Eduard Klena

AFAD (VSVU) Academy of fine arts and design diploma work "Into the future" is a semi document and reaction multi media installation to observation of Korean society, economic and urban growth connected to skyrocketing demographic growth and downfall connected to many new problems which include very old traditional patriarchy, postponed maternity leave, falling birth rates and growing numbers of elderly population and deaths.

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During my landings and walks around the Korean capital, where I lived, I was struck by the tremendous construction activity, mostly associated with the development of new residential neighborhoods where blocks, whole streets and quarters of buildings from the early 1970s disappeared. Until the late 1980s, which in width or height, copy the Korean trend - massive and sterile high - rise blocks, distinguished here and there by color and huge descriptive numbers, on their uniform facades. Their aim is to provide housing, which is still in short supply, for a large number of the young generation, as a starting point for their lives in the complex society in which they are to join and in which they are to have children, modeled on government ideas. This boom is intended to simplify the morning and evening rides of workers to the city center, to avoid lost hours in trains, long-distance buses or cars. The emerging state provides the emergence of a kind of oxymoron, where the factors of demographic decline and urban growth are pitted against each other. There is no release and expansion of living space, on the contrary, it is even more cramped and complicated, and at the same time it is questionable whether the newly built settlements will fulfill their originally intended function in the future. One can see it in every big city from east to west, such as Daegu, Gwangju, Daejeon or in new districts with great pomp filling the sea in representative Incheon, up to 400 meter towers in the south in tourist Busan with sandy beaches. However, South Korea is currently well ahead of the first Japan in the population conservation index, reaching the top of the decline in natural growth in the world, with a forecast forecast for a significant demographic decline in the coming decades.
During my initial initiations into the problem three years ago during my bachelor's thesis, I had the advantage of some indication of primary inputs that cause births to stagnate, decline and die out, not marry, even completely break away from so-called dating. These were associated with a deep-rooted "traditional" patriarchy, which is questioned in our Western culture and is gradually being corrected for gender equality, but Asian civilizations have not gone through this reform process, despite strong economic and urban progress and principles they have followed from the West. This is currently associated with a wave of neo feminism in South Korea, which in the form of a very radical revolt is in the position of "I will not marry, I will not have or raise children, I will not submit to a man, I will not be a housewife, I will not give up my career, I can make a living I will stay alone forever ", the so-called “#NoMarriage.” Statements that can practically put a country in a difficult stalemate when half of citizens, in this case citizens, refuse to participate in something that guarantees the survival of a nation, culture and society, not only with an impact on demography, but also on the economy and political stability , with the higher goal of gaining an equal position on the Korean peninsula.