My works explore the transitional states of the human body by focusing on his marginalization. They also relate on decoding the language of modern myths and encoding them in new creatures, to the intersection between man and technology, human and subhuman as a sub-product of the social, political, economical and cultural situation. Theatre and performance play a major role in my creative repertoire, which also includes drawings, interactive installations, digital technologies, videos and art theory.
Artist statement - Long version
In my artistic practice, I intertwine theoretical searches, various digital technologies, interactive performance and installation, the genre of cyber lecture, theatre practices, street art, video art and installation, sculpture, drawing and electronics.
I bestowed the title ‘SubHuman Theatre’ upon this complex artistic activity.
SubHuman Theatre appears as a sub-product of the social, political, economic, and cultural situation. Through its conceptual framework, I explore intermediate states of the human body and focus on its marginalisation. It is about a practice of deciphering the language of modern myths and encoding them in new creatures, at the intersection between human and technology.
SubHuman Theatre is a broad platform, which gathers a multitude of aspects of a lost humanity. This repressed humanity appears in the term ‘subhuman’ and originates in various forms that can be summarised with the term ‘subculture’. Subcultural expressions are often considered ugly, monstrous, deviant, pathological, marginal, subversive. Technocracy, techno-culture, techno-aesthetics and that general technological manifestation which we constantly use for communication, are special kinds of an aesthetic of the monstrous. This monstrosity fascinates and repels, seduces and frightens, legitimises and destabilises.
In my works I put a special emphasis on the human body as a means of expression. In most cases I use my own body as a material for experiments, mutations and transformations, as a ritualised personal experience. A running feature of my work, as evident in the projects presented here, is the incorporation of my own physique into the various devices I employ; a ‘building in’ of the human body into a given structure, putting the corporeal through its paces and celebrating the boldness of the physical effort.
SubHuman Theatre is an informal, pseudotheatrical structure, with a combination of social reflection and empathy at its core. This structure is a context for the creation of a modern mythology as a sum of the actual and the epochal, mythos and logos, the fabled and the critical. It is my conviction that artists must build their own mythology in response to the environment and the times they live in.
Venelin Shurelov, 2018