Front Crawl is a ludicrous Freudian sub textual analysis of a seventies instructional film. On the surface a class of boys and girls are being trained to swim front crawl. Below the surface the discipline of their strokes appears to be more of a hysterical attempt to submerge the rush of pubescent sexual feelings, fears and fantasies from raising their ugly heads above water.
‘Repeated movements, as identical as they are different, during a swimming lesson…The insistent gaze cast upon these anonymous images redeems them, endowing them with a body and a physical dimension that is sensual and choreographed.’
‘Through this minimal intervention, Chris Saunders defines his analysis of human actions with a certain economy, for the stance adopted by him here is one of an anthropologist, analysing an activity linked to the population in order to then take the stance of a socio-political critic.’ (Points de Vue (Images d’europe) catalogue essay Musee national d’art moderne 1995)