Grey Area

Truth has become a negotiation. Feeling trumps fact. Climate change is discussed as if we have no hand in it. For almost three years, Al Hassan Elwan and Ruba Al-Sweel have been investigating how to determine what’s real. From the outset, their line of inquiry was rhetorical by nature of instigating it. The impossibility of their questioning, their quest into the unknown, making it a distinctly human pursuit. 

The answer they do arrive at however, is a 666-page bible featuring over 60 contributors and the enigmatic Bianca Censori as its cover girl. Weighing in at 1.5 kg, the hefty stack serves as a beefed-up version of POSTPOSTPOST’s signature Instagram carousels, with print utilised as a means to override the algorithm and directly reach those asking the same unanswerable questions. 

On the publication of the second edition of POSTPOSTPOST, a.k.a. PPP2, we spoke with Elwan and Al-Sweel about their ick for ‘hyperreal’, combatting insanity with ambiguity, recursive imagery and revelling in the grey zone. 

PPP2 sets out to answer an ‘indefensible’ question: ‘what is real?’ What feels real, or perhaps hyperreal, to you right now? 

Ruba Al-Sweel: I could start off with this heat. This heat is extremely real, as well as all the avenues it opens up about our place in the world and our bodies, what we’ve done to accelerate this and who’s forced to experience more heat than others. 

That's just off the top of my head, but I think my whole conceit is that the realest thing we could ever imagine is just being in our bodies. There's a quote in my opening notes where I refer to Bataille – our favourite edgelord romantic nihilist – who says, “Experience itself is authority.” So in order for us to have a compass on what is real, it’s something we have to experience viscerally within our bodies. 

Al Hassan Elwan: I have some beef with the word ‘hyperreal’ or ‘surreal’: all the ways people try to talk about something that’s not real. There was a tweet or TikTok of someone saying, when people say ‘surreal’, what they really mean is just ‘real’, but they're not aware. Real is a pretty loaded term, and of course simulation and real are pretty much always used together, so I think I get this ick when I see ‘hyperreal’ or ‘surreal’ because it’s more about adding layers of spectacle than engaging with the thing itself. 

If you’re actually looking for a tangible answer, you'll go insane.

Ruba Al-Sweel: The way we interpret the question ‘what is real?’ is less an endeavour for an answer but more rhetorical, because we’re trying to highlight the impossibility of finding an answer. It’s the impossibility that makes it such a human question. If you’re actually looking for a tangible answer, you'll go insane. It’s also quite a narcissistic question to pursue, to want to reach a solid answer, instead of sitting comfortably in the unknown.