CRI听力: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 landmark sites.

The artist hopes his performance art, dubbed 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 particulate 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 brewing 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.