ABSTRACT
This study explores questions around disability and ability in arts education and artistic-pedagogic research. It proposes disability as a transformative force that can challenge and push further neo-liberal notions of diversity. The aim is to move towards more equitable practices and affirmative spaces in and through arts pedagogy. The study continues a process of investigating disability and ability, stemming from a performative workshop that took place at the Research Pavilion, Venice Biennale in 2017. The workshop is part of the authors’ research project, which is developing artistic, performative, post-qualitative and intertextual research methodology. It uses the means of performance art as a way to facilitate an experimental, artistic-pedagogic process. Drawing from contemporary disability studies, as well as feminist and posthumanist theories, the study looks into disability as a complex, material-discursive phenomenon. The authors argue that whether or not we are disabled, we are all vulnerable, intra-dependent and entangled in socio-material structures. Disability can inform our understanding of this vulnerability and relationality, and help to destabilize dominant and normative notions of subjectivity and agency.
