'We can't go back, but we don't want to. Nor can we go on like this much longer. What will emerge from such a transitional phase, when the civic body is so lacking in health (physical, moral, political and economic)?
The Renaissance was not an end in itself, but a bridge between two paradigms (feudalism and modernity). It was a cultural movement that diverted history by rediscovering lost pasts. Today, we do not need newness to cut short capitalist realism, to restore a degraded nature, to achieve greater equality. We have everything necessary for change. We only need the will.
What is a renaissance? We interview His Holiness Pope Francis on the commodification of our souls. Writer Ekow Eshun reviews WEB Bois' double consciousness. Curator Aria Dean reviews Future's Mask Off and Black excellence. Photographer Stephen Shore, in conversation with Jack Self, reviews pictures of the present. Artist Issy Wood reviews Diet Coke. Editor and NHS worker Rebecca Sharp reviews the Socialist Patients Collective, while Brady Ng and Hera Chan review Hong Kong protest strategies.
Also in the issue: Huw Lemmey reviews Pietro Aretino, the Renaissance master of pornographic literature and blackmail. Traum Inc. with Real Review present a Renaissance collaboration inspired by Marcus Aurelius and Giotto. Artist Anna Blessmann reviews absent artefacts and Indigenous activist Pekeri Ruska reviews the Aboriginal concept of country. Peer Illner reviews WhatsApp and surveillance capitalism, while Adjustments Agency reviews groundbreaking ceremonies. Ahmed and Rashid Bin Shabib review pigeon architecture and artist Ben Cullen Williams reviews Antarctica (through the lens of AI neural networks). Charlie Robin Jones reviews horoscopes, Michel De Montaigne reviews solitude and Jack Self reviews the internet.'
Real Review is a quarterly contemporary culture magazine with the strapline “what it means to live today”. Their agenda focuses on the politics of space, and trying to understand how everyday conditions enforce and reinforce power relations.
26 x 11.5 cm, softcover, Real Review (London).