John Bruce
Assistant Professor of Strategic Design and Management
Email
johnbruce@newschool.edu
Office Location
Parsons Faculty Hotseat
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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 (while the title above has yet to be updated), and serves as Co-Director of the Transdisciplinary Design MFA program, and Co-Director of the Consortium for Transdisciplinarity.
His work involves participatory artistic- and design-based research, image-oriented narrative, restorative justice, and systems approaches, contributing to conditions for transformations toward a more just, equitable and sustainable world.
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
Restorative justice, narratology, hauntology, ancestral knowledge, body and land, belonging, reconciliation, community wealth, end of life, cinema, transition and transformation.
Portfolio
End of Life
MFA Studio: Design for Living and Dying
John A Bruce