The Lovely and the Liminal
You’re there now—but why? If you’ve ever forgotten why you walked into a room, you may have experienced what scientists call the doorway effect. This temporary amnesia happens when you pass through the threshold of a liminal space; scientists theorize that the brain may “reset” short-term memories when it finds itself in a new setting. Liminality is that state of being in-between: you aren’t where you were but you’re also not where you’re going. As you explore this concept, discuss with your team: what are other examples of liminal spaces and thresholds in our own lives?
Scientists measure the "doorway effect," and it supports a novel model of human memory. We have all experienced this common situation where we arrive somewhere or start to do something, but don't remember why how how we got there. We notch it up to forgetfulness or not paying attention, but there maybe something more to this. A “completely different” idea comes from a team of researchers at the University of Notre Dame. The first part of their paper’s title sums it up: “Walking through doorways causes forgetting.”
Gabriel Radvansky, Sabine Krawietz and Andrea Tamplin seated participants in front of a computer screen running a video game in which they could move around using the arrow keys. In the game, they would walk up to a table with a colored geometric solid sitting on it. Their task was to pick up the object and take it to another table, where they would put the object down and pick up a new one. Whichever object they were currently carrying was invisible to them, as if it were in a virtual backpack.
Sometimes, to get to the next object the participant simply walked across the room. Other times, they had to walk the same distance, but through a door into a new room. From time to time, the researchers gave them a pop quiz, asking which object was currently in their backpack. The quiz was timed so that when they walked through a doorway, they were tested right afterwards. As the title said, walking through doorways caused forgetting: Their responses were both slower and less accurate when they'd walked through a doorway into a new room than when they'd walked the same distance within the same room. Then, Radvansky and his colleagues tested the doorway effect in real rooms in their lab, with participants carrying items in a covered shoebox. And, the results were the same as the video game experiment.
Psychologists have known for a while that memory works best when the context during testing matches the context during learning; this is an example of what is called the encoding specificity principle. But the third experiment of the Notre Dame study shows that it's not just
the mismatching context driving the doorway effect. In this experiment (run in VR), participants sometimes picked up an object, walked through a door, and then walked through a second door that brought them either to a new room or back to the first room. If matching the context is what counts, then walking back to the old room should boost recall. It did not. So, why does it happen?
Environmental Changes Shift Your Attention: When you walk through a door into a new space, your eyes, ears, and even sense of smell pick up fresh cues: a different room temperature, new wall art, or the sound of a coffee maker in the next room.
Context Switching Breaks Memory Cues: Context create “memory triggers”, the chair you were sitting in, the music playing, or the light in the room. These cues help your brain retrieve information quickly. A door acts like a “context divider.”
Working Memory Has Limited Capacity: The APA estimates that working memory can hold only 4-5 pieces of information at once—so new cues easily push out old ones.
To overcome the doorway effect, we can try "memory encoding“ - verbalize the task, visualize the task, repeat key details. You can also try linking an object to the task, like "Seeing my notebook, I will remember to finish that email.” Transitional phrases are another way to trigger your memory: "When I enter the office, I will remember to call my friend." You can also minimize distractions so you can stay focused on the task - literally keep it in your head. Last, use objects to help you remember - phone notes, sticky notes with reminders, and to do lists. It all goes back to the progress and lists theme earlier in the curriculum! Lol!
Most films take you from one spot to another, through the lens of the camera, as stuff happens in front of you. But some “found footage” has become famous for losing the viewer in the in-between. Watch one of the most popular of these efforts, The Backrooms (2022), then discuss with your team: did it make you feel uneasy? Have you ever had a moment when you felt adrift in this way—and, if so, where?
filmmaker, visual effects artist and musician known for his web series Backrooms based on the online fiction of the same name. This first video has gotten more than 50 million views, so it is definitely something - artistic, evocative, eerie - you decide.
Plot summary: On a street in Novato, California, Kane and his friends are recording a short film, with him being the cameraman. When the director asks him to take a wider angle, Kane backs up, trips, and no-clips into the Backrooms. After wandering for a while, he discovers something stalking him, but the creature hides. Kane finds arrows drawn on the walls that guide him to a wall covered in drawings and writing. One phrase on the wall reads "don't move stay still." Suddenly, the creature that had been stalking Kane reveals itself and charges him. Kane, after fleeing from the monster, escapes through a hole in the ground that leads him to a different area of the Backrooms. While wandering, Kane finds a fire exit that leads him back into the area which he started at. Shortly after, the Lifeform finds him again, and Kane must flee again. He ends up in a narrow hallway that ends with an angled square hole in the ground. Kane hesitates to jump, and the Lifeform attacks him, making him let go of the camera. The camera then falls through the hole and ends up in the sky before landing in a suburban neighborhood. The footage is presumably discovered on September 23, 1996.
