Strange but Familiar Places: A Critical Analysis of Liminal Spaces
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- Опубликовано: 1 авг 2024
- It's not easy to put into words what exactly liminal spaces are, so let's explore the history and some common tropes of liminal spaces.
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Honestly, liminal spaces, dreamcore/weirdcore, etc. should all be placed into a new art movement called the modern surrealist movement, or even post-surrealist movement. They're all so unique and interesting and convey really interesting art.
I think this, while not inherently separate from surrealism, does something different than surrealism. I think it's more of a post-post-structuralist movement. It's a direct refutation to both structuralism, which says you can only understand something if you understand the structure it's in, and post-structuralism, which states that structures are inherently fluid and you can never really understand the structure something's in. Liminal art takes the post-structuralist thesis and refutes it while simultaneously supporting it in a most interesting way by saying that even if a structure isn't fluid, even if it's derelict and hasn't been used for years, or even if it couldn't possibly feasibly exist, you will never truly understand both the total function it has and/or the emotions it incites, and thus you cannot truly comprehend the objects within the structure or the structure itself, but you will be drawn to the concept of understanding the structure and its objects, however futile it may be, like a moth to a flame nonetheless. It goes without saying that this should not be ignored in art history and is a massive step forward in the ideology behind art. It absolutely should not be tossed away as "just another internet thing" or whatever.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, we absolutely would not have this movement today if not for the aesthetic framework that vaporwave and mallsoft laid out before this, which is very interesting to me. It begs the question of what other visual art movements have been directly influenced by the aural arts.
@@kenkaneki6969_ An art style is not created, it is recognized. This goes for so much more than you would ever think. We live by labels today, can't function without them. In often case, Liminal effect is an emotion humanity can't process because we created the term for certain emotions, our emotions don't just apply to scared, nervous, angry, glee ridden. These are all captured concepts. If you have all the colors in the world and a new color is invented, it isn't just a new color, it is a new base to mix any other existing color with to create even more sets of colors. Time is not real, the movement of the world is inevitable, however we create a structured basis that we "loosely" apply everything on. We may see a star get swallowed whole, or an alien in our backyard and society will still be that bubble of ignorance and pride that ceases to let you leave its grasp, a societal bubble of normality and people who think everything is sane, while we live on a floating orb in the middle of a black void; irony at its best. But the truth is you can't simply leave that...its impossible, you will die, the norms don't allow you to stay alive without you garnering money in some form, there are homeless camps but then you are surrounded by these 'normal' people staring down at you like you're a failed version of their species.
Liminal space is that alien unknown chaos, and society can't handle that, they need to find a way to compare the impossible to something they can connect with, or else they just refuse to be interested in it. Such an idiot group of individuals from something so clever of a world, they refuse to be interested until it has their trauma infused into it, or their nostalgia. It can't be left as an impossible anomaly, and heaven forbid those impossible things exist on their floating orb planet surrounded by dark space, like believing in ghosts, or karma, or a higher strange power... because of course the people who worship a god that decides their lively hood have every right to say that to you. These comments think they are so clever and emotional and oh just such a tear jerker. Yah did you just leave your meme algorithm journey to be that deep or have you been writing the same comment for 2 hours now getting ready for the likes and responding comments saying "same." by the wickedest generation alive and their vibing powerful understanding of being toddlers that haven't grown up.
@@kenkaneki6969_ I really enjoyed the analysis of this comment! Was just saying to myself yesterday before I found this video in my recommendeds that liminal art is like a new form of surrealism in that the clashing, often lifeless color palettes, mixed with copious amounts of fog, darkness, and molded, withered rust, against the backdrop of dilapidated malls that thought they would always be too big to fail, really takes the style up a notch for me. Wasteland suburbias, strip mall business parks as ghost towns, low visibility weather, the loss of precious productivity time while getting lost in a sprawling maze of office hallways, pothole-corroded parking lots, just...UGH!!! Everything we were told is ugly is here to stay, and I love it!
I feel like this art style just makes sense. Idk how, but just does. Maybe I'm projecting here, but I think it also speaks to hollowed out futures so many are experiencing right now with not being able to afford to live (as seen by all the "abandoned-but-not-yet-reclaimed-by-full-on-apocalypse" buildings), not to mention almost being like a form of protest in and of itself by virtue of the fact that most people I see making liminal space art aren't these private school-background art major types. It's accessible as long as you know how to make it yourself with a good tutorial, haha! I didn't have a good upbringing, so the nostalgia effect isn't primarily what speaks to me as someone who's began making my own liminal space pieces, but more so the present-day adulthood crises I face existentially. It's just such an interesting art phenomenon to me, so glad it exists!
@@WitchKing-Of-Angmar I've read your comment like six times and I can't find a coherent thesis in it, maybe I'm not getting something here but what are you actually saying?
@@axeslinger94 I think that liminal art makes sense in the way dadaism makes sense, like the fact that it's purely existent for the emotions it delivers and not necessarily because it has a deep lore meaning you're supposed to "get" or something. It does have themes like modern decay and the dissociative nature of modern life, where you have to space out for 8 hours a day or more doing a boring job and then come home and stare at your Glowing Dissociation Box ™️ to relax, but aesthetics that branch off from liminality like dreamcore hammer the point home that liminality in modern art exists to show distance between the viewer and the space they're viewing, and from that distance, emotions occur. Brecht would probably say that this distance could be taken from liminal art and used to question the distance people feel about their real life, specifically how alienated they feel from their community and the "desirable" lifestyle in society. I think the offshoot aesthetic of traumacore nails the experience of specifically how alienated those who are severely traumatized feel, the liminality of no longer being actively hurt but still suffering all the same. And man is traumacore gut-wrenching to view, but they say that art makes the comfortable uncomfortable and the uncomfortable comfortable, so people find peace in knowing that they're not the only one whose nervous system got destroyed by someone they cared about.
