Lu Guang, Independent Documentary Photographer
China has become the world’s second largest economy. However, this economic growth has consumed enormous
resources, producing tremendous amounts of pollution. Three-time World Press Photo award-winning independent
photographer Lu Guang presents selections from his most prominent works on the landscapes and human effects
of industrial pollution.
A freelance photographer since 1993, Lu Guang has developed major documentary projects in China, all at his own
initiative, focusing on some of the most significant social, health, and environmental issues facing his country today.
His photographic work includes stories on gold diggers, local coal miners, the SARS epidemic, drug addiction along
the Sino-Burmese border, Aids villages in Henan Province, the environmental impact of the Qinghai-Tibet railway,
industrial pollution and the medical effects of schistosomiasis (bilharzia).
Fan Shigang, Independent Activist
“The struggles of workers in China’s industrial centers are shaping the future of labor and democracy not only in
China but throughout the world. Chinese worker-activists Fan Shigang and Li Wen will provide a unique, on-the ground
perspective on the most recent wave of militancy among China’s enormous working class.”
Fan Shigang was born into a family of workers for state-owned enterprises in a northern Chinese city. He has
worked as a basic-level employee in several machining factories. He is a contributor to the underground labor
periodical, Factory Stories, conducting interviews with factory workers in southern China, documenting their lives
Kerim Yasar, University of Southern California
1914, a landmark court decision, centered on recordings of naniwabushi performer Tochuken Kumoemon (1873-
1916), determined that sound recordings were not protected from piracy under Japanese copyright law. In this talk
I examine the development of ideas of copyright from the Edo period until the enactment of legislation in 1920 that
explicitly protected recordings, and how this development reflected shifting understandings of what constitutes a
work of art and/or a commodity within a changing media-technological environment. While this development was
driven primarily by economic interests, it also opened up a space where ephemeral performativity could be
recognized as “work,” both in the sense of labor and in the sense of artistic artifact. Whereas copyright up to that
point had been rooted in the primacy of writing or inscription, mediated reproduction turned performance itself
into a commodity, into copyrightable property.