were placed in the same space as Bowie. Despite his constant nods to the past, everything that he writes and records during his time in Berlin shows a real sense of yearning for the future and is extremely hopeful and optimistic in that sense. Everything that inspires Bowie exists in the same space, his influences and reality all blend into one. This is made possible by the collapse of bourgeoisie culture in the postmodern world. The middle space in which the dominant culture inhabits opens up, culture becomes fluid and enables different cultures and art forms to move into the mainstream. This grants Bowie complete agency over the construction of his own identity, where he is free to be whoever he wants to be, unrestricted in terms of class or status.
David Bowie’ s ever-changing identity draws into question the elements of his“ performative self” 16. It is as if Bowie continuously‘ kills’ himself, or rather, the artistic representation of himself. This is discussed further in the text Enchanting David Bowie, which explores the ways in which“ This process of renewal means that Bowie constantly‘ kills’ himself, an artistic suicide […] Bowie has killed Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, Halloween Jack, Aladdin Sane and The Thin White Duke […] In this environment of death and resurrection, Bowie becomes a heightened, exaggerated enigma, a figure who seems to be artificial or constructed and yet whose work consistently asks us to look for his real self behind the mask” 17. Baring that in mind, it is a fair assumption to say that many would have seen the persona that Bowie inhabited in Berlin as something that was very close to the“ real” him as he hadn’ t appeared to have created a new“ performative self” in the way that he had with his other alter-egos such as Ziggy, for example. However, I would argue that the David Bowie of the Berlin era was yet another reinvention of his“ performative self”. Bowie was wearing the mask of a regular man, living a regular life in a pretty regular neighbourhood in Berlin. It could be said that the composition of Bowie’ s
16
Sean Redmond, Enchanting David Bowie( Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2015).
17
Sean Redmond, Enchanting David Bowie( Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2015).