Breathing Bricks

Abstract

For 100 days in 2015, performance artist Nut Brother dragged a vacuum cleaner through Beijing and formed the collected smog particles into a solid brick. Dust Project brings into sharp relief the harm related to the necessary act of breathing and the effects of anthropogenic climate change. As air quality declines, breathing marks the everyday entanglement with particulate matter and its attendant violences as a performance of endurance.