Liminal Spaces

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

Is anyone here familiar with the concept of "liminal space"?

There was a short on 4Chan about 5 years ago called "The Backrooms" that brought this idea to light and got the attention of the internet.

I won't ask anything more than if anyone is familiar with this and what it means to them, but anything you add would be great. Thanks in advance.

[ancientlight]

Yes, it includes the backrooms. I've seen a game on steam I think, that was based around liminal spaces.
If it wasn't for my current mental health status, I'd be interested in buying it. 
For some reason I'm DRAWN towards liminal spaces/backrooms. 
Maybe it's part nostalgia , or part of wanting to be somewhere timeless?

It does not creep me out in the least, though I suspect many are.

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

Yes, it includes the backrooms. I've seen a game on steam I think, that was based around liminal spaces.
If it wasn't for my current mental health status, I'd be interested in buying it. 
For some reason I'm DRAWN towards liminal spaces/backrooms. 
Maybe it's part nostalgia , or part of wanting to be somewhere timeless?

It does not creep me out in the least, though I suspect many are.

Are you referring to the physical liminal spaces?

I have had a fascination with liminal spaces long before I heard of it. I have always like Salvador Dali's surreal landscapes and others like them. In some of my dreams, the liminality is apparent. In real life or in my dreams I have this attraction to desolate places that are mostly void of life. Silent and sterile where I am one of the few, usually next to a large and deep body of dark still water. I can go only so far on land and never far into the water that may harbor something large and dangerous.

Stephen King's The Langoliers miniseries (1995) did a great job with the concept of liminal spaces IMO. Way ahead of the curve with that story.

[F2d5thCav]

Brent Swancer just did an article about liminal spaces over at the Mysterious Universe website.

I find coastal areas intriguing.  On one side the ocean, on the other "inland", but in the middle is a strip with its own environment.  Amazing how quickly one can feel "away" from the ocean just by moving a bit inland.

Cheers

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

Brent Swancer just did an article about liminal spaces over at the Mysterious Universe website.

I find coastal areas intriguing.  On one side the ocean, on the other "inland", but in the middle is a strip with its own environment.  Amazing how quickly one can feel "away" from the ocean just by moving a bit inland.

Cheers

Must mean this article . . .

Link

[Ninurta]

To my understanding, liminal spaces are just "in betweens" - neither fully one thing nor the other. The edge of a forest is liminal - neither forest nor field. Dusk is liminal - neither night nor day. In a way, we all live in a liminality - we live in "today", which is neither "yesterday" nor "tomorrow", but is constantly shifting from one to the other.

Ancient American Indian concepts included an existence in a liminality - humans live in "the world":, which is neither "The Above World" nor "The Below World", but is in-between those two, neither one nor the other. All 3 Worlds - The Above World, This World, and the Below World - were connected by an "axis mundi" or "world tree", often the cedar tree to Native Americans... which I suppose is probably where the cedar got it's sacred medicine connotations. It could be used to travel from one world to the next, or to send messages between them.

Celtic concepts carried liminality. Samhain, for example, is neither "summer" nor "winter", but the precise point where one flows into the other during the equinox.

Liminality also caries the risk of being "sucked in" to one or the other worlds. Take the edge of an ocean, for instance. It is neither fully "land" nor fully "water, and is in constant motion, moving, churning, changing from one to the other and back again, which carries the risk of water-things being thrown to "land", or of land-things being sucked out to sea, never to be seen again.

Paradoxically perhaps, liminal spaces are both stable in their constant change, and also UN-stable, moving from one to the next and again returning, never staying in one exact state or the other.

Yet we live in liminality... day in and day out, so to speak.

.

[BIAD]

I think I heard that in the back rooms that assist in keeping this site running has similar
areas... I think.

[ancientlight]

I think I heard that in the back rooms that assist in keeping this site running has similar
areas... I think.

Makes for a great site banner. Rogue nation neither here nor there 

---

Yes, it includes the backrooms. I've seen a game on steam I think, that was based around liminal spaces.
If it wasn't for my current mental health status, I'd be interested in buying it. 
For some reason I'm DRAWN towards liminal spaces/backrooms. 
Maybe it's part nostalgia , or part of wanting to be somewhere timeless?

It does not creep me out in the least, though I suspect many are.

Are you referring to the physical liminal spaces?

I have had a fascination with liminal spaces long before I heard of it. I have always like Salvador Dali's surreal landscapes and others like them. In some of my dreams, the liminay is apparent. In real life or in my dreams I have this attraction to desolate places that are mostly void of life. Silent and sterile where I am one of the few, usually next to a large and deep body of dark still water. I can go only so far on land and never far into the water that may harbor something large and dangerous.

Stephen King's The Langoliers miniseries (1995) did a great job with the concept of liminal spaces IMO. Way ahead of the curve with that story.

Yes I mean physical liminal spaces. Abandoned , desolate, eerie , feels unsettling but comforting at the same time as there's no concept of time or such, it's hard to explain why I'm drawn to it.

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

Ninurta mentions an inherent risk he described as getting "sucked in" one way or the other. There is a strange uneasiness, a kind of instability and, I will add a feeling that you don't belong there, that you are the alien in that world no matter how natural it may appear.

I have had nightmares in which I was in a completely normal and non-threatening place with nothing around me that can be considered the slightest bit scary. It could be the most pleasant day in the most wonderful place you have ever seen, except that there is an evil terror in the atmosphere so thick it chokes and paralyzes you. Regardless of the happy scenery, the place is wrong, it is pure evil and it seems to want to harm you.

It may be an evil presence I suppose, but it is more like the place itself is the presence if that makes sense. I put this dream scenario in the realm of liminal spaces.

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

Ancient Light,

Yes I mean physical liminal spaces. Abandoned, desolate, eerie, feels unsettling but comforting at the same time as there's no concept of time or such, it's hard to explain why I'm drawn to it.

I have also felt that the experience is somehow a comfortable one. It is like you are in a place like home in a way. 

You belong and yet you don't, strange yet familiar, you feel good and are unsettled, even disturbed. It is this feeling that is the psychological liminal space IMO.

That kind of fear lends itself well to the concept of the art-house horror genre I mentioned elsewhere. This is the kind of thing, psychological terror, I think Alfred Hitchcock was shooting for in his works.

The term ‘Hitchcockian’ isn’t just an adjective; it’s a homage to his unique craftmanship in storytelling.

His profound impact on film language includes:

• Using MacGuffins to drive plots,
  
• Mastering the art of suspense over surprise,
  
• Creating complex characters with psychological depth.
  

LINK

Hitchcock is one to look at for psychological liminality IMO.

Suspense, it seems that this condition can't be retained for too long without some relief. It must have a number of climaxes leading up to the big finish and "wrap up" as they call it. This must be the purpose of Hitchcock's "MacGuffins" plot, the plot that seems to drive the story but ends up an insignificant sideline that was only meant to get you where you ended up. Useful for creating plot twists and other surprises to relieve the tension of suspense I suspect.