Personal Research & Reflection: Liminal Spaces, Psych-Horror & Contemporary Surrealism

Warning:
    This is a deep dive.

Regularly scrolling through Tumblr and watching recommended YouTube video essays, I come across some interesting internet-based phenomena that has not been explored much in the art world due to their niche, low-key, almost underground appeal. One such discovery was the idea of "liminal spaces". Although I've known about it for a few years, it wasn't until recently that I became interested in the wider surreal online realm in which it is categorised. Growing exponentially in popularity since 2016, liminal space has been explored on social media extensively; there even exists a Twitter bot account, from which I gathered imagery for my research. https://twitter.com/spaceliminalbot

Anthropologically, liminality has been tied to rites of passage. Creative liminality is the potential to act, but not yet having done so. Liminality gives space for innovation and change. Adolescence (phases) and mid-life crises are liminal periods, as is gender identity for transitioning and non-binary individuals (personally relatable with androgyny). Transhumanism embraces the liminality of being in between human and machine as a cyborg. Species hybrids, demigods and supernatural shapeshifters are liminal beings, as well as spiritual mediators such as witches and shamans. Being on one's deathbed or in a coma is liminal in nature (linking to liminal ideas of consciousness and wakefulness), and the realm of limbo/purgatory is the liminal equivalent of religion. The sensation of falling asleep, muscles relaxing during meditation, and experiencing insomnia and sleep deprivation, can feel liminal (explored in Eric Plant's dreamscape installation at https://dailytrojan.com/2018/08/26/sophomore-tackles-sleep-deprivation-in-liminal-spaces/). Migration is a liminal experience which can leave one feeling partly liminal for an extended period of time while assimilating into a new culture, something I can also relate to. Cognitive dissonance is a state of psychological liminality, as one is at odds with their internal beliefs.

Brainstorm key points:
    (because the original in my notebook is practically illegible)

Media

Notably, I referenced a fair few video games that came to mind when thinking about liminality, because whilst playing and watching YouTube gameplay of them throughout my adolescence, the subtle horror of them evoked a feeling of instability, like time could fall apart at any moment, or like it already had and I'd yet to fully realise. This spatiotemporal element of the liminal aesthetic is what intrigues me so much about it. It reveals places frozen in time, seemingly outside of time, degraded by time and devoid of time, which is largely what makes them so unnerving to look at. I'd say liminal spaces are almost the environmental equivalent of the uncanny valley, especially in the context of games. Psychological horror is, understandably, the most suitable subgenre to explore liminality in - the games mentioned above, as well as films, TV shows, web series, etc., provide a limitless fictional world that can be carefully manipulated to disconcert and isolate the audience, using surrealist techniques to add humour when applicable. The Twilight Zone quite literally is named after the intermediate or 'liminal' temporal zone between day and nighttime, referring to the shadow moving around the Earth observable from space. Stranger Things  and the Others deal with liminality through paranormal/science fiction horror.

For example, David Lynch's horror web series Rabbits parodies sitcoms and unsettles the viewer by overturning conventional uses of many cinematic devices, but regarding the set design of the living room, it purposefully looks off and unnatural. The furniture is placed oddly, the colours are dated and visually unpleasant, and the dingy lighting creates looming shadows on the back wall that gives the impression of more anthropomorphic rabbits in the scene than there physically are. This lounge is also the only location we see, so the fact that the entire series takes place in this room warps and distorts the viewer's perception of time, cinematic or otherwise. Furthermore, there is the narrative undertone that it is haunted by a demonic entity, creating a sense of reality at a threshold in the room. Together, these elements create a liminal space, allowing the surrealist horror story to achieve a fuller effect.

Youtube has seen a surge of image compilations about liminal areas, showcasing the existential loneliness of this cult-status, low quality aesthetic. The ending of the Truman Show was also mentioned by some in my research, as the main character is literally crossing beyond the boundary of all he's ever known (edit below).

To the right, I've compiled photos from empty stores and hallways, as well as screenshots from the Beginner's Guide and the Stanley Parable, two Source Engine games developed by Davey Wreden. The game engine is known for its blocky, uncanny appearance, leading creators to use environments that structurally worked within these visual parameters. Unpopulated 3D worlds easily give off disorienting energy, and some renders are so realistic that without people in the image, it can be hard to tell whether it's real or not, whereas obvious clashes between lifelike textures and polygonal surfaces break this suspension of disbelief in jarring ways. This is why Grand Theft Auto, the Half Life series, the Sims series and Garry's Mod are often referenced in online liminality discourse. Their appearance subscribes to Freud's theory of the uncanny, "the strangeness of the ordinary" - appropriate as the Surrealist movement was heavily inspired by psychoanalytical theories.