If you are one of those people that can't sleep after watching a creepy movie, you might just want to read the plot summary and skip the 9 min video.
The Backrooms (Found Footage), also known as Found Footage #1, or simply Found Footage or Backrooms, is a short film by Kane Parsons and the first episode of the Backrooms series (yes, there are more videos like this...). It stars Kane Pixels, a teenager who falls into the Backrooms and follows him on his way to escape. Kane A. Parsons (born June 18, 2005), known online as Kane Pixels, is a British-American YouTuber,
Fans have created virtual models of Backrooms paying homage to Kane. A movie is supposedly coming out and its own video game.
The Backrooms helped inspire this video game. Consider it and other games that take players into eerie landscapes, abandoned buildings, and foggy nowheres—such as Galactic Cafe’s The Stanley Parable (2013). What aspects of liminal spaces make them effective settings for these games?
The Stanley Parable is a story-based video game designed and written by developers Davey Wreden and William Pugh. In the game, the player guides a silent protagonist named Stanley alongside narration by British actor Kevan Brighting. As the story progresses, the player is confronted with diverging pathways. The player may contradict The Narrator's directions, which, if disobeyed, will be incorporated into the story. Depending on the choices made, the player will encounter different endings before the game resets to the beginning.
The player has a first-person perspective, and can travel and interact with certain elements of the environment, such as pressing buttons or opening doors, but has no combat or other action-based controls. The Narrator presents the story to the player. He explains that the protagonist Stanley is employee 427 in an office building. Stanley is tasked to monitor data coming from a computer screen and press buttons appropriately without question. One day, the screen monitoring data goes blank, which has never happened before. Stanley, unclear on what to do, begins to explore the building and discovers that the workplace is completely abandoned.
The philosopher Immanuel Kant argues that beauty is something that affects us as if it had a purpose even when it doesn’t. Beauty doesn’t need to be going anywhere. Does Kant’s thinking help us understand why people might be attracted to liminal spaces?
We also pass through shared liminal spaces in the real world: train stations (and trains!), airports, elevators. Consider the following works, then discuss with your team: in what sense does each of them depict a liminal setting?
A liminal setting is a place of transition. The word "liminal" comes from the Latin word limen, meaning "threshold." A liminal space captures that feeling of being in transition. It's a place that is defined by what it was or what it will be, rather than what it is right now. For example: Airports, hallways, stairwells, train stations, hotel lobbies. The space is often, but not always, empty of people. This absence of its usual human element creates an eerie, uncomfortable feeling. It's a place meant to be bustling, but it's silent. One work that gives me this feeling is Edward Hopper's Nighthawks (right), which gives off a feeling of familiarity and uncanniness. Additionally, often liminal spaces have an ambience that is like it is suspended in time.
As an art history student, I'm going to be editing this section of the resources. WSC has really introduced me to some interesting art pieces and concepts over this years. This year's curriculum has some WSC favorites (Turner, Yoshitoshi, and Monet) but also some new concepts. Let's get started. - Penelope
J.M.W. Turner | Rain, Steam, and Speed (1844)
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) was an English Romantic painter known as the "Painter of Light" whose groundbreaking work with color and atmosphere bridged the gap between Romanticism and modern art. In this work titled Rain, Steam and Speed, he captures a steam engine coming towards us as it crosses the Maidenhead Railway Bridge in the rain. The audience is looking east towards London as the train heads to the west. The exaggeratedly abrupt foreshortening of the viaduct, which our eye follows to the horizon, suggests the speed with which the train bursts into view through the rain. Turner lightly brushed in a hare roughly midway along the
rail track to represent the speed of the natural world in contrast to the mechanised speed of the engine. The animal is now invisible as the paint has become transparent with age, but it can be seen in an 1859 engraving of the painting. According to the artist George Leslie, who as a boy had watched Turner putting the final touches to the painting the day before it went on public exhibition in 1844, the hare, not the train, was meant to represent speed. Turner further emphasises the theme of speed by including two small details. On the river on the left, you can see a small boat and, barely visible near the right edge of the picture, a man drives a horse-drawn plough. Both the boat and the plough are examples of relatively slow, non-mechanised activity. As in The Fighting Temeraire (WSC two years ago), Turner contrasts the pre-industrial with the modern, depicting the forces of nature with brilliant lighting like we are suspended in a monumental moment.
