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if the city already treats places differently, could the air from those places be treated differently too?
I collected small plastic bags of air from across Beijing—tourist corridors like the central axis and Nanluoguxiang, cultural spots such as the National Art Museum,
and quiet villa districts where the air feels slightly removed from the rest of the city.
Each bag was priced according to the air quality index taken at the moment it was sealed.
Clean air cost more; polluted air cost less. The plastic bags made the whole gesture feel fragile and absurd, like trying to hold onto something that refuses to stay still.
What interested me wasn’t critique, but the ease with which familiar places slipped into a market logic.
People immediately had theories about why a villa district might be “worth more,” or why Nanluoguxiang might be cheap on a crowded afternoon.
The project briefly turned a shared, intangible resource into a commodity, revealing how environmental differences already shape quiet forms of inequality long before anyone decides to sell them.
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