SDF

As Korean society grows more pluralistic, we have become freer to assert our individuality, and more respectful of diversity in our beliefs and values. Yet we remain divided and at odds, our interactions increasingly shaped by our polarized views and the logic of identity politics. Thus, we ask, is our rapidly changing technology and our use of technology adequately reflecting social diversity? What effect is non-face-to-face, device-centered communication having on human relationships? This session seeks to better understand the deepening conflicts in Korean society today and their causes through research, experimentation and analysis, in search of the solutions that will help us overcome our differences.

The Korean National Assembly building in Yeouido has become a symbol of a divided Korean society – a place where everyone has much to say but little resolve to listen and hear each other out. In this session, four lawmakers share their stories about the bold steps they are taking to bring genuine dialogue back to the Korean legislature.

Decision-making in business and in various social sectors has become increasingly dependent on technologies believed to be more objective than humans - namely, big data analysis, algorithms, and deep learning. But what if such technologies are altering the way we think, both as societies and as individuals? In this session, leading techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci poses questions on the development of ethical technology for a better world and the importance of our right to live free of manipulation.

This session, organized in collaboration with the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, explores how in an age of unprecedented polarization and partisanship journalists and other storytellers are engaging citizens in ways that encourage constructive debate. The presentations and discussion chronicles how newsrooms and other organizations experimenting with new formats and new technologies that inform and communicate with audiences who hold diverging political views and come from different socio-economic groups

The dances created by AHN Eun-me are not typical. Her works bring to the stage the ordinary physical movements of daily life, as well as the history recorded in our bodies, urging viewers to discover anew the value inherent in our bodies and in the ways we move, and in the self that cannot be measured or judged by anyone else’s criteria. For years, Eun-me has devoted herself to the work of bringing dance back to the people. Her dances are also an exploration of the kind of future we should strive to build, and a testament to the philosophy of life as a dance, lived one step at a time. In this sessions, Eun-me shares her insights on living with direction and intention.

Ronald Rael’s talk will reexamine what the nearly 700 miles of physical barrier dividing the US and Mexico is and could be, and how design can encourage its conceptual and physical dismantling. Rael will illuminate the transformative effects of the wall on people, animals, and the natural and built landscape through the story of people on both sides of the border who transform and creatively challenge the wall’s existence. He will also discuss his architectural studio’s counterproposals that reimagine, hyperbolize, or question the wall and its construction, cost, performance, and meaning. Rael proposes that despite the intended use of the wall, which is to keep people out and away, the wall is instead an attractor, engaging both sides in a common dialogue.

In this session, director KIM Bora will share about how she created the film House of Hummingbird, offering insights from her firsthand experience creating and telling stories and emerging from pain and suffering by confronting it head on. She will focus on the creative process, exploring how a particular individual story can become a universally resonant narrative and what elements are needed for the same.