William Powell Frith | The Railway Station (1862)
William Powell Frith (1819-1909) was an English painter who specialized in portraits and narrative scenes. He is often called the "greatest British painter of the social scene since Hogarth" for his ability to capture the energy and variety of Victorian society. Frith is best known for his large, multi-figure compositions that depict public gatherings. The painting was set in London's Paddington Station, completed a decade early; built by the great Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Paddington was a cutting-edge building, constructed from cast iron and glass and lit by gas-light. Frith and his family appear as the group in the left foreground, with his wife kissing the couple's younger son goodbye. He clutches a cricket bat and is presumably off to school for the summer term. Frith and his elder son stand behind. Beside them is a bearded man in a fur coat, modeled on a Venetian refugee nobleman, who had given lessons in Italian to Frith's daughters. He is arguing over his cab fare. Then comes a bride, bridegroom and two bridesmaids. On the right an arrest is being made, the Scotland Yard detectives were modelled by the artists John Brett and Benjamin Robert Haydon, re-enacting a well-known episode at the time. By juxtaposing the arrested forger, the happy couple, the sad family, and the busy porters, Frith creates a rich and complex narrative about life in the modern city.
.jpg)
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi | Picture of the Railroad at Takanawa (1871)
Yoshitoshi has widely been recognized as the last great master of the ukiyo-e genre of woodblock printing and painting. He is also regarded as one of the form's greatest innovators. His career spanned two eras – the last years of Edo period Japan, and the first years of modern Japan following the Meiji Restoration. Like many Japanese, Yoshitoshi was interested in new things from the rest of the world, but over time he became increasingly concerned with the loss of many aspects of traditional Japanese culture, among them traditional woodblock printing.
The print is formally known as Picture of the Railroad at Takanawa (Takanawa tetsudō no zu). It's a landmark piece that captures a pivotal moment in Japan's modernization. This was one of the first railways in Japan, a powerful symbol of the country's embrace of Western technology and its "opening" to the world. The train itself was not drawn from life. Yoshitoshi based it on an engraving of an American locomotive from the Illustrated London News. The inscription on the side of the carriage reads "US MAUS," a misrendering of the original engraving's "U.S. MAIL". The scene is a fascinating cultural mix. While the train and the passengers' Western attire represent the new, the small boats in the water are modeled after Venetian gondolas, adding another layer of Western influence. This is all set against the familiar Japanese coastal landscape, giving it a slight strange and interesting vibe.
Claude Monet | Gare Saint-Lazare (1877)
While most people are familiar with his landscapes (lilies, water, bridges, lady with parasol), the Gare Saint-Lazare train station series is also among his celebrated works. In the 1870s, the train station was a symbol of the Industrial Revolution and the modernization of Paris, which was being dramatically rebuilt by Baron Haussmann. The Gare Saint-Lazare was the largest and busiest terminus in the city, a hub of activity connecting Paris to the suburbs and the coast of Normandy. Like Turner, he was fascinated by its atmosphere: the steam, the smoke, the light filtering through the glass roof, and the constant movement and likely even saw Turner's work at the National Gallery.
More than a place of bustling activity, Monet also knew this place personally. He had known the station since childhood as it was the Paris terminal for trains to Normandy, where he grew up. It also served trains to many of the key Impressionist sites west of Paris, including Bougival and Argenteuil, where he had previously lived. In late 1871 Monet had also rented a small apartment just a single block from the station’s main entrance. In this painting, the dark angular lines of the roof’s girders contrast with the random patterns formed by the vapour and smoke. By including the closed roof at the top of the picture, Monet has turned the conventions of landscape upside down – the light and clouds associated with an open sky are contained inside a distinctly modern structure made of glass and iron. True to the Impressionist mission, Monet was not interested in painting a detailed, topographical record of the station. He was interested in capturing a fleeting moment—the way the steam from the locomotives combined with the sunlight and shadows under the great glass canopy.
Yilan Folk Song | “Drip, Drip, Drip” (c. 1924)
"Diǔ-diǔ Tóng-á" is one of Taiwan's most cherished and recognizable folk songs. It is a children's song originating from the Yilan region in northeastern Taiwan. The song is celebrated for its simple, cheerful melody and its playful onomatopoeic lyrics, which vividly depict the experience of a train passing through a dripping tunnel. The lyrics are in the Taiwanese Hokkien dialect. It's an onomatopoeic expression, representing the sound of water drops falling from the tunnel ceiling onto the train, a sound like "a coin that's flipping onto a surface". Even though it sounds like a children's folksong, it has a deep connection with the locals of Yilan, who remember that era as a time of turmoil and change between Japanese colonial rule and Nationalist China rule.
