Real Review 14 takes the internet as its central problem — not as infrastructure or tool, but as a total condition that commodifies identity, forecloses chance, and dispossesses us of lived experience. Edited by Jack Self, this issue asks: what comes after the digital?
About This Book
Structured around the provocation of "direct perception," Real Review 14 assembles critics, artists, and writers to examine what the internet has done to social life, subjectivity, and the texture of everyday experience. Critical theorist Jonathan Crary is interviewed on the internet complex; artist Christine Sun Kim reviews contemporary society; Tanya and Zhenya Posternak turn to graffiti written by soldiers in Ukraine; and Sirkhane Darkroom considers the role of play on the Turkey-Syria border. The issue moves across accessible bathrooms, shoplifting, Instagram, comfort, and the Adobe Suite — each a lens on the same underlying question of what it means to perceive and act in an over-mediated world. Essential reading for anyone thinking seriously about culture, digital life, and critical theory.
Key Features
- 104 pages of critical essays, reviews, interviews, and cultural commentary
- Edited by Jack Self; contributors include Jonathan Crary, Christine Sun Kim, Tanya and Zhenya Posternak, Sirkhane Darkroom, Rhea Dillon, Emily Barker, Kazeem Kuteyi, Seth Wheeler, Jamila Squire, Maddy Weavers, Samiha Meem, Jerry Gogosian, Lucy Roeber, and Jackie Wang
- Published by Real Review, ISBN: 9781838493424
What You'll Discover
- Jonathan Crary's analysis of the "internet complex" — the structural conditions by which online life produces commodified identities rather than social beings
- How graffiti written by soldiers in Ukraine and play on the Turkey-Syria border function as acts of direct perception and resistance to mediated experience
- Cultural criticism trained on the mundane and overlooked — accessible bathrooms, shoplifting, Instagram, the Adobe Suite — as sites where power and everyday life intersect
- Jackie Wang's review of Tiqqun and the theoretical stakes of understanding collective subjectivity under digital capitalism
About the Author
Jack Self is the editor of Real Review, a publication dedicated to critical writing about the world as it is. Self has assembled a wide range of contributors across this issue, spanning critical theory, visual art, performance, and cultural commentary.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 104
- Dimensions: 260 x 115 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781838493424
- Publisher: Real Review
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects, designers, cultural theorists, and readers interrogating the relationship between digital life, identity, and the built and social environment.