Bruce lectured in Brazil at the International Symposium on Education for Art/ Art for Education on October 17, 2007, organized by the 6th Mercosul Biennial.

The 6th Mercosul Biennial has its metaphor in Guimarães Rosa’s short story “A Terceira Margem do Rio” (The 3rd Bank of the River). The purpose of the exhibition was to reinforce cultural cooperation and integration in and out Latin America, following a model that is rooted in the Mercosur region, but that is not limited by it.

Dates: September 1 - November 18, 2007
Location: Porto Alegre, Brazil
Theme: "A Terceira Margem do Rio" - The Third Shore of the River
Chief curator: Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro
Curators: Luis Camnitzer, Alejandro Cesarco, Inés Katzenstein, Luis Enrique Perez Oramas, Moacir Dos Anjos, Ticio Escobar
Participants: 67 artists from the Mercosul region and other countries

Bruce lectured at the Phoenix Art Museum on November 13th, 2007. His talk scanned the history of art and culture and inspected the contemporary world to argue that we have entered a post-literate society. Using a language metaphor, he made the claim that the history of the arts moves from a role like that of an adjective to a noun to a verb.  

In our current society, he argued that the arts are like “verbs” and that our sense of knowledge has shifted from a belief in text and language to a belief in images and sounds- a return through technologies of communication to, as predicted by Marshall McLuhan- the global village.

Bruce expanded on the idea that "Media and Culture" have emerged at the center of this new definition of literacy and that traditional notions of knowledge are being superseded by experiences based in what can be called a "cultural literacy."

A new Esperanto is emerging where everyone is talking all at once, on official and unofficial terms and bypassing traditional authorities and institutions as a result.

Bruce was the keynote speaker at the Symposium C6 conference that took place in Chicago from April 26-28, 2007.

The symposium explored the ways that globalism is resulting in new hybrid cultural practice.

>> click here to read more about the Symposium

Bruce has been invited to join the Advisory Committee for the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA). The UCIRA provides grants to arts faculty and students for projects such as exhibitions, performances, symposia, etc. - artists who are dedicated to "innovative approaches to form and content in the performing, media, and visual arts." (UCIRA website).

>> click here to visit the UCIRA website

Bruce was on a jury of international curators who selected Olafur Eliasson for the commission. The project is on view at the San Francisco MOMA from Sept 8 2007 to Jan 13 2008.

>> click here to read the press release