Architecture: The Cult Following Of Liminal Space
The original backrooms
Architectural spaces can provoke certain feelings just as human interaction does. They can represent times long gone, different periods of our lives, and situations in which we once took part or that we want to take part in. In this way, an architectural space functions in line with what it is: a container for our feelings and thoughts, from which we can recollect them again. Different from an object that more definitely radiates a use and meaning, a space is fuzzy and more open to possibilities. It is therefore no surprise that a certain genre of architectural photography has gained cult-following on the internet: photos of liminal spaces.
In the context of this new movement, liminal spaces, including so-called backrooms, are a type of emotional space that conveys a sense of nostalgia, lostness, and uncertainty. They often lack activity and purpose either because they lay unused or because they are spaces of transition - of becoming instead of being. They connect to the basic human condition of ephemerality, the notion that nothing lasts forever. As generic as liminal spaces are, they become impossible to locate and thus transcend time and place, attaining an eerie otherworldly feeling.
Wait
Consider a corridor, which is nothing in its own right, but merely leads to more important rooms. A corridor makes you wonder what will meet you in the rooms it leads to. It is this uncertainty that makes corridors widely used in horror movies where they signal that something frightening is about to happen. Who doesn’t feel at unease watching Danny roll around the corridors of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining?
Moreover, liminal space is closely linked with time. Think of that time in the early morning when you are floating in and out of sleep. Deep in the night, it seems that there are no boundaries between realities, time, space, and thoughts. Everything swirls together. Entering the liminal space between the dark and the light, you might vacillate between that boundary-free dimension and the world of form and structure. You aren’t sure where you are, what is real, and what is imagined.
Incomplete
The popularity of images of liminal spaces and backrooms originally emerged when a meme on 4chan posed the idea that if one would fall out of reality, one would end up in a maze made up of endless backrooms: an existence comprised of infinite movement without beginning or end, trapped in an eternal process that is never resolved.
The liminal space is a waiting space. You could land here for any number of reasons. Perhaps a particular event or circumstance has interrupted the life you were living and now everything is up in the air. Or maybe something is unfolding around you that will have a significant impact on your next steps. Yet you have no control over those circumstances and their timing. Or perhaps you are clear about your next steps, yet somehow you sense that now is not the time to take them.
Forgotten
The cult-following on Reddit of backrooms and liminal spaces consists of over 170,000 people sharing thoughts and images. The group describes itself with the original text of the backroom meme:
"If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you"
If you wish to get lost in the mysterious world of backrooms and liminal space check out the Reddit page.
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