Exposition Pollution Pods

Forming a ring in the centre of our courtyard, visitors will pass through the climatically controlled pods to compare the quality of polluted global environments.  All five Pollution Pods are linked, so that one has to pass through all of them in order to exit the installation.  This visceral experience encapsulates the sense that the world – and our own impact on it – is interconnected.

The entry pod, emulating a peninsula in Norway called Tautra, will contain the cleanest air.  Using Airlabs technology, all harmful gases will be fully removed, making it totally pure and reinstalling the sense of what it is like to breathe truly clean air.  A smorgasbord of metropolises follow, each with their own specific and nuanced polluted environments, approximating accurately, yet safely, London’s invisible but deadly output of Nitrogen Dioxide to New Delhi’s suffocating haze of airborne particles.

It is estimated that the average Londoner, exposed to the current levels of pollution recreated in the installation, would lose up to 16 months of their life, with a resident of New Delhi cutting their life short by 4 years.  In this work, Pinsky considers how the excessive consumerism of the West has far-reaching consequences on the environment of the East.

Pinsky’s original commission was from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim for Climart and it is the first time that the Pollution Pods will be presented in the UK.

Pollution Pods
Michael Pinsky
18th – 24th April 2018
The Edmond J. Safra Fountain Court, London
More information on : www.somersethouse.org.uk