Steve McCurry | Train Station, Agra, 1983 (1983)
Steve McCurry is best known for his evocative colour photographs that document social issues in wider global geopolitics. All of us have probably seen his iconic work, The Afghan Girl, which was featured on the cover of National Geographic in 1985.
Whilst recovering from an infection, McCurry read Paul
Theroux’s ‘The Great Railway Bazaar’ (1975), piquing his interest in the Indian Rail network. In 1983 he subsequently undertook a five-month rail journey from the ancient Khyber Pass in Pakistan, through northern India to Chittagong in Bangladesh, and then southeast along the network build under British colonial rule.
McCurry described the moment as a chance encounter. While on assignment for National Geographic documenting a train journey across South Asia, he was walking near the tracks and was amazed to see the Taj Mahal behind the rail yard. McCurry recognised the steam train as a symbol of Indian national culture. (Slumdog Millionaire, The Lion) He waited, and suddenly workers began moving the steam locomotives, creating the composition he captured. McCurry was entranced by the chaos of the stations and photographed the vast diversity of life passing through the huge transport hubs. “The station is a theatre, and everything imaginable happens on its stage”, he has said, “there is nothing the trains haven’t observed”.
Richard Artschwager | Six in Four (2015)
Richard Artschwager (1923–2013) was an American painter, sculptor, and conceptual artist whose career spanned over five decades. His whose unique work bridged the worlds of Pop, Minimalism, and Conceptual art. His primary aim was to create "categorical confusion," exploring the deceptive nature of pictorial illusionism and the structures of perception itself . He once summarized his unique goal by saying, "Sculpture is for the touch, painting is for the eye. I wanted to make a sculpture for the eye and a painting for the touch".
He was born in Washington, D.C., to a German immigrant botanist father and a Ukrainian-born Jewish mother who was an amateur artist. He studied chemistry and mathematics at Cornell University but was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1944 . He served in Europe during World War II and was wounded at the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, he returned to Cornell, earning a BA in physics in 1948 . He then moved to New York City, studying art for a year under the Purist painter Amédée Ozenfant. To support his family, he held a series of jobs, including as a bank clerk, lathe operator, and baby photographer. In 1953, he started a successful
business designing and manufacturing simple, modern furniture. In 1958, a devastating fire destroyed his entire woodworking shop . Using leftover industrial materials from the fire, he began constructing sculptures, marking his definitive return to making art.
July 2015: Four elevators designed by Richard Artschwager (1923–2013) bring visitors into contact with art as soon as they enter the Whitney Museum. Each is an immersive installation featuring one or more of the six subjects that occupied Artschwager's imagination for decades: door, window, table, basket, mirror, and rug. Titled Six in Four, the elevators are the artist’s last major work, and the only permanent commission in the new building and finished after he passed away.
If you’ve ever gone to the doctor, the odds are good you’ve sat in a room waiting for someone to call your name. With your team, explore the architecture of waiting. How can a waiting room decrease anxiety (or amplify it)? How would you design waiting rooms differently for different purposes?
The authors shares personal experience going through various waiting rooms in Germany and reading two new books on the architecture of antechambers and atriums, both a kind of ‘antespace’ – a concept historian Helmut Puff develops in The Antechamber: Toward a History of Waiting. ‘Antespace’ denotes built environments where ‘architecture becomes experiential in a processual manner’, where ‘mobility and immobility converge’.
In his ‘history of waiting’, we learn how European architecture – mainly aristocratic residences, but also the homes of the ‘middling classes’ in Baroque Rome and of the bourgeoise in eighteenth-century Paris – renovated perceptions of time and space. Between 1500 and 1800, corridors, vestibules and nested rooms proliferated; the inner sanctum of daily life was increasingly walled off from dedicated places of circulation and service. These antechambers entwine space and time in their very name: they are rooms you enter on your way to other rooms, where events occur that preface what’s to come. In perhaps his most intriguing idea, Puff claims that actively waiting in anticipation of a meeting is ‘an integral part of sociality in stratified societies, whether at court or in urban communities’. Finally people got tired of excessive waits as proof of ‘unjust rule’ in medieval and early modern Europe, spelling the beginning of the antechamber’s demise.
