Faculty

Profile

John A. Bruce is a film/video artist, designer, researcher, strategist, and educator. He is Associate Professor of Design Strategies at Parsons School of Design, and serves as Co-Director of the Transdisciplinary Design MFA program, and Co-Director of the Consortium for Transdisciplinarity. He is currently conducting doctoral research in critical and collective fabulation for addressing ongoing coloniality, with RMIT, Design and Social Context.

His work involves participatory artistic- and design-based research, image-oriented narrative and cinema, restorative justice, and systems approaches, contributing to conditions for transformations toward a more just and equitable world and for greater planetary health.

He led the research and media project End of Life, informing the film End of Life, several short films, installations, exhibitions, and the studio Design for Living and Dying. His work has been exhibited internationally, including the New York Film Festival, Cinéma du Réel, Museum of the Moving Image, Doclisboa, Thessaloniki Film Festival, ICA London, e-flux, Chicago Film Festival, The Julliard School, and The Brooklyn Academy of Music, among others. He has directed several films and videos, co-created installations and experiences, served as art director for a number of feature films, and platform producer for several transmedia projects addressing social issues. He is a strategist at Forward Mapworks, a consultancy, recently providing strategy for the Light Phone, a simple phone that provokes reflection on our relationships with technology and our ability to be present. He was a 2015/16 Fellow at the Graduate Institute for Design Ethnography and Social Thought at The New School.

Degrees Held

Presidio (Pinchot University), MBA 2009

School of Visual Arts, BFA 1987

Recent Publications

Participatory Design and Social Transformation: Images and Narratives of Crisis and Change. 2022

Designing in Dark Times: An Arendtian Lexicon. 2020. Chapter, "Mortality." Editors: Eduardo Staszowski and Virgina Tassinari

Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Design. 2017. Chapter, “Design Strategies for Impact.” Editor: Rachel Beth Egenhoefer

End of Life, nonfiction film. 2017. Directed by John Bruce and Paweł Wojtasik. Co-producers: HAOS Film and Train-Tracks Inc. (USA, Greece)

Research Interests

Responsible actions, restorative justice, narratology, hauntology, traditional and ancestral knowledges, body and land, belonging, reconciliation, planetary and community health, end of life, cinema, transition and transformation.

Portfolio

John A Bruce

Collective Fabulation

End of Life

MFA Studio: Design for Living and Dying