LIMINAL SPACES

Liminal spaces have become an internet aesthetic whereby photographs of places which are meant to be traversed (implying a temporary stay) are framed and presented as a final image. These spaces imply where people should be, but are not. The aesthetic also spreads to depictions of empty nostalgic spaces and the internet has branched into themed subgenres of liminal space (such as the backrooms, the poolrooms, the sublevels etc).

However, this love/fear relationship with eerie architecture did not

begin

online.

Liminal spaces have existed since there has been architecture, and depictions have been included in books such as House of Leaves and artwork such as Deimos by Dragan Bibin.

Bibin's work in his painting series "The Human Condition" focuses on the human as the animal trapped within artificial spaces and the uncanny dread which this evokes.

Indeed, liminal spaces existed back when I was doing my art GCSE in the 00s, before the term "liminal space" had even been coined. I studied making rooms inside boxes and painting geometric perpendicular rooms. I wasn't the first. I studied other artists. Dorothea Tanning. Rene Magrite. Georgio Chirico.

We owned a painting which had been a trolley for a spray booth which looked like a wrong open door on a slanted street.

They existed in TOOL videos in 2002.

They exist in Brutalism as an architectural artform, which is a physical assault on the senses in its sheer lack of detail, its utilitarian bluntness, its smack-flat concrete stone fascade.

In a way, liminal spaces are best defined as the fear of a void.

In a way, liminal spaces are best defined as the fear of decay.

In a way, liminal spaces are best defined as the fear of the unknown.

In a way, liminal spaces are best defined as the fear of repetition.

In a way, liminal spaces are best defined as the fear of silence.

theft of identity. infinity. dream states. forgetfulness. nostalgia. loss of all we had. repetition. the loss of home. hiraeth. epheremality. repetition. desire. being hunted. change. architecture. technology. being lost. being forgotten. repetition. megalophobia. the uncanny. the unheimliche. echoes. sound without sight. oppression. imprisonment. transience. loss of control. labyrinths. urbanophobia. claustrophobia . agoraphobia. batophobia. the unforgiving nature of it all just sprawling out ahead, a memory dribbling from your mind's eye like brains on a carpet never to return or even make sense to you if it does and who built this thing anyway and why is it so familiar but different and why am i here and how do i get out and when did all this come to exist, a great pile of familiar materials built in familiar shapes in a whole which is unfamiliar, a corpse of meaning, a spatial palatial palace of someone else's mind not mine, it was never mine, unless it was and i no longer remember or recognise it

BUT

Beyond this horror, there is so much to love. Liminal spaces are a deconstruction of rooms and places. They are a celebration of maths, of architecture, of interior design. It's a delight in the unknown, the desire to explore, the longing for more. It is self-exploration and it is savouring the unpicking of the threads of the known in order to understand it better.

Jared Pike's Dream Pools series breaks down the aesthetic of swimming pools. Uncanny yet soothing. It's wrong but it clicks.

Outside of the curvature of the wall, in the shadows, in the unseen windows, there is more to explore and more to find. It is possibly endless.

It is impossibly endless.

And you'll note that throughout it all, in these empty spaces filled with nobody, there is no evidence that the viewer is there either. No cast shadow, no footprints. No ripples.

The experience of liminal spaces has a lot in common with...

• Caving
• Ikea
• The Mall
• Exploring game maps via noclip
• Turning your head to see something hidden on a screen, despite this not having any effect.

NO MONSTERS

A good liminal space requires no monsters. The space is the monster. It exists when it should not. Its purpose is not clear. You are trapped inside of it. It has devoured you. You are already digested.

If your liminal space requires a monster, you have missed the point of the liminal space and why it is scary.

Inevitably, web series, creepypasta and films will have a monster. They must have a monster because to not have a monster is to be without a resolution. Roaming monsters are easy to understand. You must run away from the monster. They want to eat you. It is the primal fear of the lizard brain.

Liminal spaces are an intellectual horror - the vestigal disease of a hundred million years of evolution which allows us to read and operate door handles but keeps us scared of a pile of clothes in a chair at 1am. The urgent call of the void.

You can't run away from a liminal space.

You can't outsmart a liminal space.

You can't trap a liminal space.

You can't fight a liminal space.

Even if you escape the space and return to reality, it'll remain like a thorn. The curiosity, the longing to know. It is forever.

It is what killed the cat.

It is knowing that there is no more and still looking for more.

It is why you scrolled to the end.