2015年CRI Artist Makes Pollutants into Brick to Raise Public Green Awareness

 

For four hours every day, for 100 days, Wang Renzheng held up the suction head of an industrial vacuum cleaner to suck in polluted air, at Beijing's various landmark¹ sites.

The artist hopes his performance art, dubbed² the "Dust Project," can highlight the issue of air pollution to the Chinese public.

"What I do is performance art and it does not change anything immediately. It won't change the air pollution situation even if I bring 100 or 1000 people to suck the air with vacuum cleaners. But I want to magnify the air pollution problem so people cannot ignore it, and then take actions to change it, for example. The members of the public can reduce the use of cars and take public transportation, or the government can take more effective measures to tackle the problem."

From July 24 to Nov 29, the young artist from the southern city of Shenzhen carried with him an industrial vacuum cleaner everywhere he visited in Beijing.

The vacuum can suck up any particulate³ matter with a diameter over 0.2 microns, and it has a capacity of sucking in the amount of air that 62 people breathe-in every day.

The idea for his project had been brewing⁴ since 2013 when Beijing suffered severe smog which exceeded the standard PM 2.5 index.

"I think some people just take the air pollution problem for granted and become indifferent to the problem, and they don't feel it is urgent to take actions to change it."

Wang says the 100 grams of air dust he had collected was added into a brick at a factory in the northern city of Tangshan, a move to reflect how high speed development and economic actions affect human life.

The project's first phase ended on Tuesday.

1 landmark   

n.陆标，划时代的事，地界标

参考例句：

• The Russian Revolution represents a landmark in world history.俄国革命是世界历史上的一个里程碑。
• The tower was once a landmark for ships.这座塔曾是船只的陆标。

2 dubbed   

v.给…起绰号( dub的过去式和过去分词 )；把…称为；配音；复制

参考例句：

• Mathematics was once dubbed the handmaiden of the sciences. 数学曾一度被视为各门科学的基础。
• Is the movie dubbed or does it have subtitles? 这部电影是配音的还是打字幕的？ 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 particulate   

adj.微小的；n.微粒，粒子

参考例句：

• A special group was organized to dig up the particulate of the case.成立了一个专门小组来查明该案件的各个细节。
• Lungs retain relatively insoluble particulate material.肺脏内留有不溶解的颗粒物质。

4 brewing   

n. 酿造, 一次酿造的量 动词brew的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• It was obvious that a big storm was brewing up. 很显然，一场暴风雨正在酝酿中。
• She set about brewing some herb tea. 她动手泡一些药茶。