features

• Featuring: COLIN MACCABE finds fractious definitions for a slippery word
• JEDEDIAH PURDY goes back to reality
• PAOLO BARBI photographs the superior reality of ordinary things
• DEYAN SUDJIC goes inside the archive of Herzog & de Meuron
• WILL WILES on the utopians desperate to break out of the reality of the nation state
• Esoteric chemistry: ZAHEER KAZMI on an alchemical approach to our understanding of Islam
• THE WELLCOME COLLECTION'S Emily Sargent traces the boundaries of the body, technology and consciousness
• A life on the surface: How to give an account of ISIS? FAISAL DEVJI argues that it is through the movement’s superficiality, rather than any hidden depth, that it can be best understood
• Text embodied: ANNE JAMISON on the uses of rhetoric in fanfiction communities
• Paranoids on Android: BENJAMIN BRATTON in the strange world of pattern recognition
• Keeping up with the real: AJAY RS HOTHI AND CHRISTABEL STEWART present five contemporary artists preoccupied with the return of realness
• Scratching the surface: BRYANBOY reports from the front line of the super bloggers’ war with reality
• The complexities of life: star designer PRABAL GURUNG has both feet firmly on the ground
• A feminine mystique: the talented GUILLAUME HENRY has put aside girlish things and embarked on a quest for the complete Nina Ricci woman
• COME AS YOU ARE: Photography by Estelle Hanania, styling by Benoît Bèthume
• FRAUGHT WITH DRASTIC BEAUTY: Photography by Michael Hemy, styling by Nobuko Tannawa
• HABITAT FOR HUMANITY: Photography by Sohrab Golsorkhi-Ainslie, styling by Nina Walbecq
• CELLULOID AND MARBLE: Photography by Emanuele Fontanesi, styling by Anna Schiffel
• YOU'RE MY FAVOURITE WORK OF ART: Photography by Lena C. Emery, styling by Sara Gilmour
• THE MOST RADICAL GESTURE: