Faculty

Profile

John A. Bruce is a film/video artist, researcher, strategist, and educator. He is Associate Professor of Design Strategies at Parsons 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 at RMIT in critical and collective fabulation through transdisciplinary praxis as ways of being and worlding. 

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, Kerla Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, ICA London, e-flux, Chicago Film Festival 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 advisor for the Light Phone, a simple phone that provokes reflection on our relationships with technology. 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

Fabulation, narratology, hauntology, worlding, body and land, 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