The depictions of homes that feel "liminal" don't remind me of my home. They remind me of the homes I visited just once or twice as a child, often not knowing what adult business brought me there to sit on an old sofa in a strange room.
thats actually a perfect description
Liminal spaces I feel like represent a fear of being abandoned. Like you’re back to being a kid who has lost track of your mom while shopping, and the mall is closing soon…
As a 60+ year old Architect who writes fiction about unusual places and spaces, my discovery today of liminal space is compelling. Lot's of story ideas here. Thanks!
What kind of fiction? You've got my interest.
I think a big element to Liminal Spaces is the sensation of "stillness".
Not really "devoid of life", since they frequently look like scenes set up where things SHOULD be happening.
Rather, it's a "lack of anima". There's never anything that is usually active (people, animals, etc).
I only recently noticed this, but it is similar to the feeling I get if you go outside in a location with cold, snowy winters, late at night or early morning.
If there's no wind, and no people/cars, the lack of animals and insects.. It is pure.. stillness.
Not like holding your breath.. rather, like the whole world around you has just finished exhaling, complete, finished, and not yet started to take the next breath.
The past is done, the future hasn't started. The ultimate "moment".
As a night owl, whose day is full of work and wife and kids.. that stillness, that "lack of action", fulfills a near desperate need in me.
I think as we got more and more "24/7" in the new millennium in western culture, with global access to streaming and social media... the normal process of "just stopping for a bit" has left our daily routine.
I think that "stillness" resonates with a lot of people. Those who need that in their lives, feel that yearning and appreciate it.
Those who are not burnt out and instead have grown used to constant activity.. get uneasy from that stillness.
Liminal Spaces, I feel, hits on many different levels. Nostalgia, transitional/unmoored spatial concepts, uncanny aesthetics, and a sensation of stillness.
I think it's precisely that wide range of reasons that they resonate with us and have become more and more popular over time.
I agree with your "stillness" theory. The best liminal spaces I've seen are paintings by Simon Stalenhag. Most of his artwork has people or animals in them, but everything is still and unsettling and nostalgic and familiar and uncanny and cozy all at the same time.
Great observation! Never really thought about this.
I would add that liminal spaces represent stillness in the ultimate way: they almost incarnate eternity. That’s maybe why they’re so appealing: they speak to our hidden desire to never disappear, and to continue our existence beyond space and time, in a safe yet mysterious otherworldly place.
perfectly articulated
I want to add something to your stillness idea:
You already mention activity. We're so used to having a busy environment, that pure stillness, that not-happening-anything is odd to us. I know people going kinda tense when they're confronted with a basic outside camping site without music etc. They just don't last long without any kind of entertainment, oftentimes they become irritated up to aggressive of sorts.
So, I do think that the stillness, together with the learned uncanny valley of "I don't know what is happening in exactly this moment"/"is there overall something happening I don't know about" might add up to something.
Also what edreynolds8565 wrote - we don't want to face that people might have disappeared forever. Which would explain the urge to go there. Just to populate the place, to give it back a use and purpose that fits our idea about said space.
Trapped in transition
I think liminal spaces are a modern expression of a style of art that has been around for a while. From the first moment I saw one, it struck a chord with me. It was like going to my elementary school in the evening for open house or staying late in high school to rehearse a play,, rehearsing a particular scene in an unused hallway or classroom well after sunset. it’s an art style I will love long after the current fan has faded. I’m 40 years old and from America. I know that information is relevant. This is a great video. Looking forward to more
Thanks for the kind words, happy you enjoyed it :)
That description you gave matches perfectly how it feels to watch these images!
I'm beginning to approach my 40s myself and also from America, particularly the suburbs. Your experience in particular matches mine - and I'm not sure whether this factor heightens the experience or not, but most of my after-hours rehearsals took place in school buildings I myself didn't actually attend during the day. Most of them were constructed in the 1960s or 70s, which displaced them in time for me as well as in utility. The sense that "This place isn't for me" was strong, despite my being welcomed into it with my theater troupe of maybe a dozen other youngsters and a skeleton crew of staff. They resembled the places I studied during the day, teeming with students and deliberate intent, but were devoid of them. A little bit like walking into a sibling's room in your house to find another kid living there. Displacement is the word that comes to mind most.
I'm close to 40, from Canada. Being in school at night definitely captures that feeling. I vividly remember one time it happened early in elementary school. We were in our pyjamas and made crafts in classrooms where we usually didn't get to go because they were the older kid's. Meanwhile, our parents were in the gym for a PA meeting or something of the sort. Another is being up at night as a teen, just because you can. Going out on the street and to the park in the middle of the night. Sitting alone on the curb outside of my suburb house in bright daylight at 5 am in late June. There is something about the suburb, and spaces built in the 60s and 70s, and this whole notion of feeling out of place but safe at the same time. You shouldn't be there, but what could happen to you?
I absolutely love liminal spaces. Even when I was a child, before I had any idea of what a liminal space was I would seek them out. I don't find them spooky like some do I find them extremely comforting and as if they are stuck out of time.
Same for me. I particularly like large, empty, carpeted spaces, a bit like enormous conference facilities. They make me feel calm and as if I could just lie on the floor and happily do nothing or fall asleep.
I think for me this might stem from spending time with my dad as a child when he was working in large, empty spaces like this back in the 80s and there was nobody there but us. Obviously because I was small, the spaces seemed extra vast and I felt completely safe because I was with my dad.
My mum used to clean massive office buildings and she'd take me with her because she didn't have child care. So now you're making me wonder if that's why I like liminal spaces too and I specifically feel comfort from empty office spaces. I did that with her when I was 14-16 and she died when I was 18. So those offices must feel dream like and safe to me now. That's like turned on a lightbulb in my brain.
Me too, I find them so comforting
I heard that liking liminal spaces is common to those who have a desire to stop existing, not dying but, ceasing to exist from the world. It could be correlation but it makes sense, doesn't it?
my exact thoughts. it kinda appeals to this weird urge I have to be outside of time or to disappear, but not die.
I think part of what made liminal spaces so popular at the beginning of the pandemic is how people were reminded of their own mortality and how quickly we can go from being here to not anymore. Liminal spaces remind us that places, even places we created (doctors offices, childrens playgrounds, manufactured neighborhoods, highways) will continue to exist even when we are no longer a part of them and they are no longer being observed. The way that liminal space imagery is developed (unnatural lighting, low quality imagery) reflects how we expect these places to look after we are gone.
