Suspensión I
2019 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
5:00 minutes
Adrían Balseca
Adrian Balseca’s Suspensión I inverts the logic of the old colonial game, the greasy pole. Digitally filmed in the Province of Morona Santiago among the last existing community at the entrance of the Sangay National Park, a native girl climbs a balsa tree trunk from which plastic containers filled with “local” fossil fuels hang (super, extra, eco-país, gasoline, diesel, etc.). The trunk – which is lightweight quality wood, typical of the subtropical jungle of Ecuador -– has been cut down and suspended vertically and the trophies of modern progress hang from it. A reference to the painting, The Greasy Pole (La cucaña) by Francisco de Goya (1786) lingers; the Spanish painter depicts a number of boys climbing to reach the top of the pole, where gifts and chickens have been arranged as prizes, while people cheer them on below.
Artist Adrian Balseca’s work broadly focuses upon extractivist practices in South America and across the globe, contemplating their ensuing environmental impacts. Producing installation, photographs and objects, the artist explores issues including the history of rubber extraction from the Amazon, the impact of oil spills, and the development of the car industry. His work tracks a trajectory through developmental history that allows for a reflection upon the physical, economic and epistemic violence contained within modes of production at the service of multinational capital. Often beginning with site-specific interventions based around banal yet symbolic objects, the car, a sewer, or a lamp for example, Balseca goes on to explore their manufacturing process, through which we might access questions of economy, nature, power and memory.
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