In Atrium, Charles Rice tracks how the atrium’s popularity accompanied a change in the practice of architecture during the 1970s and 80s. The story begins circa 1961, when New York building codes granted ‘floor area bonuses’ to commercial developments in exchange for publicly accessible space. Built on a court model, the atrium redefined the relationship between public and private – the form made private buildings into de facto retaining walls, which enclosed a quasi-public void, often ‘interiorscaped’ with plants and gardens. More than an arrangement of the visible, atriums are perhaps best observed as an ordering of negative space. It comes as no surprise to the author that Google purchased the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago in 2022. The tech company’s intention to refashion this iconic 1985 building and its 17-storey atrium into an environmentally friendly home for a ‘flexible, hybrid workforce’ encapsulates Rice’s argument.
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and global lockdowns, when many of us spent months isolated in rooms – and as quasi-public environments like atriums become depopulated or repurposed in the era of hybrid work – these spaces gained a certain visibility through obsolescence.
When you’re sitting in a waiting room, you don’t know exactly when your turn will come, and that uncertainty can make you nervous. Scientists say that when we’re unsure about what’s next, our bodies release a stress hormone called cortisol. This hormone makes your heart beat faster and your palms sweaty. Waiting rooms can make this worse if they’re not designed well. In waiting rooms, colors are chosen carefully to help people relax. For example, blue is often used because it reminds people of the sky or water, which feels soothing. Green is another great choice because it’s linked to nature, like trees and grass, and it can make you feel peaceful. Bright colors like red or orange might look fun, but they can make you feel more alert or even stressed, so they’re not the best for waiting rooms. A study found that people in a blue waiting room felt calmer than those in a red one. Hospitals and clinics often use soft colors to keep patients from feeling too nervous.
Furniture in waiting rooms should be cozy but not too soft, so you don’t feel like you’re sinking into a couch forever. The layout matters too. If chairs are crammed too close together, you might feel like you have no personal space, which can make you anxious. A good waiting room has chairs spaced out just right, with tables for magazines or even a small play area for kids. Some waiting rooms have round tables or curved seating areas because these shapes feel friendlier than sharp corners.
Scientists have found that soft, slow music, like classical or nature sounds, can lower your heart rate and make you feel calmer. Some waiting rooms play sounds like birds chirping or waves crashing to remind you of being outdoors, which feels peaceful. Other elements like technology, lighting and smell can also impact the overall experience. Now, maybe this waiting room psychology is not as relevant as most people spend time on their phones and ignore all that is around them.
In recent years, the popular meaning of the word “liminal” has expanded to include more of the not-quite-right and not-quite-there. Consider the following pieces and then discuss with your team: is it fair to describe them as liminal works? Or are we using the term liminal too loosely?
Paul Gauguin | Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897-98)
Paul Gauguin was a French painter, sculptor, and printmaker whose bold experiments with color and symbolism were pivotal to the development of modern art. He is now famous for his vivid, often idyllic paintings of Tahiti. Gauguin was born in Paris in 1848, amidst the tumult of Europe's revolutionary year. In 1850, Gauguin's family settled in Peru, where he experienced a privileged childhood to the age of six, that left a lasting impression on him. Later, financial struggles led them back to France, where Gauguin received formal education. Initially working as a stockbroker, Gauguin started painting in his spare time, his interest in art kindled by visits to galleries and exhibitions. The financial crisis of 1882 significantly impacted his brokerage career, prompting a shift to full-time painting. By 1890, Gauguin had conceived the project of making Tahiti his next artistic destination. His avowed intent was to escape European civilization and "everything that is artificial and conventional".
The story of this painting: In the winter of 1897, Gauguin experienced a psychological crisis. He had left France for Tahiti six years prior, hoping to discover an unspoiled tropical paradise in the French colony, where he could live affordably and advance his art. Instead, he was frustrated by the modernity he witnessed, quarreled with French colonial authorities, struggled financially, and endured a steep mental and physical decline. At a time of heightened personal hardship, Gauguin explored fundamental questions concerning the nature and meaning of life in this monumental painting—the largest he ever attempted—an ambitious effort in decorative mural painting, no doubt made with an eye to his artistic legacy. In fact, it was created in Tahiti during a period of immense personal turmoil—he was ill, impoverished, and grief-stricken by the death of his favorite daughter. He intended the painting to be his final testament, planning to commit suicide upon its completion (an attempt he made but survived).
