Katta Spiel

Criptopias of Mutual Care: Desires Outside of Cyborg Imaginings

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Universität Wien, HS 41 Gerda Lerner Hörsaal
Universitätsring 1
1010 Wien

Dienstag, 17. März 2026, 18:30 - 20:30

Abstract

Framed as support devices, assistive technologies are often intended to ’help’ disabled people to find workarounds to pass or simply engage with a fundamentally ableist environment. Through their form factors and material choices, they construct a specific type of lived experiences previously linked to the notion of a technology-dependant cyborg. I conduct a visually guided analysis contrasting technological approaches and disability cultures, identifying how technology encroaches closer onto the body when cultural and personal preferences have a more interactional and dialogue oriented quality to them. In a manner of cripping access in technology, I then use the concept of criptopias and how it challenges what explore desirable worlds might look like from a crip perspective. By stretching into the past, present and futures and together with contributions from the Crip Collective, we collectively identify how we might thrive in worlds that welcome us, instead of giving us the persistent notion of being considered as an afterthought. In allowing ourselves to desire difference, though I also discuss how this tends to throw us back into the lack of a given status quo, making such an endeavour surprisingly painful to endure - while simultaneously providing wholesome alternatives oriented on mutual care and worth fighting for in solidarity.

About the speaker

Katta Spiel is an Assistant Professor for ’Critical Access in Embodied Computing’ at TU Wien. They research marginalised perspectives on embodied computing through a lens of Critical Access. Their work informs design and engineering supporting the development of technologies that account for the diverse realities they operate in. In their interdisciplinary collaborations with disabled, neurodivergent and/or nonbinary peers, they conduct explorations of novel potentials for designs, methodologies and innovative technological artefacts. They received their PhD in 2018 from TU Wien and after a year at KU Leuven, they conducted postdoctoral work as an FWF-Hertha Firnberg Scholar, also at TU Wien. Their work has received several international and national awards, including the SICGHI 2020 Outstanding Dissertation Award as well as the Förderungspreis der Stadt Wien in der Sparte Mathematik, Informatik, Naturwissenschaft, Technik in 2022 and were awarded an ERC Starting Grant in 2023. They further serve on the Austrian Monitoring Board on the UN CRPD.


Antrittsvorlesung, Public Lecture

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 18:30:00 +0100