Between Worlds: An Exploration of Liminality

Dreams are liminal spaces.

Dreams are representations of familiar existences that upon retrospect slightly deviate from reality, which generates a sense of horror immeasurable in capacity precisely because of our inability to pinpoint where went wrong.

Let's look at why it’s surreal instead of un-real – it is “supposed” to be real; yet something feels vaguely off. This sort of intermediate, almost-but-not-quite space characterizes, psychologically and physically, the sensations of transition in our lives, be it the rite of passage of aging or natural social development. Its allure lies in its almost-ness, its inexactitude in the resemblance to familiarity and custom. The reason why we are so bewitched by liminality is our entrenched familiarity with the feeling it evokes – nostalgia, deja vu, hazy, seemingly reachable yet unreachable dreams. This psychological surrealness encloses the spaces in which we often find ourselves - early morning airports where the expected rush and gush of people are nowhere to be found; scintillating poolrooms where no swimmers or splatter of water are to be seen (yet is filled with empty swim rings).

Liminality encodes the quality of “disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage,” which echoes the pseudo-reality of an almost space. An almost space embodies the impostor syndrome we associate with emotions of transitional anxiety as a result of the tentative, disconcerting nature of metamorphosis.

Liminal spaces really is a generational reflection of reality itself. Societies are on the cusp of transitions; humans undergo corporal and societal evolutions (familial statuses, roles in society, relations to others, etc.); businesses face progression and the pressure for such progression to be interminable and gapless. The plethoric variations of physical and psychological reality impels transition without designating a destination of such transition. This creates a void. Liminal spaces capture this void and translate it to visual tactility. What adds to its relatability is the expectation of realness. The expectation of being (poolrooms and office rooms that are supposed to be real, for example). We are often met with inborn expectations of "being" (e.g., as corporate success, model parent, perfect student) despite remaining imposters. We splatter ourselves across the canvases with which we are variously thrown to produce the artifact of reality that only ourselves can identify as fraudulent. Hence the horror of liminal spaces.

This is also why every path in the liminal space seems right: We could theoretically take any turns in a backroom. There is no right answer. We are transitioning without a destination. This could create a space for anxiety but also a space for immeasurable possibility. Translating that anxiety into impetus for venture, however, is often thwarted by our existential anxiety and the self-inflicted need to “exit,” which throttles the adventurous spirit inbred in our inner child (interestingly, also why in some backroom video games, the attempt to exit would trigger the monstrous entity). Liminal spaces are nostalgic by nature as they speak to a part of us long ago – when the expectation of “being” has not struck us and this existential void has yet to cloud our spaces.