In his letters, Gauguin described the composition proceeding from right to left, beginning with the sleeping infant and ending with the huddled figure of “an old woman nearing death.” Near center, an androgynous standing figure reaches for a piece of fruit. A blue idol with arms symmetrically outstretched atop a pedestal, Gauguin suggested, “indicates the Beyond.” While not planned for integration within a specific architectural setting, Gauguin did intend this decorative painting to “look like a mural,” requesting it be exhibited in a simple white frame. The painting’s yellow corners—one bearing an inscription (now the work’s title) in French, and the other his signature—Gauguin felt, made the painting appear “like a fresco whose corners are spoiled with age, and which is attached to a golden wall.” His smooth paint application and choice of a coarse and heavy burlap support further emphasized the painting’s fresco-like effect. The questions posed in the title and indeed in the painting itself are perennial concerns about the human condition that continue to resonate with viewers today: origins, identity, purpose, and destiny.
Is it fair to describe this as a liminal work? Even though this is an artistic masterpiece, there are conflicts in the theme itself as it portrays an idealistic Westernized version of a tropical paradise - that make it just a bit off. He believed that non-Western cultures held a purity and spiritual authenticity lost to the industrialized West. This belief, while producing powerful art, was also a romanticized fantasy that projected European ideas onto other cultures .
Rene Magritte | The Treachery of Images (1929)
Belgian painter René Magritte was a creator of some of the 20th century’s most extraordinary surrealist images. He was known for his witty, thought-provoking images and his use of simple graphics and everyday imagery. He became well known for creating images that challenge observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality by depicting ordinary objects in unusual contexts.
This painting shows a meticulously rendered image of a pipe with the caption, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”). Magritte challenges the viewer’s assumptions about representation—although it looks like a pipe, it’s merely a depiction of one. He forces us to consider the gap between language, image, and reality, laying the groundwork for much of conceptual and postmodern art.
Magritte painted several variations on this theme. In another version, the pipe is floating in mid-air. He also painted works where the text and image have more complex, nonsensical relationships, further exploring the gap between words and things.
Andrew Wyeth | Christina’s World (1948)
Andrew Wyeth was one of the most renowned and beloved American painters of the 20th century, known for his realistic and deeply evocative depictions of the people and landscapes of his rural life in Pennsylvania and Maine. Set in the stark landscape of coastal Maine, Christina’s World depicts a young woman seen from behind, wearing a pink dress and lying in a grassy field. Although she appears to be in a position of repose, her torso, propped on her arms, is strangely alert; her silhouette is tense, almost frozen, giving the impression that she is fixed to the ground. She stares at a distant farmhouse and a group of
outbuildings, ancient and grayed in harmony with the dry grass and overcast sky. Wyeth’s neighbor Anna Christina Olson inspired the composition, which is one of four paintings by Wyeth in which she appears. As a young girl, Olson developed a degenerative muscle condition—possibly polio—that left her unable to walk. She refused to use a wheelchair, preferring to crawl, as depicted here, using her arms to drag her lower body along. “The challenge to me,” Wyeth explained, “was to do justice to her extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless.”The high level of detail Wyeth gave to every object in his paintings encourages intense inspection, but his titles reveal the inner significance of their outwardly straightforward subjects. The title Christina’s World, courtesy of Wyeth’s wife, indicates that the painting is more a psychological landscape than a portrait, a portrayal of a state of mind rather than a place.
M. C. Escher | Ascending and Descending (1960)
The artwork is a brilliant artistic implementation of the Penrose stairs, an impossible object conceived by the mathematician Roger Penrose. The lithograph depicts a surreal, improbable world atop a large building. Its most striking feature is a never-ending staircase that forms a perfect rectangle on the roof . Two lines of identically dressed, hooded figures—reminiscent of monks from an unknown sect—populate the stairs . One line trudges endlessly upward, while the other marches perpetually downward, locked in a futile, eternal ritual.
This is an example of a liminal space because it exists outside the realm of reality. It suggests a situation that is seemingly realistic and shows a disconnection with the world, going from one place to another, but never fully arriving.
Gregory Crewdson | Beneath the Roses (2004)
If a picture represents a thousands words, Crewdson's photographs are a movie in itself. They are like trailers that triggers your imagination to a world that seems so intense yet surreal.
