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BIO

Faculty

Dr. Bruce Barber

Professor Emeritus
Division of Media Arts, Expanded Media

CONTACT INFORMATION

Phone Number: 902 492 8291
Email: bbarber@nscad.ca

Background

Dr. Bruce Barber is an interdisciplinary media artist, cultural historian and curator whose research and writing explores the representation of art, artists and art history in film, television, cartoons and comics. He holds a BFA (1973) and MFA (1975) in Sculpture and Art History from Auckland University, New Zealand; an MFA (1978) in Intermedia from NSCAD University, Nova Scotia, Canada; and a PhD (2005) in Media and Communications from European Graduate School, Leuk Stadt, Switzerland.

Dr. Barber has been a faculty member at NSCAD for 38 years. After teaching aspiring students in media arts and film history for close to four decades, Directing the MFA program and Chairing the Division of Media Arts for several terms, Dr. Barber retired from the classroom in December 2019 but as a Professor Emeritus has continued to advise graduate students.

CURRENT RESEARCH AND/OR CREATIVE PRACTICE

Dr. Barber is the editor of Essays on Performance and Cultural Politicization, of Conceptual Art: the NSCAD Connection 1967-1973, and of Condé +Beveridge: Class Works (2008). He is co-editor, with Serge Guilbaut and John O’Brian, of Voices of Fire: Art Rage, Power, and the State, and author of Performance [Performance] and Performers: Essays and Conversations (2 volumes) edited by Marc James Léger (2008), Trans/Actions: Art, Film and Death (2008) and Littoral Art & Communicative Action edited by Marc James Léger (2013). His critical essays have appeared internationally in numerous anthologies, art journals and magazines. He is presently completing a book titled Popular Modernisms: Art, Cartoons, Comics and Cultural In/Subordination.

SIGNIFICANT PUBLICATIONS/EXHIBITIONS

Dr. Barber’s interdisciplinary artwork has been exhibited internationally at the Paris Biennale, Sydney Biennale, 49th Parallel Gallery, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Walter Phillips Gallery, London Regional Gallery, McMaster Museum of Art, Auckland City Art Gallery, Artspace Galleries in Sydney and Auckland and is represented in various public and private collections. His interdisciplinary art practice is documented in the publications Reading Rooms and Bruce Barber Work 1970-2008. He is best known for his performance work, neo-conceptual reading and writing rooms, Squat projects and his theoretical writing and theory on littoral art, cultural intervention and other relational art practices.