Liminal spaces are so major
Market Square shopping centre is Geelong’s equivalent to a dead mall. It remains operational, but barely. As you tour the Ground Floor, past the JB Hi-Fi, you eventually run out of functioning shops. The rest are permanently closed behind steel roller doors. Cotton On, once considered the jewel in Market Square’s crown, is the latest loss, leaving the centre gutted.
But it’s the upper floor that feels properly haunted. A yawning Harris Scarfe. A Lincraft decomposing behind the escalator. A yellowing Mind Games crammed with boxes and Pop Vinyls. I guess it’s not cool enough to sit on the ground floor, with the Typo and the Boost Juice. Anyway, the Westfield across the road has the really trendy brands.
My favourite liminal space
One day I told my boyfriend I was ‘really getting into liminal spaces’. The other day, he sent me a picture of the upstairs floor. ‘This morning I was really feeling that itch to visit a liminal space,’ he said. ‘So I went to our favourite one.’
Pictured: the author with their niche interest
He was joking, because we’d just spent five hours stranded at an airport in the Whitsundays. As we waited for news on our delayed flight, I caught myself telling Mum ‘it might be my favourite liminal space’, which I knew wasn’t true. Proserpine Airport doesn’t feel like a real liminal space. At least, not at first. It’s too comfortable; abundant natural light, an aquarium populated with the cast of Finding Nemo, and a café with cheerful neon signage. Wait long enough, and you’ll feel the tremors of disquiet. The ceiling fans, as wide as plane propellers, whirring overhead. The fish doing loop-de-loops in their prison, while some kid presses his snotty face up to the glass – ‘look Mummy, a Nemo!’ – and the disappointing realisation that the café has run out of the more fortifying sandwiches, and you have a choice between hot chips and sugar tomato sauce, or a handful of miscellaneous chocolate bars for lunch.
Still, I’d rather disassociate to the warm ambience of Brian Eno’s Music for Airports in sunny Proserpine than the grey and bustling Melbourne Airport, even if the latter is a truly haunting liminal space.
What makes a liminal space so…liminal?
So this raises the question: if a liminal space is pleasant to be in, is it still a liminal space?
I think we can agree that medical waiting rooms are the worst kind of liminal space. The chance to ruminate on your ailments in an antiseptic room with the TV turned to some nothing channel. Only airports and shopping centres feel glamorous, or at least ✨aesthetic✨ because they imply travel and expenditure.
But my dentist recently renovated her clinic. The doorways now have rounded corners. There’s a white, rippled desk in the foyer that looks like it belongs in a hotel lobby. When I lie back in the dentist’s chair, I find myself looking at the blue and white koi fish wallpapered onto the ceiling. I end up praising my dentist for her interior design choices and getting inordinately excited by the fluoride paste being rubbed over my teeth (it helps prevent cavities. It’s also a sign that my check-up is over).
Liminal spaces can feel eerie or dreamlike, evoke feelings of melancholy or nostalgia, or be a transitional place.
There is some debate over what a liminal space technically is. The general consensus is that it should:
have an eerie or dreamlike atmosphere
inspire feelings of melancholy or nostalgia
be a place of transition, a place you visit en route to somewhere else.
However, your experience of a liminal space can be enhanced by:
the space being devoid of people, when you would expect it to be populated, or
having an ✨aesthetic✨ appeal.
Liminal spaces as an ✨aesthetic✨ experience
For me, this idea of liminal spaces being an ✨aesthetic✨ or visually-appealing experience began after learning about The Backrooms lore. The Backrooms is a mythical space featured in scary stories (also known as creepypastas) online, a constantly shifting labyrinth of office spaces, fluorescent lighting, yellowing hallways and swimming pools. There are no other humans to be found, but there may be the occasional monster.
The Backrooms are set in an endless maze of yellowing wallpaper and fluorescent lights
I find The Backrooms so appealing because, in the video games set there, you walk through every conceivable kind liminal space. The phrase I keep coming back to is ‘urban gothic’. Liminal spaces tend to be commercial. They can be places we work in, or reluctantly waste time in. We recognise them. And maybe there is a kind of pleasure in watching them fall into disrepair.
But back to Market Square. I’m considering taking my boyfriend there for a Halloween date. Dead malls are one of the few liminal spaces that also feel romantic (my other favourites include train stations and run-down cinemas). We could wander around the upper floor like two ghouls, washed-out and gaunt under the fluorescent lights. Vibing to vaporwave. Reminiscing over the stall that used to be Jay Jays, where 14-year-old me blew their pocket money on official Adventure Time and Sesame Street merchandise.