Late Bowie: Legacy, Mortality and the Archival Impulse

David Bowie's late period is one of the most compelling and enigmatic phases of a career defined by sustained artistic reinvention. It marked a profound re-engagement with identity, ageing and mortality. If his 2000 Glastonbury performance re-established his cultural relevance, his death in 2016 intensified his critical resonance, prompting renewed scholarly and public fascination.

In his final years, Bowie created a body of work that revisited and reconfigured earlier personas while offering a carefully constructed meditation on legacy, authorship and mortality. Across The Next Day (2013), the off-Broadway musical Lazarus (2015) and ★ (Blackstar) (2016), he engaged directly with his own past and, through an extraordinary process of self-curation, with the prospect of his own death. These deliberately self-referential works reaffirmed the one persona that remained constant throughout his career: 'David Bowie'.

Featuring brand new research and invited guests, the conference Late Bowie: Legacy, Mortality and the Archival Impulse celebrates Bowie's enduring legacy a decade after his death. It pays particular attention to the final works of his career, his archival afterlife (including the opening of the Bowie archive and Bowie Centre at V&A Storehouse, Stratford East, London) and his remarkable process of self-excavation and self-curation.