You did an excellent job with this video and I am very excited to see what you continue to create.
I think the best examples of liminal spaces are the ones that feel uncanny and dreamlike. It presents a feeling of being "strangely familiar" but because of the uncanny element to them it makes you feel like you're dealing with the unknown. And then when you combine that with the pictures being empty of people or animals, it gives you a sense of being lost.
I have a theory about liminal spaces, is that you never get that vibe from nature, nature is barely liminal, and I think it's to do with how our brain processes un-natural interiors, same with the backrooms. My explaination for the backrooms is that when you dream, your brain is trying to create interiors hence why in a dream you can be in a class room or friends house one minute, go through a door and be in a completely different building and then end up in the backrooms the next minute. It's your brain being bad at creating interior enviroments and liminal spaces is basically inducing this while awake, liminal spaces are un-natural interiors and enviorments our brain saves and stores for things like dreaming, often a lot of liminal spaces look dream like cos that's how our brain stores them. Then when we dream of being places our brain draws from those liminal memories.
Humans evolved in caves not perfectly geometric structures, so a lot of it can be human beings adapting to the unknown or what it's not used to and un-natural can = uncanny. I might have butchered my explination, but I hope you get my drift.
Great interpretation!
I think beyond nostalgia, the older cameras also fail to capture certain elements that would otherwise ruin the liminal feeling. Being able to see the trees in the background at 7:47 makes the image seem much more natural as there's details you would normally look at in-person, while having a black background only leaves the dull siding and the footprints of bygone inhabitants to dwell on.
9:58 also the fact that kids play areas are rather strange and dreamlike to begin with
perhaps liminal spaces could only really have become an internet phenomenon - internet natives are, to generalise, both hyperconnected yet also introverted; the ironic twist of the passages and corridors that connect places being devoid and abandoned, with the viewer the only "real human" in the scene. Liminal spaces allow a private moment between an individual and an environment
Vapowave is arguably a precursor to the liminal space phenomenon: both are mass , (also) internet-native genres with themes that explore the past brought forward, "nostalgia" (real or adopted) that's also different/remixed to how it was into a more dreamy/vauge/dark form
tldr liminal spaces are hard to define because of the confluence of factors, personal meaning and the fact the genre itself deals with beaing hard to define
Great interpretation :) I hadn’t considered that the viewer ends up being part of the scene in a way as well, and how an empty space makes for a private experience only you are experiencing.
I think all liminal spaces share one thing in common, apart from their emptiness: artificiality. You never see a lonely forest, usually its old buildings and architecture, and there is never any natural lighting, it's always fake and manmade. I think it appeals to feelings of fear, nostalgia, and loneliness exploring manmade structures as kids. The artificial grass, school, mall, or playground setting, and the 2000's to 2010's architecture, and the old cameras from a decade ago especially all give hints to where this weird feeling comes from.
It's because of kenopsia, the feeling of unease caused by a setting that should be bustling with people but is completely empty. Signs of human habitation minus the actual human habitation. So for example, perhaps a prehistoric person would get "liminal spaces," but for them, a photo of a grouping of huts, fire pits, bones hanging up outside, with no one around, would be much more likely to evoke the feeling that we get from an empty classroom or playroom or hallway than the lonely forest just behind the abandoned village.
@@gadpivsyeah so like museum exhibits of what early civilizations might have been like would look like caveman liminal spaces
Liminal spaces for me as a concept really just validated something I’ve felt in certain places and situations since I was a kid, situations that feel uncomfortably lonely, familiar but not. Things that just “don’t compute” because they don’t match the expectations and schema you’ve developed. Being at an older relative’s house at night, with decorations and a vibe that just remind you that there once were kids living here, but now there aren’t. There’s an element of nostalgia, sure, but it’s almost the opposite, something invoking an unease you felt as a kid when you were simply experiencing fear of the unknown. There should be people here, but there aren’t, and you feel somehow unsafe, like fear of a dark basement but broader.
I share the same view of the matter
Strangely enough, the oldest liminal spaces I can think of were post-WW1 surrealist paintings. Not by Salvador Dalì or Max Ernst, René Magritte and Giorgio deChirico, who all drew barren landscapes, strange residential rooms, empty streets, and collections of objects. They all capture some kind of claustrophobia and emptiness as they were veterans of the war and extreme childhood neglect, mainly emotionally. They’re exhibitions left the public uncomfortable and mildly anxious after being immersed for hours in the paintings.
Andrew Wyeth and some of the realists are worth bringing up for slightly different reasons. A lot of Grant Wood's paintings, on the other end of the spectrum, have a dream-like quality to them that overlaps with dreamcore.
i think 9 times out of 10 people are looking for the word kenopsia coined by John Koenig, they dont know the word so they dont use it but most of liminal space photos can be summed up by "the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that’s usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet-a school hallway in the evening, an unlit office on a weekend, vacant fairground" - Kenopsia is always left out of the liminal conversation.
What if i like liminal more ?
@@jenylass1521 you’re wrong but I cannot stop you.
@@dreamcast.0 go pa, kenopsia it seems. Liminal makes my heart go weeeeee 😚
@@jenylass1521 that’s how I feel about John Koenig’s words. I want to buy the full Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows one day. I love that he’s putting words to these things everyone knows/experiences. Language is lovely.
I think houses can absolutely be liminal spaces, especially if they are slightly unfamiliar to us. they still need to be nostalgic, but not personal to us, like going over to a friend's house and getting that strange feeling when you are left alone in a room, or in the house while no one else is home. it still feels familiar but unfamiliar in the sense that we are now alone in a place where it is normal to have company, because the reason you are there is to visit the people who live there. say your friend uses the washroom or leaves you in their room while they do a chore. we are now just waiting for their return and feel strange getting too comfortable in their room or messing with their stuff. so, it becomes a familiar but unfamiliar place to wait, which is pretty damn close to the definition of a liminal space.
