Real Review Issue 7

WOKE AWAKENING

You've been privatised, pathologised, indebted and exploited. Civil society is disintegrating, and hard-won freedoms are being undone. Yet from this maelstrom has emerged an intense clarity: a desire for sobriety, self-control, altruism, generosity, and the pursuit of mental and physical wellbeing. We are more aware, informed, engaged, and alert to social injustices – particularly of race, gender and geography. We are woke. But is this miraculous awakening to structural inequalities true or merely tokenistic? Is wokeness a fad, or a systemic, generational shift in social ethos?

Why are some white people scared of a Black Planet? We interview RENI EDDO-LODGE to find out. Meanwhile, BUCKMINSTER FULLER reviews God, and ALICE BARKER (aka @PUPPYCODES) reviews algorithmic profiling. Should some artworks be forbidden? JACK SELF reviews the degenerate art of EMILE NOLDE. Spanish architect ANNA PUIGJANER reviews the kitchenless apartment and PAOLA ANTONELLI reviews tamagotchis and modernity. FRANCESCA SOBANDE reviews cultural appropriation. MARIO CARPO reviews the invention of design, plus much more.