2D and top-down games also interest me within this topic, because despite being in a pixel art style or existing within a parallax side-scrolling arrangement, they are designed to represent recognisable spaces, e.g. villages. Digital artist Osamu Sato's games Eastern Mind: The Lost Souls of Tong Nou and LSD: Dream Emulator, as well as Detention by Red Candle Games, show how eastern Asian influences have shaped horror as a genre. Lavender Town is a good example of how when combined with eerie music composition, video game graphics can easily manipulate the player's psyche into feeling unsettled. This track has been circulated around the internet as a meme, being converted into creepypastas (copy-pasted horror stories/urban legends) and inspiring indie horror games. This is also how JRPG (Japanese role playing game) horrors developed a cult following in the 21st century, as people saw the creepy potential in 2D games and explored them as an avenue for surreal/psychological horror.

Nods have also been made to one of my favourite manga series, Blame! by Tsutomu Nihei, who studied architecture before committing to the project. It follows main character Killy as he traverses looming apocalyptic, decaying superstructures built by machines long ago, and links to the 'grunge' aesthetic that liminal spaces appeal to online.

Internet Aesthetics

Tumblr turned out to be an unironically valuable resource for collecting qualitative data about people's interpretations of liminal space and the overall eerie aesthetic it relates to. Online 'aesthetics' are a vast topic of modern-day creative social media expression; originally meaning the study of beauty, the term was appropriated on Tumblr and in pop culture throughout the past decade, now more comonly referring to an overall means of style categorisation. Liminal space posts tend to overlap with the 'weirdcore' hashtag, an aesthetic celebrating bizarre imagery, nostalgic subjects (video games, toys, pop culture icons, cartoons, etc.), photographed using flash or in high contrast lighting if possible (simulating early camera-phone use), then distorted during editing to give a comedic surreal effect. These two overlap because they share the subtle obscure horror element, with liminal space focusing more on the emptiness of things and weirdcore focusing on the weirdness of things. They both also feed into the collective, dreamlike cultural memory of generations growing up largely in the 21st century, culminating in an aesthetic known as 'Hauntology' named after a term coined by philosopher Jacques Derrida in 1993.

'Fever dream' was another aesthetic-based hashtag that closely resembled the psych-horror media I was researching; it shares this obsession with the hauntingly familiar, as well as the unprofessional photographic and creepy post-processing approach. Fever dreams have been described as troubling, strange and emotionally intense, like extremely dialled-down nightmares. They are set within sinister atmospheres devoid of any real dynamism. I would conclude that liminal spaces are the backdrops to such dreams, which is why they are frequently mentioned together.

Thirdly, found across the internet (specifically Tumblr and Reddit) are masses of pictures correlating to a meme (online injoke) phenomenon known as 'cursed images'. My fascination with the psychological phenomena of these images relates to a wider appreciation of user-generated content as art, but to give a brief definition, a cursed image is disseminated to make the viewer ask questions about its existence. They incite the 5 W's (who, what, when, where and why) and often feel arresting to the eye because they defy unwritten rules, e.g. an empty indoor waterpark. Though the content varies wildly, from trivial object misuse to camera failures, the specific positioning of liminal spaces within this visual class is particularly interesting because of its connotations. What exactly is "cursed" about a desolate arcade or a dark basement staircase with flash? Supposedly, these images tap into the fear of the unknown due to their mysterious appearances and lack of context. There is no obvious threat, but there is also little to no chance of rationalisation, so the viewer is forced into a liminal state of low-level dread. In this way, these 'cursed images' isolate the crux of environmental psychological horror.

The poetic, temporal dimension to this aesthetic is one relating to the 'After Hours' tag, which depicts places after they've closed for the working day, eliciting a sense of tranquility. Besides the sheer ambience of emptiness, these photos capture the enigmatic appeal of isolation and nyctophilia (love of darkness/nighttime). The r/thenightfeeling subreddit more closely encourages this more comforting side of things, where solitary activities such as contemplative night drives and cityscape gazing are the photographic subjects. Below is further imagery illustrating the similarities and differences between these moods.

On Tumblr, I also found a more edited side to the weirdcore/liminal space tag, where people would harshly sharpen images, black out human forms and add text depicting violent imagery or depressing stream-of-consciousness extracts, emphasising the purpose of the post; to unsettle. These are examples of more mental illness-centred posts, depicting experiences of derealisation, dissociation, anxiety attacks, paranoia, depression and other psychological issues. This aesthetic is sometimes categorised under 'Traumacore' and links to the idea of mental liminality - not knowing who you are as a person, not feeling comfortable in your own flesh, handling change poorly, etc. I've gathered my favourite examples below, some of which use principles of glitch art, vent art and collage.

Sentiments I found relevant include:
- Not wanting to be "perceived"
- Concept of feeling "welcome"
- Subjective idea of "home"
- Not "belonging" anywhere
- Opposite of cafes, uncomfortable

Defining features of liminal spaces:
- Indoor spaces designed to resemble outdoor spaces
- Obviously artificial/manmade scenes
- Impractical design
- Subpar lighting fixtures

- Desolate/abandoned

Right: A Tumblr user sharing second-person "imagines" (Internet textposts designed to fuel daydreams) - an example of exploring liminality through creative writing.

