The following stills are taken from a video that I made during DAI trip to Dakar, Senegal. Video presents a visual sketch made for my current research focused on self – immolation acts that spread across North and West Africa after the self – immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia that marked the start of Arab Spring. One of the initial points of my interest are different contexts in which those acts appear and how they relate to the enfoldment of the Arab Spring events.

In Dakar, presidential palace is the site in front of which several cases of self – immolations were executed as desperate calls to structures of power, calls triggered out of poverty. The video focuses on the space itself, on the safely guarded landscape in which citizens are being carefully observed and controlled. My own shooting was possible after negotiation with the policeman, in which I convinced him that I am shooting postcards of Dakar’s tourist attractions.