For the Zendai Museum's 366-day public intervention project, INTRUDE , an oxygen- dispensing three-wheel bicycle was rolled into a busy market area in Shanghai. People could sit in the back of the cart and inhale air free of urban contaminants.

Breathe is an adaption of "Fresh Air Cart," a performance project originally done in 1972 by New York sculptor Gordon Matta-Clark and video artist Juan Downey. While thirty-five years have passed since Downey and Matta-Clark invited people to inhale oxygen in lower Manhattan, Shanghai faces the same air quality problems today.

This project, like the original we are adapting, offers people a place to sit down for a minute to breathe, turning a simple invisible act into a public spectacle with technologies. By intervening this way in urban space, the project reveals how our experience of air and its qualities are simultaneously public and extremely intimate, private. Following this line of reasoning, the act of breathing is at once personal and political.

Shanghai air quality on November 6, 2008 (the day the project was executed) Source

The chart covers the main pollutants from combustion common in cities. NO2 and SO2 are compounds Nitrogen and Sulfur, respectively, form with Oxygen. Both adversely impact health at extended high levels. PM10 in this chart refers to airborne particulates.
"Historically, interest in particulate matter focused mainly on smoke which can cause health problems especially in combination with other pollutants. However, recent epidemiological evidence is also linking concentrations of particles in the atmosphere with human health effects. Particles can vary widely in size and composition. The PM10 (particles measuring 10µm or less) standard was designed to identify those particles likely to be inhaled by humans, and PM10 has become the generally accepted measure of particulate material in the atmosphere in the UK and in Europe. The main sources of primary PM10 are road transport (all road transport emits PM10, but diesel vehicles emit a greater mass of particulate per vehicle kilometre), stationary combustion (domestic coal combustion has traditionally been the major source of particulate emissions in the UK) and industrial processes (including bulk handling, construction, mining and quarrying)." from Pollutant Detail
The older people really got into breathing; we had to politely ask them if they were ok, so they didn't get carried away indefinitely. They looked relaxed and happy when they finished.

Breathe was brought to the city of Shanghai by the Katalog Study Group members Jay Brown and Sarah Lewison, under the sponsorship of Zendai Museum INTRUDE 366, and with the generous and unwavering support of Lijiang Studio