How liminalism became the defining aesthetic
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Re: How liminalism became the defining aesthetic
#72“How a popular movie confirms my priors”
Re: How liminalism became the defining aesthetic
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, for places metro stations/gyms it's more of a maintenance and hygiene thing rather than an aesthetic. I'm currently in Paris so I've seen a ton of metro stations recently and really, unless you arrived in the dead of night so that you could snap an empty photo like the one in the article, there's nothing much liminal about them. A space can't be liminal if it's packed with people, buskers, beggars, dogs, etc. I…
Unless all those people are transfixed into their own isolated, smartphone-mediated experience, as they are likely to be these days, then it's arguably "liminal" again. I.e. a lonely, deserted and uncanny place. A Nina Simone song comes to mind: everyone's gone... to the moon...
I'm on a metro right now, it's full of conversation and there was even an accordion player in my previous train.
Re: How liminalism became the defining aesthetic
#74It’s some memes. No one is intentionally designing architecture with bare beige walls and flickering tube lights.
Also, most of the images in the article don’t actually invoke the liminal spaces feeling.
Re: How liminalism became the defining aesthetic
#75Calling liminalism the "defining" aesthetic of our time is a bit much (though I get the article is trying to hitch its wagon to the Backrooms, aka the "current popular thing"). It's an aesthetic microniche, about as popular as vaporwave, or cyberpunk, grunge, or Y2K (think flip phones, bulky plastic cameras, etc.). There's a ton of these, and some are surprising: for example, there's even been a relatively recent rev…
Liminialism is way way more popular these days than cyberpunk or anything like that. Please go talk to a group of teenagers if you don't believe me.
Re: How liminalism became the defining aesthetic
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, for places metro stations/gyms it's more of a maintenance and hygiene thing rather than an aesthetic. I'm currently in Paris so I've seen a ton of metro stations recently and really, unless you arrived in the dead of night so that you could snap an empty photo like the one in the article, there's nothing much liminal about them. A space can't be liminal if it's packed with people, buskers, beggars, dogs, etc. I…
> I'm currently in Paris so I've seen a ton of metro stations recently and really, unless you arrived in the dead of night so that you could snap an empty photo like the one in the article, there's nothing much liminal about them. Liminal does not mean minimal. It means in-between, neither here nor there but in the interstices, transitional. Dictionary.app in macOS Sequoia defines (with example usage) "liminal" as >…
The very usage you bring up is a whimsical metaphorical one: "I was in the liminal space between past and present". We are all in this liminal space because we are all trapped between the past and the present.
Like many things throughout history, I strongly suspect it means whatever the author means.
Re: How liminalism became the defining aesthetic
#77I know the trend from the LiminalSpace subreddit. It's nice to scroll through, peaceful yet slightly unsettling. But I think a lot of that effect comes less from the physical "in-between-ness" of the spaces and more from the fact that they are places you would expect to have people, but which don't. The article notes this but only in passing. You never see a photo of a busy corridor, for example. They are always empt…
Maybe I'm slightly projecting my European sensitivities here, but I think there is more going on there than just the emptiness. There is a common theme that the spaces depicted are, on their own, quite unpleasant (barren, made from flimsy materials, probably emitting some amount of toxic fumes); it's just that this unpleasantness is normally masked by their human use and interpretation, which invariably some form of…
This is more or less my thoughts as well. Walking around the exterior of Nymphenburg Palace even when empty would not be very emotional at all.
Walking around a modern suburban development devoid of people, houses, pets, etc. would be at least unusual in the feeling. The spaces are intentionally designed to put people and their things within obvious boundaries. With the boundaries still there but lacking the things within them it becomes quite a different experience.
Re: How liminalism became the defining aesthetic
#78Calling liminalism the "defining" aesthetic of our time is a bit much (though I get the article is trying to hitch its wagon to the Backrooms, aka the "current popular thing"). It's an aesthetic microniche, about as popular as vaporwave, or cyberpunk, grunge, or Y2K (think flip phones, bulky plastic cameras, etc.). There's a ton of these, and some are surprising: for example, there's even been a relatively recent rev…
All of the ones you list have one thing in common: They have at least some root in nostalgia.
Re: How liminalism became the defining aesthetic
#79I know the trend from the LiminalSpace subreddit. It's nice to scroll through, peaceful yet slightly unsettling. But I think a lot of that effect comes less from the physical "in-between-ness" of the spaces and more from the fact that they are places you would expect to have people, but which don't. The article notes this but only in passing. You never see a photo of a busy corridor, for example. They are always empt…
Maybe I'm slightly projecting my European sensitivities here, but I think there is more going on there than just the emptiness. There is a common theme that the spaces depicted are, on their own, quite unpleasant (barren, made from flimsy materials, probably emitting some amount of toxic fumes); it's just that this unpleasantness is normally masked by their human use and interpretation, which invariably some form of…
I think classic liminal esthetic would also include empty swimming pools, resorts etc. It doesn't need to be barren or cheap, could be relatively luxurious, but needs to be late Modernist as a base - i.e. mass produced and devoid of conscious symbolism or ornamentation.
Re: How liminalism became the defining aesthetic
#80Interesting article, but calling it THE defining aesthetic of our time feels a bit sensational.
"our particular slice of dystopian late capitalism." Did not call it the aesthetic of our time since the term was first used for post world war I economies. We must be in late-to-its-own-funeral capitalism.
A ton of liminal space photos are of Soviet era stuff, especially brutalist architecture.