I was once in a liminal space underground, reading some graffiti. Only after I had left did I realise I had fallen victim to subliminal messaging.
Underrated comment
This is such a high quality video! Loved every second of it
Thank you so much!
agree! great job.
Nah fr tho this guy is a good content creator
I think one of the more underappreciated aspects of liminal spaces, and perhaps art and photography as a whole, is the way every picture is frozen in time. A lot of the places in liminal spaces have probably changed and moved on since then, as the rest of the world has. I think that's why a lot of the school, bedroom, soft play, etc liminal spaces have taken off despite not being 'truly' liminal - they offer a brief connection to a time that can never be experienced again, something that will grab almost anyone looking back on their childhood
Coming from someone who knew nothing about liminal spaces prior to watching this, this was interesting! I can’t help but feel that part of what people find so striking about these pictures is the sense of decay and loss that’s present in most of them. A lot of them seem to depict urban decay, like the Soviet-era apartment buildings in Poland and the abandoned doctor’s office, while the more naturalistic examples often take place in winter, when what little life that would be in these photos, like leaves and grass, is buried and lost under the snow. All these places were once vibrant and alive with people and ideas, but those things have been stripped away by time and the change it brings. I’m reminded of J.M.W. Turner’s “The Fighting Temeraire” and Q’s assessment of it in the movie “Skyfall” - “A grand old warship being ignominiously hauled away for scrap. The inevitability of time, don’t you think?”
That’s a very good point! I hadn’t considered the theme of decay, or “civilization in decline”, but it definitely is present in a lot of these photos.
@@farrellmcguire I thought so too. I think your remark that this phenomenon really began to pick up steam during the start of the pandemic, when civilization was declining faster than our generation had ever seen, lends credence to this idea as well.
It might also be interesting to follow this up with an analysis of the captions that accompany these images. I couldn’t help but notice that, in your Reddit experiment, you used different captions in the posts. It made me wonder how that may have affected the results of the experiment and what role the captions, comments and other supplementary components of the text (i.e. the image itself) have in validating and codifying the “liminal-ness” of the space.
@@Colinb95 excellent idea for a future video :)
i think that's a valid interpretation, but to me it's about the pause of time rather than the acceleration of it.
the strongest things i find are present in liminal spaces are that the place seems to have a purpose, but in this moment is divorced of it. a gas station with no one in it, a school at night time, a stop sign on an empty road - they _have_ an apparent meaning, but it's abstracted into nonsense in this space. i was just on an evening walk where there was no traffic at all, and in the silence i noticed a "people crossing" sign in the middle of the forest. there was no pavement on the other side, just a muddy bank. where would people be crossing to?
i feel that's also why a lot of liminal spaces compel people to make stories about being 'outside' of something - usually reality, if we look at the backrooms and the resurgence it's brought. the backrooms are full of weird stuff with no context, starting with the idea of an infinite empty office building forever. office architecture servers a purpose, but there's no one here to appreciate it, so what's it doing here? being outside of reality would imply being outside of time - a thoroughly divorced situation.
and i think the biggest reason this stuff is getting big now is because of the loss of purpose it represents. the pandemic didn't birth it, only accelerate it - being young nowadays feels hopeless. it's incredibly hard to picture a future, there are reasons for everything to fall apart on all sides, and anxiety's through the roof. liminal spaces unnerve us because they're the external expression of feeling completely out of place, but we're also drawn to that which compels us. right now, being no one nowhere is compelling, because that's how it feels.
Not to be a fence sitter, but to me, both of these themes are held in a kind of dialectic tension in the kind of liminal spaces you describe, Hellothere. On one hand there’s the unnatural pausing of time and fixing of space, and this unnaturalness in turn calls attention to what is natural, ie decay. I think both interpretations can be liminal. Like he says at the end of the video, everything is a transitional space eventually.
What an incredible video. I think that anyone who has moved out of a house and taken one last look through the rooms has experienced a home as a liminal space.
The places that you used as examples of non nostalgia based spaces give me more liminal space vibes, since the whole existential crisis thing is surrounded by the unknown and surreal/supernatural. I see a lot more of the non nostalgic things in my dreams and in reality, they are peaceful places I actually that also can be unsettling depending on the time
This is one of the most perfect essays on liminal space that I have seen so far on youtube good work man.
There's a picture I saw on the internet of a liminal space that was a neighborhood, but upon looking at it, I felt comforted. The soft pastel colors of the houses, a golden-grey sky, a slight mist hanging in the air, it honestly felt like I was standing outside after a rainstorm, it honestly felt cool, light, I could almost smell the rain itself, and in its existence I appreciated the nostalgia I felt. It was like looking into a window of my past. A moment in my childhood that I had somehow forgotten about but then immediately remembered with a sort of fondness and jubilance that can only be described as the innocent joy of a child splashing around in rain puddles.
I couldn't be happier with the emergence of liminal spaces as aesthetic and thought exercise, and the fact that people seek out and compile images to scratch that itch I didn't know I had. I love the various artistic styles that have come out of it and I love having language for the feelings I've always had about those abandoned places I would briefly glimpse in childhood.
E: re picture quality and nostalgia, I'm in my 40s, so I lean towards polaroid and disposable camera quality photos rather than early digital as the most evocative.
actually when you showed the garden of earthly delights it did somehow feel akin to a liminal space for me personally. I had a bizarre dream as a small child that stuck with me permanently, but as I get older I recall it less and less often and it feels even more strange. It looked very visually similar to that painting, so similar in fact I wonder if I saw it as a small child and it made its way into my subconscious and into my dream. Up until this point though, I wasn't aware of the paintings existence
I agree that it wouldn't get much reddit karma, but maybe with that context it could in a slightly different subreddit
i would kinda like to know more about the dream
What was the dream? You should write it down for posterity.
This has been such an intriguing watch and an excellent video essay on the phenomenon of liminal spaces. I'm a 3d artist and game designer on my full time job, we started building the 3d liminal space community in the digital world for around 3 years now and it's honestly been so wild to see how the genre developed over the years. This was an amazingly accurate summary. I'm reminded by how earlier artists introduced us to the first forms of liminal art such as Edward Hopper and John Register in the 60s and 70s.
