The online life of Bowie’s Blackstar continues to develop with a 16-part Instagram video series, and the first episode is now live. Unbound is an opaque and abstract visual storytelling of the late singer’s last album.
The experimental online video series may be called Unbound but is certainly bound by Instagram’s 15-second video limit. They say constraints can be useful for creativity, but this pushes that concept to a very tight limit.
Tavi Gevinson stars in the series, which is directed by Nikki Borges who also features, and it’s written by Carolynn Cecilia.
So, what’s going on?
In the first 15-second vignette, a tracking shot reveals a library room that wouldn't be out of place in a stately home, with seven characters gradually revealed. The look is part Downton Abbey, part teen murder-mystery weekend. On the table in the foreground, there's what looks like a brown book with a black star on the cover, sitting atop a doily runner.
On one seat, a woman is requesting a book from another at a bookcase to read to a young boy to her left. Another woman drinks tea. Another seems to be sewing or doing a bit of cross stitch. In a darker corner, a young woman spins an old globe. And finally, a Bowie-like figure is revealed with their back to the camera wearing a white shirt, sitting, arms outstretched on the arms of a chair, watching on in stillness.
There’s a cup and saucer on the table, white flowers feature, deep red is a dominant colour in two of the characters clothes, many of the books on the shelves, and the leather chairs. What does it all mean?
The soundtrack is the a fuzzy tune of the introductory notes of Blackstar, the opening track on the album, as if played through an old wireless, which cuts off before the vocals come in. The whole thing is certainly abstract, so perhaps we'll have to wait for the next 15 instalments to figure out what's going on.
