Bootstrap – the Concluded Future

Vision in the economy is an inflationary expression. But, concretely, how is the future determined in capitalism? Does the bootstrap principle actually apply here — as we know it from Baron Münchhausen’s hair-raising feat in the tall tale — where business pins its hopes to some future state of affairs and like Baron Münchhausen pulls itself up by the ponytail, or rather by the bootstraps?

The film Bootstrap investigates this question about the future and its role in our economic system, decrypts the economic relationships that are entered into with it. There’s also the question of reproducibility and the depiction of the future as a product of business.

The film begins with character ƒ trying to approach players of Frankfurt’s banking district. But only after ƒ puts out a job ad via the unemployment office does he get answers to his questions from a controller, investor relations manager and chief executive officer.

The film Bootstrap confronts two perspectives on the economics by alternating between the characters’ own linguistic representation of the connections, filmed in various meeting rooms, with short scenes of employees’ behavior in public spaces.Through this juxtaposition, the viewer is pulled into the materiality of the different languages. Moved by the materiality of economic speak, the office building’s architecture and the body language of the employees working within, there arises an idea of the bootstrap – the future produced by the economy.