For me, the reason an empty house, or close-to-empty house or apartment, especially ones that have outdated carpet and drapes and tile, look so liminal is because it very much IS a transitional space. If you’re just moving out, then it is an anxious time of uncertainty. You wonder if you’ll have a good life in your new residence, especially if you’re moving a long distance to a very unfamiliar city. If you’re moving in and you just haven’t brought anything in yet, then just as I said before, you’re wondering if this new place will be a good home for you and if it will be a place you have good memories in after living there a while. The outdated carpet and tile are things that are probably in a place you are moving out of because maybe you lived there a long time and it is a home that was your parents house and they owned it since you were a baby and now they have passed on and they just never updated the house any. So there are MANY memories of that house and those things.
So seeing any house with outdated things invokes emotions and feelings of the same kind that you remember from your own childhood home and residence. This for me is one of the most intense kind of liminal space. In such places I can see myself playing, learning, struggling to cope with life as a teen, and so many other things. It’s very complicated. So houses VERY much are liminal spaces for me. Transitioning in them is a very common thing; from toddler to youth, from youth to middle school and its struggles, from middle school to high school and its whole new set of struggles, from high school to the real world and its HUGE whole new set of challenges and struggles. So an empty home with outdated things just REALLY sets me reeling. Its a place so many of us wish we could go back to because of the relatively carefree life we had and all of the things that we felt that we NEVER anticipated we would ever experience in adulthood. As I said, it’s a very complicated thing and I hope what I have said here makes sense. Sorry, but not sorry for the long comment. Sometimes it just takes a lot to explain things in written form. So sometimes I write long comments. Certain subjects deserve some time spent writing about them. Certain people get disgusted with long comments or posts, but reading is one of my favorite things to do and I used to be a writer as well as a Civil Engineer before I retired. Thank you for taking the time to read my comment. Take care and God bless.
Same thing can be said of abandoned places like old retail outlets and shopping malls. In a 'properly' lit, high quality photo from their heyday, depicting them bustling with people, they are in an original state. In a photo of similar quality after they've been demolished and turned into an office complex, they are in a later, newer state. The space in between, when they are abandoned, in a state of decay, with signs of the original state still evident but in a modified and unusual way, is transitional, or liminal.
I’ve been developing an idea for a video game based around the feelings of liminal spaces. But not like the “you’re in the back rooms and there’s scary shadow monsters” type of game. You play as a 7 year old who’s parents never came to pick you up from school so you decide to walk home. You get more and more lost and have so little understanding of the world around you. It’s so full and vast but also empty. I’m still working on it but this video really made me think about it.
That's one great video, thanks for this really clear and neat outlook on liminality!
Also, hello from Poland. The video from Woźniakowski you mentioned definitely hits differently for someone who grew up here, throughout the 90s. An interesting thing to note is that the spaces Woźniakowski shows there are still present in the everyday Poland and as such they're half liminal, half just ordinary photos. What creates the strongest sense of liminality for me is post-soviet/sovietwave movements which induce the feeling through an aesthetic of disappearance and decommunization. Those are truly things from past generation, that I remember and are nowhere to be found.
Another tidbit, I spoke with my American friends and there's an interesting thing to note. It seems that for American people the Eastern European liminal spaces / sovietwave/ post-soviet aesthetics seem very alien and missing context. Obviously - since they never experienced this world, it's a reality wrapped in mystery of post-war communist scare, but that's about it. However for me and friends I have here, the American liminal spaces hit really hard in terms of invoking this liminal unease. My guess is, it's because how drenched in American culture we've become. To the point where I sometimes feel resentment because I never got to experience an American upbringing, with high-schools with rows of lockers, college, copypasted suburbs, etc. and I feel robbed of this romantic from my perspective experience.
Anyway, hope to see more from you, have a great day!
When I was in high school, every year, as a part of Latin club, I would go to the state Latin Convention. It was always a ton of fun, and it's something I'll always look back on fondly. For most of the time I was in Latin club, it was always at the same hotel, but for the last year, we had to go to a different hotel, because the old one was closed down, I think it had water damage or something.
A few years ago I found a RUclips channel where a guy explored old abandoned buildings. One of the buildings he explored was the old hotel that Latin convention used to be held in. It was such a surreal experience, seeing the halls and ballrooms that I always remembered as being brightly lit and absolutely packed with people, now dark, empty, and in complete disrepair. I didn't know what liminal spaces were back then, but I think that might've been my first real experience with them.
I used to take photos for my family vacations with those old digital cameras before I had an iPhone. It reminds me of the good old days when things were simpler, as displayed in the quality because it’s a lot simpler than the complex and high quality pictures from the iPhone
You kind of look like R.L. Stine, which I think is kind of ironic based on the context of the video.
If I were in a liminal space alone, I would most likely be very uncomfortable. Yet for whatever reason I wish I could go to them.
I love liminal spaces. I feel comforted by them and have always just wanted to go inside the pictures I see of them.
Liminal Spaces pics (without creepypasta), either creepy or weird, are comfy because they remind me of my dreams, a state when I'm out of the physical world.
You know, whenever I see a picture of a Liminal space with the nostalgia aspect to it, I legit start crying because it just reminds me of a time I’ll never get back.
What truly unsettles me about the early 2000s liminal spaces is that it gives me the feeling that it's still there. That those houses and play structures are still somewhere out there just waiting for us to return. It reminds me of a post I saw once that said, "Time travel to the past isn't hard. There's just no one there anymore."
I have always found liminal spaces so comforting. I never understood people feeling uneasy or unsafe. Well, maybe uneasy, but in a good way.
this is a magnificent video. the music, which you made, fits it all too well. i’ve been interested in liminal spaces since their beginning in 2019, and growing up in the late 2000s and early 2010s america really adds to these images for me. they remind me of times i can just barely remember. my mother sold houses as a job and i’d often be taken along sometimes late at night to empty, old, and forgotten homes. these images often remind me of those times i experienced when i was just 6 or 7. the low quality adds to the fuzziness of those memories, and how they are something i can barely remember. this is a very very well made video, great job, dude.
nowadays i focus on painting. some of my favorite types of paintings are those pictures in the nature during dusk or dawn. they are very beautiful, but so eerie as well. i’m so glad you pointed those out.
also, i highly recommend posting your musical works on this account too, since i’m sure tons of people would love to hear it!
