Harriet A. Washington and Tomás Saraceno on Freeing the Air

In this video, science writer and ethicist Harriet A. Washington joins Tomás Saraceno to discuss his new artwork, “We Do Not All Breathe the Same Air,” and the ways pollution's harmful effects are inequitably distributed along racial lines. The artist’s new installation, commissioned by The Shed and inspired by Washington’s writings, from which the piece also draws its title, is a visualization of the uneven distribution of air quality and particulate matter—or particle pollution—across the United States. State-wide air pollution regulation agencies use a machine called the Beta Attenuation Mass Monitor to measure the particulate matter in the air over time. The machine’s vacuum pump pulls a measured and controlled amount of air through filter tape every hour, catching particulate matter in the process. The resulting dots, ranging in tone from light gray to black and usually discarded or archived after the numerical data has been collected from the machine, reveal how what we breathe reflects variance across spatial, racial, social, and political factors that determine whether one can exercise their right to clean air. On the strips one dot is recorded per hour, resulting in 24 dots per day and 168 per week. Each frame constitutes 24 weeks of air pollution data, amounting to 4,032 dots in total, organized by states of origin. Washington, who contributed an essay to the exhibition’s catalog, has shown that race, not class, is the strongest determining factor in access to clean air. Moving forward will require both the realization and recognition that not only do we not all breathe the same air, but that not all have the right to breathe.