The biopolitics of role playing disabled making

To explore disability and participatory design practices, the article reviews curriculum for pre-service art education courses that utilizes design thinking and 3D printing to create DIY prosthetics with particular attention to assistive devices that would enable art making. As novice 3D modelers, art education students gain an exposure to an innovative technology and develop understanding of embodied difference within the arts learning space that incorporates Universal Design for Learning frameworks. As a part of the design research process, role playing is used to engage students in art making where they restrict the full use of their hands/limbs to gather information about materials and embodied experience to generate ideas about their designs. DIY prosthetics explores the potential for art education as a socially engaged practice that combines digital fabrication and making while having positive social impact. Yet, while these effects are in play, there are many instances where role playing can have a powerful impact on learning and catalyze the dynamics of ethics and access in education. Unpacking the biopolitical relations and ethics of role-playing disability provides insight into curriculum as a design process itself and articulates crip/ queer embodiment to constructively deform art education.