co-ABILITY Design Practises Matter and Mind in Disability Design exhibition presenting works created in cooperation by students of the University of Applied Arts Vienna (DIE ANGEWANDTE) and Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest (MOME), funded by the Austro-Hungarian Foundation for Action; Budapest, Hungary.
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This exhibition represents the interdisciplinary work of students of two universities; design experiments between design and science with the focus on different abilities of an individual and cooperation among entities. The presented works do not solely show new objects or design products, but interim results of research questions by design practice and design elements. The students that participated were in Bachelor or Master degree studies and derived from the departments of Art Sciences and Art Education, Social Design, Arts as Urban Innovation (DIE ANGEWANDTE) and Design and Art, Product Design (MOME). During the semester-long work, the students researched the correlation between art, design, and science with focusing on deconstructing the contemporary norms in society while examining cultural and experimental interpretations of abilities and disabilities. The objective of the course was to change the perspectives on disability and become familiar with its values and positive advantages by using methods of co-Ability studies (Dezső, 2019) and Applied Design Thinking (Mateus-Berr 2013; 2020). ‘The understanding of co-Ability is grounded in the posthumanist philosophy and in the critical disability studies outlined by scholars such as Rosi Braidotti (2013; 2017); McRuer (2016); Goodley (2014; 2017); Goodley & Lawthom (2009); Campbell (2012); Wolfe (2009). This term applies to the relational matter of our world.’ (Dezső, 2019) To deconstruct the contemporary normative perspective related to inequality the key is to disconnect the stigma attached to the term. “The notion of disability is enigmatic, even confusing because the term ‘disability’ itself has negative connotations, given the prefix ‘dis’ meaning ‘absence’ or ‘negation’” Mitra (2018: 9). Mitra, one of the most respected and committed development economists working on disability, argues entitled, and her work replaces rhetoric with detailed evidence and critique. She argues for the interactional model of disability based on Nobel-prize winner (1998) Amartya Sen’s capability approach. The capability approach has been used to deal with different disability-related issues by the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum (2006),