortality. If Bowie’s performance at Glastonbury in 2000 saw him strategically re-enter the public consciousness with renewed relevance (evidenced by a range of new biographical and critical assessments), after his death 10 years ago in 2016 he has acquired an intensified critical resonance, becoming the subject of renewed scholarly and public fascination. In his final years Bowie created a body of work that not only revisited and reconfigured earlier personas but also presented a carefully managed meditation on legacy, authorship, and the aesthetics of mortality through the apparent self-curation of his own death. This creative statement manifested across three major works: the album The Next Day (2013), the off-Broadway musical Lazarus (2015), and the album ? (Blackstar) (2016). These works are deliberately self-referential projects in which Bowie re-engages with and interrogates own past, reasserting the only persona that remained consistent across his career: ‘David Bowie’.
This conference, which takes place in the Visconti Studio at Kingston University, invites proposals which offer a range of critical and creative responses to Bowie’s late-period work: his musical outputs; self-curation of persona and image, collaborations, media presence, death and posthumous reshaping of legacy in contemporary culture. The conference welcomes not only academic papers (from across all disciplines) but the work of creative practitioners whose work engages with Bowie’s late-period work and especially this final period.
The Visconti Studio provides professional-grade facilities for presenting musical performance, sound-based research, and audiovisual practice outputs, making it an ideal venue for practice-led contributions. The conference also welcomes proposals which engage with the newly opened David Bowie Centre at the V&A East Storehouse in London. While the conference prioritises the latter part of Bowie’s career, we also invite proposals which illuminate connections between these final works and earlier periods of Bowie’s career, particularly where they reveal the retrospective strategies, self-referential practices, and archival impulses.
Suggested topics for proposal might include (but are not limited to):
Musical analysis and sonic signification
2013-2016 outputs as unified artistic gesture: self-referentiality, intertextuality and archival practices across the three final works
The Bowie/Visconti late-period collaboration and production aesthetics
Jazz, improvisation and the Donny McCaslin band
Music video as narrative and visual assemblage
Jonathan Barnbrook’s design work and visual identity
Lyrical themes: mortality, transience, morality, alienation, spirituality
Decoding/reading/responding to cryptic symbolism
Bowie biographies and critical examinations
Bowie’s death and responses to it
The performance of lateness and “late style” (including late vocal style)
“Living archives”: late stars and cultural memory
Fan responses, mourning practices, and memorial culture
The Bowie Archive and the curation of the Bowie Legacy
The Man Who Fell to Earth (1963/1976) and its afterlives
Bowie’s reading and his top 100 books
Bowieland (Peter Carpenter) – Bowie and psychogeography
From Liza Jane to Blackstar: considering the whole career/catalogue ‘journey’
Please send all proposals to the conference coordinators: Dr Leah Kardos (l.kardos@kingston.ac.uk) and Dr Matt Melia (m.melia@kingston.ac.uk) by March 15th, 2026
Conference Details:
Date: 11-12 September 2026
Format: [In-person]
Venue: Visconti Studio, Kingston University, Kingston Hill Campus, KT27LB
Proposal Format:
• Abstracts of 250-300 words
• Include name, affiliation, contact email
• Indicate if proposing practice-led presentation requiring audio/visual facilities
Timeline:
• Proposal deadline: 15 March 2026
• Notification: 4 May 2026
Matthew John Melia