Where are you from?

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Is the name given to a new performance by Tanya Hengstler. Though not a performance in the traditional sense, she describes this action as "flash art," part of a new genre of performance art. A subset of performance art, of which its primary peculiarity is its rapidity, combined simultaneously with absurdist insignificance. To be certain, the claim to create a new visual art genre at the end of the twentieth century seems obviously humoristic.

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In today's completely pragmatic world a new tendency of surviving art is a refusal from the historical ambitions and orientation on fashion and understanding simplicity, even if it provokes negative emotions. Tanya Hengstler's performance is, in my opinion, emblematic in this sense. It works with the context of expectations at first, as any other fleeting art, oriented to the immediate communication, and criticizes it radically.

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Thus, a Russian female artist comes to USA and lives here for a few months to produce an artwork according to her new impressions. Obviously, she gets into the context of the American public's expectations, as any artist coming from a huge, dangerous and mysterious country. They could expect something brutal, extremely trite, or something inarticulate, non-understandable, reckoning the long explanation. Apparently, the guest herself has her own stereotyped perception of Americans as well. Hengstler's idea is conceptually simple, but difficult in its realization. When she came to US, she wanted to... wave an American flag. The difficulty in its realization is in creating the needed conditions of representation. This gesture will only work with the maximum of the audience's interest. The artist needs to make a considerable preliminary work to stimulate an interest towards his or her own representation. Only the maximum of interest, directed to the banal and tautological gesture, would produce an exploding effect of misunderstanding and destroy the traditional fixed perceptions. The interest provides 90 percent of the idea's success, no matter how the artist will act, whether she rises to the stage upright or stumbling, so any of the possible results may be interpreted in a positive way.

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This aspect clearly emphasizes the main weakness or possibly the main force of contemporary art, which is the necessity for the audience's interest. The critique of function of art and its position in society is evident. What is it about? Did a few dozen smart people gather only to see the American flag for the hundred thousandth time? Did nothing really change since Duchamp and do we have to repeat the ready-made repeatedly, of our own body? But, on the other hand, maybe this gesture is more appropriate in today's social-cultural situation. Nothing left in the world but the American flag!

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Anyway, the ironic tincture of Hengstler's performance isn't particularly evident; it can be interpreted as an apology as well as a prophecy: "long live the USA, the country of unlimited possibilities and true freedom!" This obvious ambiguity of contemporary art finds its sources in times of Pop Art. American Pop Art remains mysterious for the critically thinking intellectual. Is it an apology of America or its critique by tautology, doubling? One of the most famous Pop Art works "American Flag" by Jasper Johns, doesn't seem to give a clear answer.

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The possibility of the being interpreted in two contradicting ways is a way to win independence and the sovereignty for the artwork. Until now the Pop Art strategy, questioning of traditional theory of art engagement, is also staying not subverted by contemporary sociological concepts. Art is a kind of neutral territory that is to be won as a prize by anyone who manages to explain its meaning and purpose. The successful work of Tanya Hengstler is another new stimulus to examine this question.

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The last thing to be said concerning this work is its capacity for extraordinary lightness and style. This work is astonishingly simple and it carries an asceticism unlike most of contemporary artworks; which make you wonder about wasted production efforts and expenses. This work keeps a sense of humor, which is so familiar to all elementary pieces of classical avant-garde (i.e. Duchamp's "Fountain"). Mobility, immediacy and contextual precision are coming back to contemporary art. The humoristic effect's presence in Hengstler's work indicates these processes.

Anatoly Osmolovsky