Real Review / 18

Perennially popular at the magCulture shop, this ingeniously formatted magazine concerns architecture (and life) in its broadest sense: ‘What it means to live today’. This Spring 2026 issue of Real Review is dedicated to ‘Pretending the World’, with Nishant Choksi’s signature cover design, depicting a slipping mask, reinforcing the message that power and performance are inextricably bound—both in the exercise of political authority, and the mobilisation of the masses: 

‘To pretend means to ‘lay claim’—to stretch forward and take hold of what we want, as if it already existed, or were already ours. To pretend is thus to call forth another reality and create truth through the power of conviction alone. It is fashionable to ridicule performative gestures as ineffective posturing. Yet this is literally the only way new societies come into being.’

 

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Real Review is a quarterly contemporary culture magazine with the strapline “what it means to live today”. Our agenda focuses on the politics of space, and trying to understand how everyday conditions enforce and reinforce power relations.