"Ukraine's Got Talent"

The other day my mother sent one of those pop culture emails making the rounds. This one showed a young woman Kseniya Simonova, who recently won the finals in a TV program named Ukraine’s Got Talent, something of an American Idol knock-off. The woman created sand paintings on a large light-table that featured scenes from German invasion of Ukraine [USSR] during World War II. While it may not be correct to consider this invasion part of the Holocaust, one in four people living in Ukraine at the time of what they locally called the Great Patriotic War died. Watching the video, analyzing its circumstances, and reflecting on its merits either as a work of art or as a moment of witness may prove useful as I move ahead exploring questions to ask concerning ways that art and poetry contribute to the conversation concerning the Holocaust itself.

Here’s what happens in the images Simonova creates in sand. First, a couple in love sits on a bench. The war planes come, he disappears, a tear stains the woman’s cheek, a baby arrives. The chaos of war returns, the woman receives news he is dead. Then we see the face of an old woman, more tears on cheeks and, based on varying interpretations, we next see either Ukraine’s "Monument to an Unknown Soldier" [Sailor] or a marker on the man’s grave. The final scene shows the woman looking out a window with her young child. The image of a sailor, hands pressed against the glass, looks in.

In the video, people in the audience cry. The judges cry. People receiving this online email cry as they watch the beautiful woman in a nunlike black dress choreograph this sand painting that looks almost like an animation. She obviously has talent as an artist and as a performer. The prize, varying by accounts of the contest, ranges from $75,000 to $125,000 US.

As I watched the video, I felt discomfort about the whole experience. Let me try to analyze what I think was going on with the production as a whole and then to separate out my own reaction. At the time that Kseniya Simonova appeared on the reality show in September of 2009, the country was in the middle of what the Guardian.co.uk spoke of as a “fraught presidential election campaign …underway ahead of a vote in January 2010 and a deepening financial crisis.” This video also had much in common with the viral video with the unlikely winner on a sister program Britain’s Got Talent, singer Susan Boyle. The reality show platform requires the winner to be an unlikely candidate to win, Susan Boyle because of her appearance, Simonova because she paints in sand. A dream may be part of the equation. Susan Boyle wants to be a star. Simonova presents a world rocked with war with hope of catharsis, perhaps through having a child. Her images of destruction replaced by those of healing seem powerful. One of the most important aspects of both comes from their dependence on a public vote. People choose the winners based, often enough, on emotional response, not on artistic merit. Both are part of a global franchise called Got Talent. The word franchise signals the selling of goods and services.

I felt grateful to Simonova and to Ukraine’s Got Talent as I watched. I began a list of questions that I feel a work of art, of witness, needs to address. All of these felt lacking in the video I saw. First, I want to see something authentic, real, earned. The images in the sand painting were generic and sentimental. How easy to draw the tear in the eye as the lover goes to war. How obvious the baby in the early moments of the piece, the small child later. I had no sense of whose story this was. Or to what purpose beyond the winning of the contest did the creation of the sand painting lend itself. I am a huge believer in art for art’s sake. Yet, if a work considers itself political, then how and what does it argue. Intent should go beyond the simplistic “War is bad” statement this piece makes. Also I want accuracy. As I surfed the Web concerning the video, I discovered the town portrayed was actually in Romania at the beginning of World War II, not Ukraine. I want to feel that there is a sense of layering, that there is more to discover in the piece, that everything is not right there on the surface and obvious. Perhaps most important for this to be art, I want to feel that the artist herself has put something at risk. I want to feel a sense of danger in the art itself, that the artist has gone way inside to a place of personal discovery. Then, maybe I’ll be able to feel something, too.