Name: Reading Disability Through Epistemic Artefacts
Start: Wed Oct 07 2026 11:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
End: Wed Oct 07 2026 12:30:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
Location: Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design

Design often treats disability as a tragic deficit or a problem to be solved, completely missing the profound, situated expertise forged through everyday lived experience. This hands-on workshop upends that patronizing dynamic by positioning disabled people as true epistemic authorities and creators. Working in collaborative groups, participants confront a curated material archive of everyday hacked, physically modified objects. Rather than diagnosing medical impairments, we analyze these objects as epistemic artefacts that materialize ingenious, situated knowledge. By pairing these material modifications with critical disability theory, we map how individual, sensory lifeworlds (Umwelt) collide with, negotiate, and actively reshape restrictive social environments and institutional infrastructures (Mitwelt). Moving past passive, simulation-based 'empathy' exercises, this session invites designers to recognize crip technoscience not as a compromise, but as a vital, generative force for world-making, collective care, and systemic transformation. 

The programme is presented as part of the Social Dialogues in Art+Design symposium.

Presented by:
Shilpa Das and Bea Sosity

Reading Disability Through Epistemic Artefacts

A workshop on disability-generated knowledge, design, and epistemic justice

Moholy-Nagy Művészeti Egyetem

A workshop on disability-generated knowledge, design, and epistemic justice. The programme is presented as part of the Social Dialogues in Art+Design symposium.