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To Baggage Claim and Exit
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
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LiminalSpace
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Liminal spaces are the subject of an Internet aesthetic portraying empty or abandoned places that appear eerie, forlorn, and often surreal. Liminal spaces are commonly places of transition (pertaining to the concept of liminality) or of nostalgic appeal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminal_space_(aesthetic)
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It actually is liminal.
The original, and still current, definition of 'liminal' is an intermediate between two states, conditions or regions.
It is the concept of transiting, moving through from one place or belief system or state of mind or form, to another.
Liminal Space is an architectural term that applies to areas that are designed to simply be moved through, not to stay or dwell in for long periods of time.
An entryway, an airport concourse, the sort of walking avenues of an indoor mall, a hallway... all of these are liminal spaces. A bedroom, or dining hall or office, or study, are not.
...
The internet phenomenon of liminal spaces being creepy originally derived from some youtube videos explaining how a large amount of particularly American lives are experienced in areas that are designed to just... be moved through, as opposed to inhabited, and how this in itself is creepy and dissociating, as there are fewer and fewer and fewer physical areas that are designed to allow just... public gatherings... and how this literally is now a world that is designed to just shuttle you through, that you can't stay anywhere ... that this itself is creepy and dissociates us from ourselves and others.
...
Purgatory, as a concept, is liminal.
The Matrix's depiction of purgatory, as a literal subway station that just pops you out on the other side of the track if you start moving through it, this is liminal.
The place is physically designed for you to move through quickly, it has no comforts or privacy, encourages you to leave... but in the Matrix, you can't actually leave, you always return to where you start.
... Analogous to how, if you take a subway to work in real life, everyday... you're always going there, every day. It is familiar, but it isn't welcoming, you cannot inhabit it and make it your own, but its a major part of your life.
So it is more of an inescapable place than it is a livable, customizable, comforting place.
It evokes the feeling of a hamster running on a treadmill but not actually progressing anywhere.
...
... But anyway, then 'the backrooms' happened, and soon after that, most of the internet lost the plot to the point that you believe what you just said.
You could have a dilapidated, post apocalyptic bedroom, with a few scattered childrens toys, but overgrown with mold and vines, noticably less advanced in the places the bed and dresser were but no longer are, with a strange iridescent oil seeping up from the ground...
And that would be
But it would not be a liminal space.
I appreciate you taking the time to write all this but it hasn't changed my opinion. The concept has evolved over time. This community is for the internet aesthetic that is currently described as liminal, according to the description.
The current description of the community basically uses the actual definition, that a liminal space is somewhere that evokes or pertains to transition, as well as the descriptors of feelings that are evoked by recognition and contemplation of liminal spaces, which have since been emphasized to the point that their root, their cause, has been largely forgotten.
So... even with your definition of a liminal space, my long winded explanation still proves my point.
By my definition, by the community's definition...
This airport concourse actually is a liminal space, as the community definition is more broad than yours.
Even if you'd argue against that, that it isn't abandoned and rundown, that there are people in it, I can equally validly argue that a functional airport concourse with just a few people in it evokes nostalgia for a time I was at an airport, that it reminds me of a physical and emotional transition, that this experience was surreal and unsettling, and that I find airport concourses to be unwelcoming, uncomfortable, ominous.
Perhaps you can see now why I prefer the more concrete meaning over the meaning based on a set of evoked feelings and qualities of a space.
I can very honestly tell you that if I were to return to a great number and variety of places where pivotal, transitional, fork in the road of my lifepath, events occured, I would genuinely feel surreal and nostalgic, even though the physical attributes of those places vary wildly. Some of those places are now abandoned, erie and desolate, others are not.
... Glancing at a bunch of the more recent posts here, I will grant you that basically none of them have people in them.
But they are not all abandoned to the point of decay. Some are, but others are well kept and well maintained. Almost none are dilapidated, just older. I find very few of them surreal or eerie... but perhaps that is because I have spent a great deal of time homeless, on foot.
Seeing places of all kinds, at all times of day, that most people only see when they normally have people in them, but don't when I am there, is quite normal for me.
If I had to describe the current definition of liminal spaces by the last month or so of posts here, I'd say the actual main theme is just emphasizing isolation, an ominous, foreboding sense of being the last person on earth after an apocalypse has removed all the people from places they'd normally be in, like that old Twilight Zone episode where one man wakes up and everyone in his town is just... gone.
But maybe that's just me.
Ok, that's fair enough. You've changed my mind :) Cheers
=D