Category: What’s new

When Art Meets Air Pollution

In February 2018, Avril Unger, a performance artist collaborated with Jhatkaa, a Bengaluru-based advocacy and campaigning organization for her latest piece, an art installation on air pollution.  Read about it here and here.

An excerpt from the news piece:

“You’d probably be perplexed at the sight of her, performance artist Avril Stormy Unger wearing an air pollution mask, clutching flowers in her hand, and sitting on an immense wooden chair alongside traffic-choked Old Madras Road. And seeing her again, the next day and the next. You’d become intrigued, curious enough to start asking questions – and that’s exactly the point.”

Avril Unger is an interdisciplinary performance artist interested in disrupting social patterns while challenging the relationship between the audience and artist. Her recent works include public interventions around Bengaluru, site specific installations and collaborations with other artists.

A short Q&A with Avril:

What was your motivation for designing and executing this performance piece? 

 It started off as a part of another project, we were all asked to react to the city- my topic was fading wonder and since I come from a small town (Mangalore) when I came to the city it was filled with this magical wonder that soon faded. The first time I performed this piece I was surrounded by people who spent everyday in that area, the petrol station staff, the police etc. So it started becoming about them and the pollution that they need to withstand in order to do their jobs every single day.

Given the poor quality of the environment in India, how can artists and performers contribute towards this discourse?

I think artists should be active in increasing awareness of the issue, since this is something that is not given heed until it is too late. Small projects in their own communities and neighbourhoods will go a long way.

Are there any active collaborations between government, researchers and artists focusing on the issue of air quality?

 Not that I am aware of. Jhatkaa was the first time I performed with an organisation as until then I have been doing it on my own.

Find Avril on Twitter (@AvrilUnger).

Dr. Arti Choudhary’s research is focused on on-road emission characterization and emission modelling. She is currently working at the Central Road Research Institute (CSIR-CRRI). She has a PhD from the Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (India) and M.Tech. from Thapar University, Patiala (India).

Her past research was funded by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India and recently, she was awarded the SERB-National Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.

Find her on Google Scholar , Linkedin and ResearchGate.  You can also contact her via e-mail.

A short Q & A with Dr. Choudhary:

 

What is your SERB project focused on?

My SERB project focused on three different engine type auto-rickshaw, like petrol fuelled auto-rickshaw, CNG fuelled auto-rickshaw and e-rickshaw, for on-road driving cycle development and on-road emission factor (EF) estimation for two different cities- Delhi and Guwahati. Some other focus points of the project are assessment of operational and financial performance of e-rickshaws and CNG fuelled auto-rickshaws as compared to petrol-fuelled auto-rickshaws in terms of emission reduction potential per kilometre, fuel economy, maintenance cost per kilometre, operating costs per passenger, and the ratio of operating costs to traffic revenues.

How did you get interested in the field of air pollution?

The topic of air pollution and its impact on the environment is important and is highly relevant in the wake of the alarming air pollution in the most of the urban cities of India. I found my interest in air pollution during my M.Tech. dissertation project. Through sampling and analysing (size-segregated) PM across locations, I learnt about the dynamic behaviour of pollutants, seasonal variation and its impacts on human health and our environment. I found real time data collection, analysis and assessment of its impact in real world to be very interesting. This motivated me to continue research on air pollution and during my PhD, I chose to study transportation sector for real-world emission characterization, which is one of the significant sources of air pollution, particularly in urban areas.

As a young scientist, what are the biggest challenges you face in terms of conducting research? 

As a researcher, I found instrumentation to be the biggest challenge in air pollution research in India. Collaborative research across the nation is neither flexible nor supportive. For quality research, we need to manage better collaboration across national and regional research laboratories and scientific organizations, and better linkages with the foreign academic community.