I've had a liminal space encounter in-person. A few years ago i got back into collecting baseball cards and i found out about a card store that was in a mall that was largely abandoned, save for that store and a handful of other plus an accountants office. Id never been to this mall before, when when i walked in i felt like id been there before. Wasnt alive in the 80s and i was born in 97 so i dont identify with the 90s, but man, walking through there felt like id been transported back to an altered late 80s-early 90s timeline. Got hit just as hard when i got in the card store, since a lot of that stuff was from that time period too.
For those of you that go antiquing or go to flea markets or other places where old stuff is resold, do you also get similar feelings too? I do, but its not the same as liminal space nostalgia
Antique stores always remind me of one of my mom's friends' house. Husband was a serious hoarder and had all sorts of junk and knicknacks all over the place. Antique stores remind me of her house, those partitions filled to the brim with random old stuff reminds me of exploring their house as a kid.
Affordable housing complexes give me similar vibes. The idea of familiarity in sounds being just around the corner yet never in reach reminds me of many of my dreams. I think they fact that they are pictures at all, not something that you can touch adds to the fragmented memory vibe.
Also Squid Games.
What you said about context making or breaking a liminal space is indeed vital. Perfect example was one you mentioned: Super Mario 64. I'm an elder millennial born '86, and I played the game when it was brand new. I cannot stress to you enough how incredible the transition from 2D to 3D games felt to live through. At that point, every game I'd played in my life had been a 2D side-scroller. When I got control of Mario in a 3D world for the first time, it was *amazing*. The sense of freedom in a bright new world, the ability to explore anywhere, jump and slide and climb all over the place at will, was liberating in a way I can't express. And of course, there were all the familiar characters and creatures from earlier Mario games that made the world just as familiar as it was new. That game will always be special to me, and the castle and its environs will never be scary or unsettling. It will always remind me of that sense of new freedom I had when I was 10, the hope and brightness and joy of being a kid.
Great video, thanks for creating it!
I'm most of the way through the video and haven't heard it mentioned, but: another key aspect of liminal space pictures is *stillness*. You never see a liminal space with a car speeding by, or a bird in the distance, or a house with any sign of someone being home.
There's an emptiness to them; a lack of presence, of life.
On the night of the February 2021 Texas freeze, I fell in love with the stillness of winter. My partner of the time and I went outside and it was the most surreal experience. I live about 500 ft away from a highway and since there were no cars driving there was only the sound of the earth. It was so beautifully primordial. No cars speeding in the highway, no sounds of other humans, it was as if we were existing in a liminal space. it was so romantic I will never forget how beautifully dark it was outside and how quietly the snow fell as well. How the cold felt against our bodies. (I am saving up to go to Yakutia so I can experience this stillness again. ❤)
Liminal spaces to me are places that seem familiar, but it goes against expectations.
For example, there is a mall near where I live. Most of the stores inside are closed, and theres very few people. When I’m in the mall, I will often hear people in the distance but I dont see anyone. And theres still music playing in the mall.
Loved your video! I agree with you on liminal reflecting how we were feeling during the beginning of 2020. Places that normally had tons of people were now empty, and the future was so uncertain. I just subbed to your channel and can't wait to see more!
I was one of the few who, due to the nature of my job, had to show up at the workplace in those early months of 2020. Walking around the office spaces had a definitely post-apocalyptic feel. Where thousands of people had come every day to work was now acres of empty cubicles, exactly as their occupants had left them; dozens of computer screens used to make announcements gradually crashing & stating they could not find a boot partition; the oppressive silence. One day as I walked along the hallways, I encountered another employee for the first time that day, & we both startled each other, having come to not expect to see anyone on that floor of that building.
You nailed it at the start. What people called a “liminal space” nowadays are just inaccurately defined “cursed images”.
Since the images are often more familiar but creepy or invoke unease they are just grouped in with liminal spaces.
It’s something that easier to know than to describe since it’s “art” and every has their own subjectively feelings on “art”. You can’t show me a liminal space (as defined by the internet) since I may not feel the same way about what you show me. This is why some liminal space photos seem “bad”, it wasn’t bad to the person that posted it and the people that liked it…
For me, liminal space photos that are unsettling are usually places that we are used to being filled with people, bustling with activity, and are now suddenly empty. It gives me an abandoned, left behind, rapture vibe. Like an empty office, empty school, empty mall, they're all really creepy. And then of course the way the photo is taken, like with a bad camera then the not so great photo is artificially sharpened.
Which is why the nostalgic photos are creepy, you remember the ball pit being loud and fun with all the kids. Now its empty, and it shouldn't be. Like you're the only one left...
Wow this was very well done and added some great thinking points that haven't been touched on fully in other Liminal Space videos! I'm hyped to see your upcoming content here!
Normally busy streets at 4:00am with the amber glow of the sodium lamps lighting things and throwing shadows how they do, gives that feeling that in the moment everyone else on earth instantly disappeared and you're the only one left somehow. I love it.
As someone who really really really enjoys liminal spaces, I can certainly say the most attractive element to me is the lack of anything actively going on. I as a young adult lived most of my life up until now not knowing I had ADD, the entire world felt like it was a step ahead of me and like time was this unrelenting force that would run away on me the moment I got absorbed in anything, these spaces are the perfect opposition to that. I feel like I could gladly step into an empty, preserved world of uncanny (or new) representations and nobody to answer to and just live there forever. These images are like an escape I never had, and never new I wanted until I found them.
To me, what makes something a liminal space is that it feels “post human”. Like it’s been left to rot or forgotten. It’s the same vibe that makes old theme parks creepy.
