David Bowie's final works under the spotlight at Kingston University conference

Ten years after the death of David Bowie, leading scholars, archivists, artists and creative practitioners will gather at Kingston University to examine the musician's final body of work and its lasting cultural impact.

The two-day conference, Late Bowie: Legacy, Mortality and the Archival Impulse, will take place at Kingston University's Visconti Studio on 5 and 6 November, bringing together experts from around the world to explore Bowie's late-period output, legacy and continuing relevance. The event comes as the University marks ten years of the Visconti Studio, the recording facility co-founded with Bowie's long-time producer and collaborator Tony Visconti.

Keynotes will be delivered by Grammy Award-winning designer Jonathan Barnbrook, whose visual work helped define Bowie's later albums including Blackstar, and representatives from the David Bowie Archive at V&A East Storehouse – which opened to researchers last year.

Hosted by Kingston School of Art, the conference arrives at a significant moment for Bowie scholarship. Ten years after the artist's death, the opening of the David Bowie Archive at the V&A East Storehouse has transformed opportunities for researchers seeking to better understand his creative process, artistic development and carefully curated public image.

Conference co-organiser Dr Leah Kardos, Associate Professor in Kingston School of Art's Department of Performing Arts and author of Blackstar Theory: The Last Works of David Bowie, said the anniversary offered an ideal opportunity to reassess the significance of Bowie's final creative period.

"Ten years feels like a significant milestone since his death," she said. "The work is getting more interesting as time goes on. The world has changed enormously since 2016, it feels like a good moment to return to this work and think about what it means now." 

Dr Kardos, who manages the Visconti Studio and is currently editing the forthcoming Bloomsbury Handbook of David Bowie, said the archive was already reshaping how researchers approached Bowie's work. "For years scholars have been writing around what we hear in the music and what we know from interviews and media coverage," she said. "Now we're able to engage with materials from the archive and gain new insights into Bowie's creative process."

The conference is expected to attract researchers from across the UK, Europe, North America and Asia, alongside Bowie fans, creative practitioners and members of the public interested in the artist's enduring legacy. The conference also reflects Kingston University's longstanding connection with Bowie, who in 1974, performed at what was then Kingston Polytechnic.

Among the keynote speakers are Jonathan Barnbrook, Harriet Reed, Project Lead for the David Bowie Archive at V&A East Storehouse, and Clare Watt, Bowie Fellow at the V&A. The programme will also include contributions from author Peter Carpenter and film and television producer Kevin Loader.

The event will feature archive workshops, panel discussions, a screening of filmmaker Mark Jenkin's acclaimed short film David Bowie Is Dead, and conversations exploring the relationship between memory, creativity, mortality and cultural legacy.

Conference co-organiser Dr Matt Melia, Senior Lecturer in Media, Journalism and Communication at Kingston University, said the event marked an important moment for Bowie studies, with many participating scholars already drawing on research undertaken within the newly opened archive.

"We're in a fascinating moment where the artist and the archive are coming together. The archive creates new ways for people to engage with Bowie's work and allows future generations to continue discovering and reinterpreting it."

Questions of legacy and what remains after an artist's death sit at the heart of the conference. Bowie's later work frequently revisited ideas, images and characters from earlier in his career, creating what organisers describe as an archival impulse within the music itself.

"There is something compelling about the way Bowie used materials from his own past to create new meanings," Dr Kardos said. "At the same time, we now have the archive itself, these physical traces of a remarkable creative life. Together they raise fascinating questions about memory, creativity and what remains after an artist is gone."

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