La flecha de Zenón [Zeno's Arrow]

This video addresses a series of paradoxes that the early Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea (490–430 BCE) presented on the basis that movement and distance can be divided into an infinite number of static moments. Zeno's Arrow Paradox states that a flying arrow occupies a series of consecutive spots in place and time. In each spot, the arrow is static, so in fact, the arrow never moves. Although Jorge Macchi and David Oubiña refer to this paradox in the video's title, they visually allude to Zeno's Racetrack Paradox. According to Zeno, a runner will never be able to reach a racetrack's finish line because he must first reach half the distance to the goal; but before that, he must cross half the distance to the halfway point, and so on, as the remaining distance becomes infinitely divided in half. Here, the artists rely on Zeno's paradoxical use of logic to delay, apparently forever, a familiar film preamble, transforming it into an uncannily endless numeric countdown.