I think I'm in the "cozy" team, regarding how I feel about liminal spaces.
Once I was stranded in an airport for a day as I couldn't board a flight and had to find and buy another ticket on the spot. I had to commute from terminal to terminal (through a corridor that connected the buildings and felt like it stretched forever) in search for the counter of a specific company. There weren't fixed, and at any time the staff of one company would arrive at the counter and put up their logo and everything and start serving costumers. It was more or less a guessing game to find out which company would "spawn" where. And then I had to eat my meals in this odd restaurants in the middle of hallways. I ended up meeting some random and interesting people. I overheard two engineers talking about their company, the projects, the office politics, the salaries, which was a totally unexpected and welcome insight in my future profession (I was a student at the time). Idk, that day utterly sucked because of the anxiety and the tiredness I felt, but I can't help but remember fondly of that moment. It was... transitional, I knew it wouldn't last forever and I kinda enjoyed the excursion and seeing society ticking, the crowd of strangers, everybody doing their part.
To me, looking at liminal space photos almost always makes me feel really sad, its like looking at another world that is exactly like our own except empty and dead
This is one of the best videos I’ve watched describing liminal spaces. Thank you for an enjoyable and educational watch.
The best examples of liminal spaces I've seen are the artwork of Simon Stalenhag, like his paintings for "Tales from the Loop" and "The Electric State."
I have to comment purely on those underground bunker places - they look terrifying. A) the practical reason you’d be living there is because the world has been blown to smithereens. B) can you imagine the smell of those places compared to nature?? Do not want!! C) No mention of the abstract unease of imagining just being trapped down there by a maniacal captor, or trapped *with* a menacing creature sitting just out of sight??
Thank you for your video, I liked it, have a lovely day. 😌
6:29 I had an immediate palpable reaction this this image because i literally played on this exact playground set as a kid. sort of... I reverse googled the image to double check, since the lighting and trees were off compared to the one i remember from when i was a kid, and sure enough; this model was build all across the USA in the 1980's & 90's. A company called "Leather & Associates" organized communities to build this setup in their towns. Over 2000 were made, and many are still in use today (although they are noted as being hard to upkeep and unfriendly to disabled kids these days). So, yeah. Mystery solved! Thanks internet, you really gave me a good spook just now. ... This took ~20min or so to piece together ^^;
Really glad I found this video and your channel! Like everyone else, I'm fascinated with the subject. Glad to see another analysis video and more people's opinions about liminal spaces. New subscriber!
I was born in 1980 and love the concept of liminal spaces. You NAILED the concept of context.
I got this video in my recommended videos and I have to say it was really thorough in terms of the topics covered, but also really personal, since you didn't just read out definitions and showed images, but rather conducted your own experiments. Just wanted to leave that here.
Man, congratz for your full analysis! You go deeper in this question with sources and theories. Very good! 👏👏👏👏👏👏
Amazing video, such good quality and really just took me back to last year when I was really into liminal spaces, there is something quite uneasy but comforting about liminal spaces, its like a good type of scary.
imagine you are at a party and you decide to go home after, then the walk you take alone in a quiet area is the liminal transitional phrase.
My biggest bone to pick with liminal spaces is that the name itself is nonsensical. You can see the evolution of someone attaching the name to it, people learning the academic definition, and justifying its usage by saying “no, actually, we like these creepy and uncanny images because they’re transitional”. You would never come to that conclusion if the word liminal hadn’t already been attached to the aesthetic.
Tjia video it's just perfect! The feeling of calm and dread was a perfect combination of feelings for videos like this!!! I wish you better luck in the future and keep up your amazing work!!!
This was great!! Can’t wait to see what else you make!
They are like places paused in time and hopefully untouched and it gives me comfort even though many things I haven't been there or done it it gives me a feeling of comfort and anxiety like something is out there but the nice colors and old places you went to just make you feel like you are frozen in time exploring things that unlock old memories
Congrats on your perception and knowledge, research, and more. Learned a lot. Thank you.
I will never forget my last day of elementary school. Back then I hated school, I often didn't wanna go, I'd rather stay at home and sleep longer and then play outside all day. Last day of elementary school we had party with all the students from out generation and teachers, after all was over, it was late noon, I stayed in last, school was pretty much empty, maybe few teachers left in their offices so I decided to just walk around the school for the last time to say my goodbyes, it was so liminal, so empty and familiar, I went down to the lower classes where
I went when I was a kid, I had such a great memories from it, I will never forget that alone walk thought my elementary school and feelings I got while walking.
Le me comes across this video after binge-watching every video that talks about liminal spaces, watches this video through the end,
me with teary eyes, stands up and starts clapping for 5 minutes all alone in front of my computer.
This video was wonderful, and I thought I've seen like everything in youtube talking about liminal spaces, well yeah most of the things you mentioned aren't new to me (or more like I could only find 2 things you mentioned being actually new to me, but still I loved it), the format, the references, the script, the narration, even the experiments, you took it multiple steps further and I loved it!
Btw, I love liminal spaces, been in love with them for quite a long time (as well with the dreamcore-weirdcore types of aesthetics, also I dream everyday of visiting some sort of poolrooms, if only they existed irl....) also I've gone quite hardcore into game development, I can totally confirm how Gmod and in general source engine games have 100% this liminal space feeling, this is something I really wish I'm eventually able to replicate and if possible one day develop a game with this feeling (and that isn't just a walking simulator like most indie liminal space related games out there) so I'm turning my head to the mid 2000s era of games for this goal...
Old technology weights pretty heavy in this as technical limitations had developers try ways to create big worlds without wasting memory so some of the tricks used (like the fog in silent hill: the level is loaded in small chunks and the unloaded parts are hidden by the fog) created this liminality, which can be really difficult to replicate with modern engines as per your iPhone vs old camera comparison (which btw I'm gonna borrow from now on when comparing game engines in order to make liminal games)
I've long been a big fan of the road movie genre and I get a very similar vibe from a lot of these liminal space images... The image of the empty highway is very liminal in itself, but also themes of empty, abandoned or decaying locations that crop up in these films have a very liminal quality.
