This lecture will examine the history of anti-gentrification efforts in contemporary Seoul introducing the Feminist Insurgent Planning framework, based on the experiences of the urban art collective Listen to the City.
Insurgent feminist planning is based on a feminist epistemology. It criticizes authoritarian urban planning and some major anti-gentrification movements as male-centric. In existing scholarship on urban resistance movements in South Korea, there is a lack of attention to a feminist perspective.
In the talk, Eun Seon Park analyzes the following aspects of the Seoul anti-gentrification movement: 1) From the speaker to the listener: therapeutic urban planning, 2) Reflection on instrumental rationalism, 3) The demand of the “right to the city”, 4) Reflection on governance and participation, 5) Feministic activism tactics, 6) Making a space of hospitality against cultural imperialism, 7) The revival of urban history. Thus, this lecture will explain how Listen to the City have made radical achievements through artistic and feminist approaches.
Eun Seon Park is the Director of Listen to the City, a Seoul-based art, urbanism, and research collective that started in 2009. The collective consists of urban researchers, designers, architects, filmmakers, and activists. We are not focused on how our activities are displayed or circulated in art galleries, but on posing a set of creative questions and searching for answers about what to do within the social context. Our approach to art is different from the conventional preoccupation with materials and form, as we are engaged in a variety of activities aimed at creating a sustainable and resilient urban community, always seeking the most appropriate format for a given project without prioritizing artistic form. Depending on the theme of a given project, Listen to the City’s work takes the form of any number of media, including drawing, design, video, research, publications, seminars, and public interest litigation.
Eun Seon holds a PhD in Urban Planning from Yonsei University South Korea and is a visiting researcher with the Research Network for Smart Sustainable Cities at UiS for the month of May.