A viral example of liminal space being appropriated through meme culture is "the backrooms". Originating in 2018 from a paranormal board on the 4chan website, this creepypasta quickly spread across the internet and was transformed by the ironic collective online sense of humour. People have made short thriller films within sandbox video games about the backrooms, analysed them through video essays and reconstructed them in games like Roblox and Minecraft (another example of games being used to emphasise subtle horror).

In the r/liminalspace subreddit, people had some very interesting discussions, personal interpretations and bites of contextual information about the images, which helped me engage with and dissect this aesthetic.

Here we once again see people connecting liminality and outdated video game graphics.

A morbid, existential slice of commentary summarising the sensation of liminality.

http://www.kenopsia.com/ is a website celebrating the emptiness of once bustling spaces. As its name and mission statement suggests, "kenopsia" is a word coined by John Koenig in his 'Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows' referring to the "emotional afterimage" of a place abandoned but remembered. He describes these locations as "hyper-empty", which is what makes liminal space photographs so eerie at their core - they are devoid of human subjects. People are often missing from our own cemented memories, but environments are prominent; school classrooms and changing rooms, playgrounds and family establishments from our childhood can take on an almost disturbing quality when revisited. When looking at or creating images of liminal spaces, one is forced to encounter a "total population in the negative", the no-man's-land that is timeless photography. This element of liminal art draws in urban exploration (Urbex) photographers, who seek out buildings left behind, but not entirely forgotten. One could even say that COVID-19 has turned places liminal, mostly during the height of hard lockdown leading establishments into lifeless states. An example of this is Court Theatre's livestream of an empty stage, allowing viewers   contemplate the drama and life that has transpired there before, now hushed and dormant. https://www.courttheatre.org/about/blog/the-liminal-space/ Kenopsia can also act as an umbrella for the eeriness of empty maps in multiplayer video games, as briefly aforementioned. No Players Online, a short horror game developed by Papercookies, runs with this idea of dead servers as its main premise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7PjipC-C3U&ab_channel=AlphaBetaGamer

Analysis & Personal Reflection

Alongside the complex nature of memory, liminal spaces bring to light the importance of context for people to feel comfortable when viewing images. This would be the "why" in the 5 W's of 'cursed' content. Places designed for the purpose of transport or temporary rest are transitory in nature - they are not designed for one to spend an extended period of time in them. Similarly, places that one has built up a lot of associated memories with suddenly stripped bare can be considered liminal, e.g. moving house. Therefore, when captured in absence of human life, they suddenly give the viewer feelings of apprehension and eerie anemoia; they are familiar deep within the subconscious, yet isolated from intended context. Waiting rooms, airport terminals, railway stations, bus stops, underground metro tunnels, car parks, shopping malls, unstocked supermarkets, newly built/vacant houses, stairwells, hotel corridors, theatres/auditoriums, arcades, hospitals, laundromats, empty pools, petrol stations, aeroplane bathrooms, extensive furniture stores such as IKEA and the motorways of Google maps are all examples of this phenomenon. This is clearly an environmental example of defamiliarisation, a surrealist art technique used to stupify the viewer and make them perceive something entirely differently to the way they usually would. Visually, the lack of human presence emphasises the vastness and structural details of environments designed to be forgettable due to function being prioritised. Our brains conceptualise the world through context, so things can easily feel off-balance when looking at images designed to perturb us; they are "context machines".

These can also be very personal - for example, a liminal space for me would be an alleyway/public path just behind the Aldi I used to live near in Reading, which was part of my daily walk to secondary school and Sixth Form. Trying to recall it reveals snippets of the chain link fencing, packaging litter beyond it, collection of damp leaves, graffiti on the concrete car park platform, the bicycle path and the small allotment adjacent to it. The difference is that because this ingrained memory is one of me walking through this alley alone, crossing maybe one or two other people, a defamiliarised version of the scene would be to inject many people into it - the exact opposite of most liminal space imagery, whilst retaining the central subject of a space used for commute. Other areas that came to mind but not discovered in my research are midnight trains and escape rooms, the former originating from recollecting my journey to my stepfamily's village in Ukraine, and the latter coming from considering entertainment venues as liminal once deserted. I also feel that the sensation of coming home and stepping into your house after a holiday, abroad or not, lies adjacent to liminal experiences.

BACKGROUNDS can be PERSONIFIED to be THREATENING.

Another example of context removal causing a feeling of liminality can be found in product packaging. Artist Chris Barret designed several Lego box backgrounds, knowing they would be covered up by text, numbers and images of Lego, yet still recognised the importance of detailed concept art. When stripped of the intended superimpositions, this Lego box art appears off in some ways.

I will explore artist responses to liminality and surreal horror in another post.

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