In Frank Perry's The Swimmer (1968), Burt Lancaster's Ned Merrill—wearing only trunks—emerges from woods like a wild animal to swim laps in a friend's private pool. After a cocktail and superficial chat surveying upper-class terrain, he conceives swimming an imaginary river of sequential pools to his home.
Sascha Pohle's video of the same title adopts this protagonist role within tourism's context, reenacting the swim through successive hotel pools on Tenerife—chosen randomly as Thomas Cook's first advertised destination. Following brochure page order, he swims one lap per pool, concluding with the 51st in open-ended infinity (or nowhere).
The Swimmer unfolds tourism's vast pool typology—from architecture and surroundings, with or without guests, across perspectives. Repetitive absurdity, solo swims in leisure settings, SD video quality, aging hotels, and extended sequences lend melancholy. Brochure photos versus crossed pools provoke reflection on photography's pool representation—an afterimage of status symbols against bookable dream homes.
For further readings I can swim home... by Jochen Volz
Video Still
Thomas Cook travel broschure
'All Inclusiv: A Tourist World', Kunsthalle Schirn, 2008, Frankfurt/Main, curated by Matthias Ulrich
Imaginarios colectivos: la construcción de la imagen turística, curated by Pedro Vincente
'Beyond Paradise', SMBA Stedelijk Bureau Amsterdam, 2008, curated by Ayako Yoshimura, Delphine Bedel
Forum 1822, Frankfurt/Main, 2002
exhibtion view, 'Terminus', ParaSite, 2008, Hongkong, curated by Chirstina Li
pages of travel brochure and video stills
Helen: ( purring ) Neddy, ... where’ve you been keeping yourself?
Merril: ( marvelling at the sky ) Oh, here and there, here and there, what a day ... have you ever seen such a glorious day?
.... he stands sipping his drink, glimpses other yards, other pools in the cascading landscapes of forest and dale.
Merril: If I take a dogleg to the southwest, I can swim home...
Helen: How? Why?
Merill: Pool by pool they form a river...all the way to our house...I’ll call it the Lucinda river, after my wife.
The Swimmer, Frank Perry, 1968, film still
The Swimmer, Frank Perry, 1968, film still