Shot over approximately five years, the Beneath the Roses represents an ambitious fusion of fine art photography and Hollywood-style film production. In these pointedly theatrical yet intensely real panoramic images, Crewdson explores the recesses of the American psyche and the disturbing dramas at play within quotidian environments. Critics have described the photographs as revealing "the claustrophobic limbo and abyss of spiritual repression that is the typical suburb," where "hushed-up violence, alienation, isolation, and emptiness are nothing new or unfamiliar, but rather part of the everyday neighbourhood experience"
In Beneath the Roses, anonymous townscapes, forest clearings and broad, desolate streets are revealed as sites of mystery and wonder; similarly, ostensibly banal interiors become the staging grounds for strange human scenarios. In one image a lone and pregnant woman stands on a wet street corner just before dawn: she is a small but a portentous still point in a world of trajectories. On a stormy night in another nondescript town, a man in a business suit stands beside his car, holding out a hand to the cleansing water in apparent mystification. In a plush bedroom, a man and a woman—prototypes of middle-class American dislocation—are visited by a songbird, who gazes at the woman from its perch on the vanity. Crewdson’s scenes are tangibly atmospheric: visually alluring and often deeply disquieting. Never anchored precisely in time or place, these and the other narratives of Beneath the Roses are rather located in the dystopic landscape of the anxious
American imagination. The series positions Crewdson within a rich artistic lineage including Edward Hopper (for the mood of American alienation), David Lynch (for the unsettling suburbia), Alfred Hitchcock (for the cinematic suspense), and Federico Fellini (for the gestural flourish and moral commentary on societal decay). And in the end-like film at its best-Crewdson’s fictions, elaborately staged and plotted though they may be, convey an experience that is intensely real.
Camille Seaman | The Distant is Imminent (2020)
Photographer Camille Seaman believes in capturing images that articulate that humans are not separate from nature. Born to a Native American father and African American mother, Camille’s sense of connection with nature stems from growing up in the Shinnecock Indian Nation on Long Island, New York, and the influence of her grandfather.
Meant to be projected on the walls of cities most threatened by rising sea waters, a line in Seaman's video depicts where the water level would be in that particular location in 2050, if no action is taken to curb climate change – viscerally showing that while icebergs melting away might feel distant and abstract, it is indeed imminent and personal. A living artwork, the piece initially covers four locations (more to be added in the coming months) – New York City, Tokyo, Amsterdam and Limerick, where the artist resides.
To be in-between is to pass through a space where the normal rules of movement, time, and social interaction are suspended—but only briefly, on the way to elsewhere. But what happens if you’re stuck in such a place? As you explore the selections below, consider: how should we approach spending time in liminal spaces? Should we do more to seek them out?
Waiting for Godot is a tragicomedy play written by Samuel Beckett, an Irish writer from Dublin, first published in 1952 by Les Éditions de Minuit. It is one of the strangest and most mesmerizing modern plays in history. The two main characters, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo) spend their days waiting for someone named Godot, who they believe will provide them salvation. They also encounter two other characters, Pozzo, a merchant, and his servant Lucky. They pass the time through conversations, philosophical musings, and physical routines, but their hope fades as Godot never arrives. This repetition of actions and tangential dialogue suggests the cyclical nature waiting for divine providence. I highly recommend reading the whole play (it’s quite short) so that you can understand the themes and the story better. Waiting for Godot challenges what characters should do on stage, as well as raises questions on religion, reality, and mortality, perpetually waiting for the inevitable.
Samuel Beckett | Waiting for Godot, Scene 2 (1953)
Pablo Neruda | “Keeping Still” (1958)
This poem by Pablo Neruda, a Chilean poet. (fyi if you have done WSC in the past you might recognize him as Daniel’s favorite poet lol) The poem incapsulates themes of staying still in a world that’s constantly rushing. As life passes by, we often lose track of the present when we are all looking towards the future. Neruda poses a solution: if we just stop and stay in the present, maybe the sadness and threats of the future and death would become silent. Yet, there is a twist at the last stanza; by writing, “Now I will count up to twelve and you keep quiet and I will go,” Counting up to twelve references the twelve months of a year, and Neruda highlights how we now live in a society where the status quo is to keep “going,” to the point where it seems socially impossible to stop and “keep quiet.”
Philippe Orreindy | I'll Wait for the Next One... (2002)
This is quite an interesting short film that subdues expectations. Set in France, the main character, a woman, sets foot onto a subway where a man expresses his frustration towards not being able to find a girlfriend even though in France there are about 5 million single women. He continues to advertise himself and states that whoever is interested in dating him should get off at the next platform. The woman, hopeful of new opportunity, gets off of the subway only to be hit with the line: “Miss, it was a sketch!” This short film highlights the space between hope and reality – the subway acts as this middle ground, suspending the woman on the cliffs of optimism and anticipation only to be dropped down into the ravine of realization.
