A Chinese artist just spent 100 days walking the streets of Beijing with a vacuum cleaner, and has made a brick from the city's polluted air. The artist, who calls himself Nut Brother (坚果兄弟), walked the city's streets for about four hours each day, pushing a large, 1,000-watt industrial vacuum cleaner while holding its nozzle in the air. Image: Nut Brother's WeiboSee also: Beijing hits highest air pollution alert of 2015 And he's made a brick from the dust and smog collected — a symbol of the city's infamous pollution that has made face masks a common sight on its streets. On Monday, the brick was created at a brick factory, that mixed the vacuumed dust with clay. Nut Brother told Mashable he was often mistaken for an air quality surveyor or cleaner by passers-by, who thought that it was "cool" for the city to have employed people to monitor and clean the air. He said he hasn't gone for any health checks after his 100-day jaunt, but said his body feels okay, if a little "numb", but didn't elaborate on where he felt numb.

Several commenters on Nut Brother's Weibo account criticized him for mixing the dirt with clay, saying that it exaggerates the amount of dirt collected. upright vacuum cleaners dysonBut his work is getting noticed across various local media outlets, which are lauding the message behind his project.light hoover vacuum cleaner Image: Nut Brother's Weibosteam vacuum cleaners nz Image: Nut Brother's WeiboOf his project, he said (translated from Chinese): "The day we exhaust all of the Earth's resources, we will ourselves turn into dust." Nut Brother's project is especially timely, given that Beijing on Monday upgraded its air pollution warning alert to "orange" — the highest reading in 13 months. Beijing has suffered from air pollution for years, in large part due to massive coal burning in industrial cities up North.

An estimated 4,000 people die each day due to air pollution, say physicists. The artist was a former copywriter in Shenzhen till he decided to give it up and move to Beijing in 2008. Prior to this brick project, he bought a (presumably deceased) dog from Yulin — the city which holds an annual festival where dogs are slaughtered and sold as meat — and cremated it. He filled 1,000 blue balloons with the ashes and floated them up in the sky. When the balloons burst after floating too high in the sky, they scattered the ash, a symbol of sending the dog up to "heaven," according to the artist. Image: Nut Brother's WeiboUpdated Dec 1, 2015 10:25 PM EST with comments from the artist, Nut Brother.World leaders are talking about climate change in Paris right now. I bet a lot of them are itching to get out of stuffy conference rooms to go for a stroll and clear their heads in the crisp Parisian air.Meanwhile, people in Beijing are facing some of the swampiest smog they’ve seen in years.

The type of smog that makes you cough, causes you to lose your breath, makes you squint for every street sign and burns your eyes.The type of smog that makes life unbearable. Pollution is currently 35 times higher than levels that are deemed safe. It’s so bad, schools have been ordered to keep students indoors.A cyclist in Fuyang, China, on Monday in the worst recorded smog of the year. China released a 900-page report on how... Posted by The New York Times on Monday, November 30, 2015Most of this smog comes from coal, China’s favorite source of energy. The country builds a new coal plant every 7 to 10 days and consumes more than 4 billion tons of coal per year.When the wind stops blowing, smog builds up and blankets cities.Beijing has been notorious for air pollution for years, and citizens are understandably fed up. Air pollution affects the poorest in Beijing the most--those who can’t afford expensive air purification systems and who toil outside in the open air.Recently, an artist called Brother Nut set out to capture this feeling of disgust and dismay.

He walked around Beijing for 100 days with an industrial vacuum cleaner. He held the nozzle in front of him as he walked, sucking dust out of the air, an action that attracted all sorts of bewildered looks.  Artist Brother Nut at Tiananmen Square. Many mistook him for a high-tech street sweeper. — Chris Buckley 储百亮 (@ChuBailiang) December 1, 2015He started out with a heavy-duty air mask, but soon gave it up, regarding it as a pointless cosmetic in a city so drenched in pollution. — Greenpeace East Asia (@GreenpeaceEAsia) December 2, 2015His solitary journey took him to landmarks like Tiananmen Square and the National Center for Performing Arts.Some days were relatively clear. Other days, rain kept him inside.Some onlookers thought he was a new-age street sweeper tackling dust head-on, and even asked him how much he made.After 100 days he had a mound of particles, a great big lump of gunk. He mixed some red clay into the mound and formed a brick that will be baked in a kiln.

— AIGA (@AIGAdesign) December 1, 2015The Beijing media has run with the story. Although it’s critical of the government, it closely reflects the grievances of the people and the ruling party has acknowledged the need to clean the air. All the attention has turned Brother Nut into a mini-celebrity.It’s ingenious social art performances like this that can trigger change, that can get people to visualize alternatives and finally say, “Enough.”One commenter on a photo gallery speculated that everyone in Beijing would probably have a brick of dust, or several bricks, in their gut.That’s a scary image. Imagine digesting a brick of dust. That seems like it would be a lot harder than stopping climate change.  So do your part to end pollution. Go to TAKE ACTION NOW to ensure world leaders work towards a cleaner world.Smog in Beijing is so bad someone made a brick out of it Artist ‘Nut Brother' spent four hours a day, for 100 days, using a vacuum cleaner to collect dust from the city's toxic pollution cloud

Thursday 3 December 2015 07:32 BST A performance artist has used particles hoovered up from Beijing’s toxic smog-cloud to create a brick, to draw attention to the Chinese capital’s ‘airpocalypse’. ‘Nut Brother’, otherwise known as 34-year-old Beijing resident Wang Renzheng, spent four hours a day, for 100 days, using a vacuum cleaner to collect dust from the city's toxic pollution cloud. Since July, Nut Brother’s vacuum cleaner has toured some of Beijing’s most famous sites, including the hutongs (old lanes), Tiananmen Square, the Bird’s Nest national stadium and the Ministry of Environmental Protection. On the 100th day, 30 November, the artist mixed the collected dust with clay before taking it to a brick factory – to make a semi-finished brick. In a few days, it will be finished, and stuck in a kiln to be dried and fired. Schoolchildren in the city have been kept indoors in recent days, while others ended up in hospital with breathing difficulties, as Beijing grappled with a huge cloud of pollution made up of carcinogenic PM2.5 particulates - measuring more than 200,000 square miles.