A Chinese artist made a solid brick of pollution by vacuuming smog out of the air
Timed perfectly with COP21 climate change talks, Chinese artist-activist Wang Renzheng, aka Nut Brother, has found an interesting way of drawing attention to the severity of the smog problem in his home nation. He made a brick out of pollution he pulled from the air in the city he calls home. From July 24 to November 29 (100 days), Wang walked the streets of Beijing for four hours each day with an industrial vacuum cleaner, sucking up the air around him – the same air he and the millions of other people in Beijing breathe. He journaled his trips from the old lanes to the Ministry of Environmental Protection, recording the date, the weather, the area he vacuumed, and a photo of him doing his work. In that time he collected about 100 grams of dust, grime, smog, and other pollutants in fine…