Anxious Atmospheres

Focusing on how the inhabitants live and work next to a coal-powered plant in the Senegalese town of Bargny, I explore the atmosphere of anxiety that arises from the cohabitation between the dust-creating infrastructure, the inhabitants, their animals, as well as the natural and spiritual landscape. I demonstrate how this anxiety is directed towards the future as the dust impacts the lives of the residents' children, while also reflecting concerns about the past as the infrastructure gradually destroys an important, sacred heritage site. Nonetheless, I argue that the activism and protests against the polluting infrastructure reawaken animistic beliefs, thereby creating new constellations of human and non-human resistance.