I think Paris, Texas is probably my all time favourite in the genre, as well as being one of my favourite films of any genre. Some of the shots in that movie quite literally give me chills for reasons I can't explain.
It's hard to put into a YT comment, but I feel that the childhood aspect of liminal spaces is quite similar to the childhood aspect of Peepo (also really popular in Poland iirc), the transition from childhood to adult had a high "liminal" characteristic for this generation, especially the uncertain aspect. Its a weird correlation, but it makes sense, they are both pretty big memes that passed through the 4Chan cesspool.
The best illustration of this in peepo is the "Spending time without your favorite streamer" animation.
I don't usually comment but I really liked your video! On your point about art, I think that many more liminal spaces are art than just paintings of liminal spaces, since most are photographs which is imo another medium of art :)
Yeah personally whenever I see one that's of a painting or a really old game it loses the feeling for me. I think it's more effective if it looks realistic.
Loved this video, man! Love to see other youtubers talking about this topic!
I’ve been binging your videos for the last few days and I’m honestly so impressed by the work you put into them and the super interesting topics that are not sensationalised!!! I‘m not sure if someone commented this already, but the definiton of liminal spaces in the beginning of the video very much reminded me of Marc Augé‘s book ‚Non-Lieux‘ - it‘s an anthropology book that defines so called non-places, transitional spaces that have been built by humans, but are so devoid of history and culture that they solely function as transitional areas. Augé names airports and parking spaces as examples, but also writes about the play-pretend ‚construction‘ of cultural meaning through signs: In France (and Germany) for example, the highways have billboards next to them to advertise the cultural heritage of whatever town the road is passing by. This is to try to embed the highway, a non-place, in a historical setting, thus making it ‚legitemate‘. The same can be said for the little flyer stands in hotels which advertise local tourist destinations (usually historic ones). This fake construction of meaning might make a space even more liminal, since it usually only emphasises how artificial a place truly is.
I feel like more of what people are feeling is the uncanniness of the places you have only seen full of people and lit but you are now seeing them completely empty and dark.
Whenever I see videos like this discussing liminal spaces, I never hear any discussion about dreamcore art, atleast in the video itself. Dreamcore gives me a huge “nostalgic yet unsettling” feeling. Pictures like that one with the perfectly spherical hills and repeating houses just have a weird nostalgia yet I can’t exactly put my finger on what the nostalgia is about.
For me, liminal spaces are both welcoming and unsettling at the same time. Welcoming because of the nostalgic aesthetic and feeling like I've turned back the clock to a more known era, where "the ending" has already been revealed. But that's precisely also what makes it unsettling. Because liminal space, loosely speaking, are spaces that are static and unchanging, and just merely entertaitinign the thought that a conscious being may have to spend an eternity in this lifeless, timeless dimension that sends a chill down my spine.
I just found your channel and I am obsessed with your content. I hope you keep posting 🥲
You may or may not be completely safe is the best liminal space sentence I've heard.
No mans land is the best phrase I've heard related to liminal spaces.
I wish the back rooms hadnt fallen to broogli and the like
Great video! You got yourself a new subscriber and I can’t wait for more content!
this was incredibly on point to how i feel about liminal spaces. I feel safe and at ease with one’s that i may relate to my childhood but on edge when a liminal space deciphers a once full of life experience with a monotone environment
Hands down, the best video of the topic in the history of YT.
Really cool video! You managed to explore the concept of liminal spaces like no one has before. Looking forward to your new videos!
To be fair even whilst filming taking two different tech photos among the snow cabins I felt a lot of liminal space even with you in it, moving speaking, it seemed unnatural almost like you were layered into it, I loved that it challenged your sentiment from moments before.
I do get the nostalgia element and you're right, at the same time the warped music really amplifies the feeling. There's so much in it and it's all psychological, different for every person also,
At the end of the day it's just super fascinating personally i love the feeling of intense aloness with a hint of horror yet there's nothing particularly wrong or threatening, but mentally its a lost sensation.... the horror comes from knowing the deeper you go the more alone and disasociated you become and there's no retracing your steps.
Oh, this is your only video. I'm looking forward to more! I like the balance you've struck here between "causal conversation about something" & "spooky retelling of the details".
A lot of channels either seem to be one or the other, and I like the fusion you've created.
See you in the next one!
Wonderful analysis of this fascinating topic. That's exactly what I was hoping to find when I searched for "liminal spaces" on RUclips.
wonderful dissection. i do have to say i’m in the camp of feeling strangely comforted by a lot of these images, but i don’t necessarily agree with your reasoning. i personally don’t know what it is that makes me feel the way i do about liminal spaces, but i did really appreciate your stab at trying to define it, and i think it will definitely resonate with a lot of people. i’ve been low key obsessed with liminal spaces for the past couple years, and always click on video essays pertaining to them when they pop up on my recommended.
Great quality and script. I am very excited to see what else you put up!!
Loved your video! It added some new thinking points
Well done, and I agree with pretty much everything said. I too find the liminal images and aesthetic on the one hand somewhat creepy and unsettling but on the other hand oddly comforting, cozy, nostalgic, and I find it's often linked with a rather specific time period, from like the 80s to the mid 2000s. There's definitely a familiar, dreamlike quality to them that's just hard to pintpoint. I also agree on the outdoor spaces inside thing, and I find that very cool somehow.
This music is great. I just found some new favorite albums to sleep/chill to.
Dude, you're so underrated!! I hope you make more videos with this kind of quality!
This was a beautiful analysis! I enjoyed it thoroughly.
I was born in 1986…these liminal spaces are simply a deja vu for me. A lot of those pictures contain architecture, designs and things that simply don’t exist anymore or do but are abandoned forever. Everything mid 2000’s is now sterile and straightforward. Think McDonald’s in the mid-90’s to McDonald’s now. We feel like we’ve been there and these are snapshots of our memories. Even though we’ve never seen them before
amazing video man, from such a small channel. killer work
The main reason that the digital camera picture looks more liminal is because you can easily see the background where as the digital camera you can’t see anything in the background and gives it a more eerie feeling