The speed of China’s economic growth has resulted in severe damage to its environment. The pollution resulting from the unprecedented industrial and urban expansion has catapulted cancer to a leading cause of death, rendered the water undrinkable, and the air unsafe to breathe. As The New York Times reporters Joseph Kahn and Jim Yardley write, “China has entered the most robust stage of its industrial revolution, even as much of the outside world has become preoccupied with global warming.” As the 2008 Summer Olympics convene in Beijing, this diverse panel representing the worlds of art and policy, will discuss industrial growth in the 21st century and how film and cultural representations can help build awareness and encourage global change.

Panelists:
Mathieu Borysevicz, artist, critic, curator, and filmmaker, splits his time between New York and Shanghai. His photography and film work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as the Tribeca Film Festival, ICA London, the Bauhaus, Duolun Museum Shanghai, the Bronx Museum, Center for Contemporary Culture, Barcelona, and the Israeli Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv. Since 1994 Borysevicz has been involved with the contemporary culture of China focusing on the intersections of social transformation and artistic production. He has written for ART FORUM, Art in America, and ART Asia Pacific. He is currently working on Learning from Hangzhou, a photographic case study in the form of a book and exhibition examining the relationship between architecture and signage in Hangzhou.

Orville Schell has worked for the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, covered the war in Indochina as a journalist, and traveled widely in China since the mid-70s. He is a contributor to such magazines as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Wired, and Newsweek, and is the author of fourteen books. He has worked both as a correspondent and consultant for PBS Frontline as well as a correspondent for 60 Minutes. Schell is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a regular participant in the World Economic Forum at Davos. He is a former professor and dean at the UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and the current Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society.

Michael Zhao is a graduate of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism as well as Beijing Language and Culture University. He also worked in the Beijing bureau of the New York Times. As a multimedia and documentary producer, he is exploring new media techniques in storytelling by creating a web site that brings together documentary films and other visual projects on China’s environment, energy, and climate issues. You can visit his site at http://michaelzhao.net.

Moderator:
Julie Sze is an assistant professor of American studies at UC Davis as well as the director of the Environmental Justice Project for UC Davis’ John Muir Institute for the Environment. Sze’s research areas include race, class, gender, and the environment, and she has published numerous articles in these areas. Her book, Noxious New York (MIT Press 2006), analyzes the culture, politics, and history of environmental justice activism in New York City within the larger context of privatization, deregulation, and globalization.

Read more: Where Film and Activism Meet in China’s Environmental Movement

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China and the Environment will take place at the Asia Society, 725 Park Ave @ 70th St.