Going Fluid

Actar, Common Accounts, Essay, expanding design practices, Technology and fabrication, Territory and mobility, Urban Paradigms

City Protocol, Cultural agitator, Essay, Fluidity, Gangnam, Global Awareness, Humanity, New districts, Planetary urbanizations, Posthuman, Social Media, South Korea, Transformation, Transforming society, Urban Paradigms

Originally published in "Superhumanity", 2018 -- https://actar.com/product/superhumanity/
and e-flux -- https://www.e-flux.com/

This kind of virtual and material reflexivity via integrated prosthetic enhancement is perhaps nowhere more apparent today than in the world’s most active plastic surgery district, in Gangnam, Seoul. The modern Korean plastic surgery industry originated in the wounded bodies of the Korean War. In the 1950s, American reconstructive surgeon Doctor Ralph Millard began a program of physiognomic reconstructions on survivors of the conflict, which led to the development of new procedures not rooted in an ethos of repair, but of “enhancement.” His invention of blepharoplasty, or double-eyelid surgery, rapidly gained notoriety and is to this day among the most popular surgeries practiced in Gangnam.