Suspensión I is part of a series of videos around the subject of play. Adrián Balseca recorded the last group of people living in the Sangay National Park, in the province of Morona Santiago, Ecuador. A young girl climbs a cut-down tree trunk from which hang the ‘trophies’ of modern progress. These are plastic recipients containing local fossil fuels, such as petrol and diesel, among others. A playful scene reminiscent of Goya’s painting La cucaña (The Greasy Pole, 1786), a popular game in which boys climb a greased pole in an attempt to win the food prizes suspended from the top, cheered on by a watching crowd. Introduced to the Americas by the colonisers, Balseca uses it here to recreate the colonial imaginary of a supposedly exuberant land – in the Middle Ages, the País de la Cucaña, or Land of the Cockaigne, was a mythical land of plenty where nobody had to work – and the abusive system of economic extraction that has ultimately contaminated a country like Ecuador.