Cultural actors sustain a game between real and imaginary, an epistemological tension between organic and inorganic, as well as a genre’s hesitation regarding the boundary between life and death, artificial and natural, made and born Body.

Through the image of this crippled creature I engage once again with the discourse of monstrosity. It is one of the particular ways in which the boundaries between human and almost human manifest themselves. Monsters serve not only to mark a boundary line, but also to signal the fragility of these borders. They are indeed monsters as they both demonstrate and destroy the differentiations through which culture distinguishes natural from artificial, human from non-human, normal from pathological. Their representative functions serve not only for description and communication, but also for legitimation, reproduction and normalisation – or, vice versa, for subversion, refutation and destabilisation. I describe such representers as ‘cultural actors’. They serve as a critique of humaneness. My searches lead me to deciphering their language and to encoding it in the creation of new creatures.

Orthoman thanks to:

Irina Batkova and M-tel Awards for Contemporary Bulgarian Art Team

Arduino, sensors, electronics: Simeon Yanchev

Sound records: Alexander Evtimov (Shamana)

Electronics: Borislav Tonev (Bucky)

Electronics: Rumen (Rumen)

Orthesis: National Center for Social Service

Creative advice: Nedko Zhechev, Maele Pupez, Yana Krachunova

Orthoman and Fantomat were awarded by the M-tel Awards for Contemporary Bulgarian Art, and were also ranked first by the audience.