A university professor is set to live as David Bowie for a year in an effort to better understand the singer.
Will Brooker, a professor of film and cultural studies at Kingston University near London, will live his life as different Bowie personas for months at a time after being commissioned to write a monograph on Bowie.
His work will be titled Forever Stardust.
As part of his project, Brooker will adopt the dress sense, diet and cultural interests of each character from Bowie’s work. He will also travel to the locations that spawned the personas. Having already been to Brixton, Bromley and Beckenham, Brooker will also visit Berlin next month, according to The Guardian.
https://twitter.com/willbrooker/status/621212235021488128/photo/1
https://twitter.com/willbrooker/status/621801690333753344/photo/1
“The idea is to inhabit Bowie’s head space at points in his life and career to understand his work from an original angle, while retaining a critical and objective perspective at the same time – a kind of split persona perhaps,” Brooker says.
“If you’re reading some strange science fiction and books about magic you can kind of get into Bowie’s head and see it’s sometimes quite a strange place. A dangerous place, a place you wouldn’t want to live too long,” he told Australian network ABC.
“So it’s fortunate that I’m going through his career chronologically. Because I think by ’83, he was pretty clean. I think I’ll get a tan, get fit, get my hair changed again, get my teeth whitened.”
Of Bowie’s possible reaction to the project, Brooker said: “I hope he would be interested in and amused by my research. I do feel, though, that everything he says and does in public is performance, so if he did hear about it, we would be unlikely to know what he genuinely thought.”
Meanwhile, Bowie has announced the latest in his run of 40th anniversary 7″ picture discs.
“Space Oddity” and “Golden Years” will be released on October 2 and November 13, respectively.
They wil be joined by an orange vinyl 7″ of “Amsterdam” and a limited edition blue vinyl release of Man Of Words/Man Of Music, the US version of Bowie’s 1969 album David Bowie aka Space Oddity.
The “Amsterdam” 7″ and Man Of Words/Man Of Music album coincide with the opening of David Bowie Is… at the Groninger Museum, Groningen in The Netherlands and are exclusive to the exhibition.
Bowie releases the first in a series of box sets spanning his career on September 25.
David Bowie Five Years 1969 – 1973 features all of the material officially released by Bowie during the early stage of his career.
The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – is now on sale in the UK. Click here for more details.
Uncut: the spiritual home of great rock music.