Real Review #2
The REAL foundation is pleased to announce our latest issue of Real Review, the quarterly magazine dedicated to “What it Means to Live Today.”
We are overwhelmed by a feeling of déjà-vu, of being merely spectators in an already predetermined script. We are watching ourselves live, powerless to influence the course of events—both suspended in an infinite moment, yet divorced from our bodies by space and time.
The second issue of Real Review explores our times and formulates positive propositions for how to live in this extreme present.
Inside issue two
–Did the Serpentine Pavilions create the “starchitect”? RR interviews Hans Ulrich Obrist on the “extreme present” and the role of the art object today. Also featuring poetry by architect Jean Nouvel.
–In “Muscular Secularity,” Leon Batchelor reviews crossfit gyms, those sweat boxes where “elite fitness guarantees moral and economic supremacy.” Includes pornographic motivational artworks by Tosha van Veenendaal.
–Fashion companies are accelerating production by sending ships from China filled with fabric and seamstresses, with new fashion ranges designed in transit. Ming Lin reviews these floating factories in “Slow Sea, Fast Fashion.” Photography of gibberish English t-shirts by Ann Woo.
–“An Uber driver produces her future obsolescence through her hard work in the present.” Helen Runting and Arthur Röing Baer review algorithmic networks, self-driving cars and the future of the city in “Uber as Megastructure.” Prius-based photography by Max Creasy, captioned with Uber’s empty promises...
–“If the communist system represents a radical pursuit of the mundane, the market economy embodies the inverse: a mundane pursuit of the radical.” OMA partner Reinier de Graaf reviews the USSR’s concrete panel housing slabs, illustrated with rare 1970s Soviet cartoons.
–Jack Self reviews the year 2011, from the Arab Spring to Occupy, from the end of the Iraq War to the death of Osama bin Laden, and from the August Riots to the Royal wedding.
–Meanwhile, Iranian architect Samaneh Moafi reviews president Ahmadinejad's housing programme, designed to produce 4-million strong, on-demand, pro-government protests.
Also in the issue: Vere van Gool reviews the ultra-left anarchist manifesto Theory of a Young-Girl, and tells us she prefers '90s rap group TLC; Mark Cousins reviews the relationship between the domestic and domination; Samantha Hardingham reviews the works of renowned architect Cedric Price; Amelia Stein reviews artist Camille Henrot's telephones; Emily Rees reviews the difference between masculine and feminine TV sets; Federico Campagna reviews the 5th anniversary of Occupy, with photos of the 1% by Carlos Spottorno; Giles Smith (Assemble) reviews Britain's legacy of Modernist social housing; James Taylor-Foster reviews Rem Koolhaas; and, Guardian columnist Deborah Orr reviews the cultural destruction of ISIS. Plus! Real Review on 9/11 and commissioned artworks by Justin Beal and Graham Hamilton.
About Real Review
Real Review is published by London-based architectural institute the REAL foundation. It is edited by Jack Self, and designed by OK-RM. The current and previous issue of Real Review are available online from www.real-review.org. For all questions or comments, please contact us at info@real.foundation.
