Underdog Treadmill

“In each beginning there’s a special magic,” as the saying goes. Underdog Treadmill begins where this magic is absent: amidst all the toil and travail that accumulates before an idea can be realized.

Media artist Anna Vasof points her camera at her latest mechanical construction: a dog treadmill, which she has transformed into a cinematographic apparatus based on the principle of the praxinoscope. Individual images are attached to the 62 wooden slats, which a counter-rotating mirror combines into a moving sequence. When the device is set in motion, a classic film countdown appears, repeating itself endlessly. However, contrary to convention, the numbers increase rather than decrease. As the director walks on the treadmill and films the rattling numbers, the sequence of numbers announcing the beginning itself becomes an endless loop. The anticipation that’s been created gets stuck in the warm-up phase.

Along with the repetitive rhythm of the countdown, a treadmill-like stream of consciousness is launched. Off-screen, the director reflects in a matter-of-fact voice, accompanied by the machine’s wooden clacking, on why her films never actually start. Avoidance strategies – such as waiting for the dishwasher to finish, tedious administrative tasks, and creeping existential anxieties – coalesce into a mental block that only intensifies in the hamster wheel of the compulsion to be productive. With self-deprecating humor, the film circles around these dynamics of alienation that precede the actual filmmaking process.

As the performative activation unfolds, the realization that “the process replaces the film” emerges from the spiral of thought, allowing the film to see through to its own origin. Suddenly, the limitations begin to transform into something liberating: in the underdog’s existence, a renunciation of demands that are imposed seems to arise. And so the countdown begins, until perhaps everything begins anew. (Charlie Bendisch)

Translation: John Wojtowicz