Who are you, Madame Blavatsky?

In my search for the bridges between the context where I grew up in Ukraine and the context where I live for the past 8 years Netherlands. I found a functioning theosophical society named Blavatsky House in The Hague, which claims to be the heir of the original one, founded by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (HPB) in 1875. In the Netherlands, she is known because her ideas influenced a lot of artists and musicians at the beginning of the 20th century, including de Stijl. Mondrian, for example, was a theosopher and a great admirer of her work. He went so far as to name his art Neoplasticism which is a direct connection to the theosophical concept of Plastic Essence of life. And he is not the only one Kandinsky, Skryabin, Hilma Af Klimt, Avant-garde artists they were all influenced by theosophy. Even if I was not directly familiar with theosophical ideas before encountering this information, they were part of my world through visual culture and music. Concepts like synthesia, thinking about out-of-body experiences, necessity to talk about spiritualism and develop new visuals for it. Discovering these connections was like coming home in a way, understanding where it was coming from.

At UvA there was extensive research done about the influence of the theosophical society on modernist culture in 2013. [10]


“Theosophy has become in recent years a fashionable subject for cultural and art historians, because it has become increasingly evident how influential the Theosophical movement was on a number of artistic and literary movements, particularly at the turn of the 20th century. It seems clear that, in some significant cases, Theosophy helped artists and writers to break away from the formal constrictions of canonical traditions, and propose new languages of artistic expression.” Marco Pasi [1]


HPB vision is a synthesis of different traditions of thinking. Interestingly, her study was considered  anti-modernist, anti-progressive, but it was all present in the visual culture of modernist artists. This is the paradox.

Her real house, where she was born in 1831 and baptized is in the former Ekaterinoslav (now Dnipro), the museum is the only Blavatsky museum in the world. This museum was founded in 1990,  a year before the disintegration of the Soviet Union happened. Because theosophical ideas were not supported by the communist regime either. The republication of the secret Doctrine flooded the market. I happened to have it at home. I remember that the cover of one volume was flipped upside down, not intentionally. I have family stories connected to these books.

Her actual house has been in a state of ruin for years, and the museum cannot get funding for restoration. First of all there is always a lack of resources in the art world in Ukraine, and secondly funding bodies might be suspicious because of the occult connections that do not fit into any narrative worth investing into.

As someone who was born in the same city, the same year this museum was founded. I have interset to make my analyzes, create a space where I can enter the discourse. What does it mean to have a Blavatsky museum in Contemporary Ukraine? What kind of subjects we are becoming when we have this museum in the city? Which kind of audience does it generate? In 2018 the museum obtained status as a historical monument building.

Memorial plate on her house today says that she is a Russian writer. Ethnically she was Russian/German. Her father was one from the committee of the “colonizers of the South'', who came to colonize Ukraine. She was the first Russian who received American citizenship, and she wrote her books in English, she died in London 1891 from Spanish flu. So it is a very complex identity.


I am fascinated by the mythology that Blavatsky created around herself, and that her strategy proved successful in counteracting the patriarchal society of the 19th century. She has to collaborate with men a lot to make her voice heard. The co-founder of the Theosophical society Olcott, the first president of the society, was an experienced media person. Newspapers and magazines are the two main components that brought the organization to its fame.


Another question that is important to address is problematics in the text, despite Blavatsky’s discourse for universal brotherhood.
 
Which actually doesn’t come as a surprise at all, if you are familiar with Posthumanists literature. This contradiction is quite consistent with the logic of humanism.[13]  The question of who is counted as the human remains open in that case. Also her methods to travel to the East to gain knowledge is a canonic move for the colonial practices. I don’t see her as a unitary subject. I want to reveal all these complexities and contradictions that her persona has.  

In my work I am recreating the space and the atmosphere of her house, not literally, but in the so-called memory castle way, where each part represents part of her story. I am interested in creating a space that haunts. During the performance in december 2021, I made collage experiments with photos found online and then projected it onto the walls and ceiling, also this experience was accompanied by the sound instalation.  In this setup I gave a lecture performance for the Master's Scenography students in which I narrated through the space of Blavatsky's story and at the same time drew with charcoal on the walls, so drawing merges projection with reality. I am trying to enter in between, here and there.


In January a trip to Dnipro is planned. I am going to visit a museum and interview people who work there, about their urge to keep the place running, and what they think about Blavatsky. Also she was writing a lot about critique of materialism. Even though I have read about connections between theosophy with post structuralism, I can not find anything tangible in this field. I was wondering how to connect this with my ideas of spirituality in technology and thoughts and writings.