Synopsis

In a shadowy Manhattan office corridor, Bowie appears in stark, theatrical close-up, moving between pools of light and darkness. He holds and manipulates two eerie puppet figures that evoke earlier Bowie personae, while fragments of text and images turn the setting into a private, haunted stage. The performance is spare rather than narrative-driven: the puppets, Bowie's isolated presence, and the severe lighting create a portrait of fractured identity, emotional abandonment, and old selves confronting the present.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video accompanies the edited version of "Love Is Lost (Hello Steve Reich Mix)," James Murphy's remix of the song from Bowie's 2013 album *The Next Day*.

• Bowie conceived, wrote, filmed, and edited the clip during a single weekend in the darkened corridor of his Manhattan office.

• The tiny production team consisted of Bowie, assistant Jimmy King, who operated the camera, and longtime friend Coco Schwab, who handled continuity and practical support.

• The reported production cost was $12.99, representing the price of the USB thumb drive used to transfer the finished video.

• The puppets came from Bowie's personal archive. Their Pierrot and Thin White Duke associations connect the clip to his earlier visual identities.

• The Pierrot imagery recalls Bowie's iconic 1980 "Ashes to Ashes" video, giving the homemade production an unusually self-referential quality.

• The video premiered during the Barclaycard Mercury Prize broadcast on October 30, 2013, shortly before *The Next Day Extra* was released.

• A separate, longer 10:24 visual treatment for the full James Murphy remix also exists, so versions of "Love Is Lost" are sometimes confused with one another.