LIMINAL SPACES & ALTERED REALITY – a study
The concept of liminal spaces has always been fascinating to me. I stumbled across the idea one day and its very notion struck a chord with me. So, I have created a written study of what I have come to understand it to be. Liminality is that our own world, thing and places we know to be familiar and almost mundane, can also have an adverse darker undertone to it. Leaving a nauseating and displaced feeling.
Liminal spaces, are places or states of space whereby reality feels altered and strange. Places where we associate motion and transition come to a standstill at one point or another, providing a haunting and empty phase. It is perhaps because human nature relies upon context, whether it is in our learning processes as an infant or the need for rationality in the everyday. Therefore, when tangible solid aspects of our lives become slightly altered, it is jarring for the brain to process, creating a fleeting limbo-like state. I suppose these places are recognisable subconsciously and because of that, we have grown accustomed to not taking much notice of it.
For example; empty train stations during late nights, supermarkets in the early mornings or vacant corner shops filled with the dull hum of music. The inside of a car whilst it’s raining, snowfall during night time and empty buses. As well as take away shops with only a few customers, flooded with neon fluorescent lighting. Frost covered grass in the park on winter mornings, and bare cinema theatres whilst the endless trailers play, or galleries and museums with no observers. It is also reminiscent in films, especially from the dystopian genre. Films such as Blade Runner 2049 (2017), have taken places typically associated with occupation and hollowed it out. Here, in figure 1, occurs a more extreme and cinematic example of liminal space. It depicts a dead and hopeless reality with the yellow lighting and grand yet dusted, aged décor portraying a nostalgic calling for a civilisation that once existed.
Figure 1: Blade Runner 2049 (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment)
There are many more examples, but what I have noticed is that these spaces are dependent upon two things: the time of day either early morning or late night and winter. I think the coldness of winter lends to these stark differences in daytime and night-time. Both leave different but lasting impressions upon reality. The crisp and bitterness of early mornings paired with a dull and almost white daylight, to the stretched-out darkness of night that seems to last forever. This seasonal change allows for liminal spaces to exist in a much more evocative manner, creating a melancholic and sinister tone to common places of existence. Perhaps this is why summer time is much more romanticised in popular culture, as its natural warmth gives in to our familiarity with life. It invites us to enjoy these spaces with more wonder and joy, as sunlight fills the emptiness with golden tones of reassurance and familiar wistfulness. Rather than the numb, damp and coldness the outside that winter provides.
