The world’s first academic symposium on David Bowie as pop cultural phenomenon rocked into Ireland last month with international professors, artists and PhDs galore deconstructing Bowie’s prolific influence across music, fashion and the arts with just the perfect mix of sincerity and glam.
Hosted by Doctors Devereux, Dillane and Power of University of Limerick’s Sociology Department, with participants such as Kathryn Johnson, co curator of the V&A Museum’s much anticipated ” “Bowie Is…” retrospective, Undertones Paul McCloone and Bowie’s former RCA publicist Chris Charlesworth, the conference was never going to be your typical scholars meet.
The papers didn’t disappoint. From sessions seeking to locate Bowie’s oeuvre in relation to Baudrillard, Eliot, Freud, Buddha and Barrett, to fashion historian Helene Thian on how Ziggy Stardust’s flamboyant Yamamoto jumpsuits planted the seeds of Japanism in the Western fashion world, there was something for the most cerebral, and aesthetic, of Bowie fans.
As well as sound, there was also vision. I curated the conference exhibition “Because You’re Young: The Pop Ephemera of a Teenage Bowie Fan” drawn from the childhood collection of Dubliner Emily Abrahamson, sister of Director Lenny Abrahamson, together with my series of Pop Art /Rock Mannequins and Matroyoskas (Russian dolls) alongside limited edition self portraits by Bowie himself.
Similar to a previous symposium on Morrissey hosted by the Pop Culture Doctors at University of Limerick, if you missed this one, the papers are likely to be enshrined in a forthcoming academic tome that one suspects will have ‘to cram so many things to fit everything in there’.
A full synopsis and links to all the papers can be found via the David Bowie Symposium, University of Limerick, Ireland Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Bowie-Symposium-University-of-Limerick-Ireland/311358902256321?fref=ts
: The worlds first textbook on Bowie drawn from symposium papers presented in Ireland 2012.
A second international symposium in Australia, held in July 2015, launched another collection of academic perspectives in textbook form “Enchanting David Bowie”.
The collection featured another curious paper, Confronting Bowie’s Mysterious Corpses, I wrote foreshadowings Bowie’s death six months later.
Exactly how long did it take u to post “Bowie gets his Geek On | tanja stark”?
It has got loads of really good information. Thank you -Pamela
Thanks Pamela 😉 x