Liminality: That funny feeling (Aesthetics Explained)

An empty train station. A school over the weekend. A long-dead Reddit thread. 

You know, that eerie feeling that something is just… missing.

Anyone who managed to make it through the pandemic with their sanity clinging on by the fingernails knows what it means to occupy a liminal space.

Liminal – from the Latin līmen, meaning “threshold”.

The concept of liminality has been around for ages, and has been used to great effect in art, movies, TV-shows, and music. More recently there has been a surge of liminal horror games à la Escape the Backrooms.

A close friend recently brought this concept to my attention again by introducing me to the (free) indie game, 2:22am by umbrella-isle.

And the resulting rabbit hole it sent me down was way deeper, and darker, than I was prepared for.

So, put on your favorite liminal Spotify playlist, and strap in. Things only get weirder from here. 

*This is the first post in the Aesthetics Explained series. Let me know in the comments what you’d like me to cover next! Please let it be a happy one.

I say “liminal” you say…

Liminal spaces are probably where most people get their daily-dose. There is just something jarring about catching a place that is usually buzzing with activity during the off-season.

The word liminal means “of or relating to a transitional or intermediate state, stage, or period”. Very literally the in-between.

It makes sense then, that extended stays in places like airports, train stations, and hotels often go paired with a sense of liminality: You’re not supposed to stay in these places for too long. Their main function is to get you from one place to the next. Staying here means being stuck in the middle, an uncomfortably conscious stasis.

That being said, who’s never fantasized about getting locked up in a supermarket overnight? Liminal, sure, but also, as with any abandoned place, there is also the curiosity, the thrill of exploration, the excitement of the unknown. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

The kind of liminal spaces we’re talking about are the ones that feel lonely, maybe even a little tragic.

Nuclear Liminality

Allow me to share one of my favorite liminal spaces here: 

This is Pripyat Amusement Park in Ukraine.  It was finished in time for its grand opening on the 1st of May 1986. Unfortunately, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster on April 26 cut that short. Apparently it was used briefly, on April 27 1986 – mainly as a distraction from the unfolding catastrophe until the evacuation was called later the same day.

I don’t know about you, but the thought of a place intended to bring joy, where lifelong friendships would have started, where teenagers would have gone on dates and fallen in love, being left to deteriorate makes me kind of sad.

It also makes me want to put on a hazmat and take the old girl for a spin.

The thing about thresholds though, about crossing over, most of the time when we are really forced to stop and think about them, they’re a lot less tangible than walking over a bridge or crossing the road.

That funny feeling

I’m not talking about puberty. Okay, no I’m definitely talking about puberty. But that’s just one of the great thresholds of life. 

Admittedly, it is one of the more profound ones, and I’ve always had a soft-spot for a coming of age story.

But here are a few other ones (apart from puberty) that you’ve probably experienced, or that you can look forward to:

• Losing a job
• Losing your teeth
• Coming home alone after a trip with friends or family
• Finishing school
• Realizing it’s time to get out of the shower
• Finishing your degree
• Middle-age
• Getting married
• Getting divorced
• Coming back from the vet without your pet
• Finishing the last episode of a TV-show
• Or the last book in a series
• Floating in a pool at night
• Losing your teeth, again
• Rewatching your favorite childhood movie (and realizing neither of you have aged very well)
• Retiring
• Death

A lot of the items on this list, you’ll notice, are tinged with nostalgia. Makes sense doesn’t it?

Can’t get stuck in the middle if you don’t have something you’re losing or moving on from, whether that be growing out of your favorite pair of jeans, realizing that you want to start wearing shoes again, or leaving your hometown for good.

You’ve lost something, finished something, or realized something, and there’s no going back.

Liminality goes hand-in-hand with nostalgia. And probably anxiety about the future.

Capturing the in-between

It’s hard to explain liminality in a sentence. Any feeling for that matter, without using any synonyms or antonyms. Try it. Tell me what happy is.

But the good thing about aesthetics is that they can be transferred through art. In no particular order, here are 5 things that’ll make you feel liminal:

• A song: F8-Mournful Camaraderie by The Caretaker
• A book: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• A movie: The Shining
• A painting: The Song of Love by Giorgio de Chirico
• A game: Pools

Fair warning: Indulging in the liminal aesthetic will probably make you feel… weird. 

But…

The Lighter Side of Liminality

Think back to dreaming of being locked up in a supermarket. All the things you could do, the freedom you have.

“Moments or periods of transition during which the normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed, opening the way to novelty and imagination, construction and destruction.”

~ Dave Gray

See, liminal spaces, or periods, are where the magic happens. It’s a place of discovery, a place where your imagination is allowed to run wild (for better or worse).

If you find yourself in a liminal space, knowing you can’t go back, not ready to go forward, time has just become your canvas. You get to create, prepare, reinvent, pulverize. It’s incredibly exciting.

And you know how sad it is when things don’t get used for their purpose.