The Blob

In 2001 Gert Verhoeven presented a first draught of ’The Blob’ (2001) on a wide screen at the Palace for Fine Arts (BOZAR). This video is a report on the World Pumpkin Confederation Contest in Buffalo, New York and Port Elgin, Ontario, Canada. The recording style is typical of a straight documentary but also extremely fragmentary, leaving the spectator without a clue on what it is about at first. Jerkily he keeps seeing the image of pumpkins, giant pumpkins. In all their squatness and flabbiness they are subject to a multitude of curious manipulations by masculine hands and fork trucks. Due to the lack of a storyline the attention of the spectator clings itself to formal details and actions: the various (un)shape(lines)and the colours of the pumpkins, the ingenious knot work of ropes and leather belts nipped in which they move about the screen, the endearing variety of pallets, mattresses, carpets and blankets on which they are displayed,… The comments and dubious questions of the voice-over in the distant background mainly serve as white noise. Yet, after some guesswork the viewer can make out he is watching a persiflage in which the pumpkins are put forward as artworks-in-progress, whereas the absurd ritual of the contest is a reference to the machinations of the accompanying art market. Oddly enough text and images are so far apart that the pumpkins remain essentially ponderous, plump objects. Almost comically they refuse to act as metaphors for sculptures, ideas or other manageable concepts.