Marcel Ayme | “The Man Who Could Walk through Walls” (1941)
This short story French novelist and playwright Ayme follows a man named Dutilleul, a clerk in the Registration Ministry, who one day discovers that he can walk through walls. After going to the doctor and getting pills that can fix his problem. However, after taking one, he leaves it in a drawer and forgets about it. The story continues as Dutilleul uses his powers to annoy his mean boss into insanity, commit robberies with the pseudonym “The Lone Wolf,” and escaping from jail. One day, he decides to break his cycle of committing crimes and chooses to lay low. There, he becomes friends with a painter named Gen Paul, who recognizes him as the infamous thief. Additionally, he meets a blonde beauty who happens to be married to a dangerous and jealous man who locks her in her room. Yet, this does not deter Dutilleul, who uses his ability to walk through walls to meet up with the blonde beauty. One day, when Dutilleul finally chooses to elope with the blonde beauty, he had a terrible headache and
decides to take some pills to not let something so trivial make him miss his rendezvous. However, as he went through the wall, only then did he realize the pills he took were the pills prescribed to him by the doctor to counteract his abilities. Now halfway stuck in the wall, there was nothing else for Dutilleul to do as he is stuck in a perpetual state of inaction. This story’s main theme is of pride and greed, and to not let your arrogance and hubris get to the best of you.
Aymé's genius lies in presenting the utterly fantastic as if it were perfectly ordinary. The story is told with a deadpan, matter-of-fact narration that makes the absurd premise feel real and humorous . It's a blend of "anarchic comedy" and moments of unexpected pathos. While not a strict surrealist, Aymé masterfully uses surreal and absurd situations to expose deeper human truths and social dynamics, blending realism with "grotesque fantasy".
Amor Towles | A Gentleman in Moscow (Excerpt) (2019)
This excerpt is taken from the novel A Gentleman in Moscow, capturing the social upheaval in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, as a Russian aristocrat is condemned to spend the rest of his life inside Moscow's famed Metropol Hotel, an art noveau landmark that is as stately and behind the rapidly-changing times as he. The excerpt Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, the aristocrat that is confined to the Metropol Hotel. As he returns from his daily, escorted walks in the Red Square, he is informed that he will be moving from his grand hotel suite to the empty servant’s quarters. Though optimistic about the downgrade, the Count recalls his life with his grandmother prior to living in the Metropol Hotel. When the Tsar was executed, the Count chose to let his grandmother escape whilst he remained in the family estate and take on the consequences of the Revolution. Throughout this excerpt as he chooses which prized possessions to bring to his new room, he imparts us with an important message: whilst these possessions may hold memories of loved ones and bring us solace, “but, of course, a thing is just a thing.”
This is probably one of my favorite readings that WSC has this year, so be sure to check it out after reading the summary – Penelope
Some people put on a little music when they’re talking with someone else, or when they’re eating dinner—just to fill the room with a certain kind of background sound. Ambient music is designed to do exactly that, without needing you to focus on it—and it’s a newer genre than you might think. Consider the examples below, beginning with composer Brian Eno’s effort to make airports less stressful, and then discuss with your team: should we be playing more ambient music and fewer pop songs, podcasts, and YouTube videos when the goal is just to keep away the quiet? Or is ambient music best reserved for liminal spaces—is it, in fact, music for airports?
Brian Eno | Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1979)
Brian Eno is an English musician, songwriter, record producer, and sound designer. He helped introduce unconventional concepts and approaches to contemporary music. This studio album Ambient 1: Music for airports was the first Eno album labeled ambient music (think Lofi Girl or white noise). This album is intended to induce calm and a space to think, with the intent of defusing the anxious atmosphere of an airport terminal. Music for Airports is credited for defining the ambient genre.
Hiroshi Yoshimura | Music for Nine Postcards (1982)
Hiroshi Yoshiumra was a Japanese musician and composer, known as a pioneer of ambient music in Japan. His music lies within the genre of kankyō ongaku, or environment music. Music for Nine Post Cars is his debut studio album, which is home-recorded with a keyboard and Fender Rhodes. Yoshimura states that he was inspired by “the movement of clouds, the shade of a tree in summertime, the sound of rain, the snow in a town.” Critics’ response to the album said that, “The effect is multidimensional: melancholy, wistful, invigorating, consoling.”
Max Richter | Sleep (2015)
Max Richter is a British composer and pianist, working within postminimalist and contemporary classical styles. Sleep is an eight-and-a-half-hour concept album based on the neuroscience of sleep. It is targeted to fit a full night's rest. It was released alongside with one-hour versions with variations, From Sleep.
