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Liminal Thoughts
Jun. 18th, 2023 09:05 pmContrapoints does extra videos for her patreon that are less structured and sort of rambly on various topics voted on by the community. I don't know if I'll have time to watch the whole thing, but this month she is talking about liminal images and she traces the popularization of the aesthetic trend/term to tumblr before hitting reddit or 4chan. I really appreciate this because as much as I love videos like SuperEyepatchWolf's one on the topic, a lot of people covering what's going on don't seem to get that like this has been an intentional aesthetic for a long time. I learned about the concept back in school. We covered the idea in my English classes and the teacher used liminal images to illustrate his point. That was before tumblr even existed. I was attempting to do liminal photos back in the 00s. I don't know if I ever nailed it (and now I'll never know because I am missing that era of my photography) and people were confused as to WTF I was doing, but I knew what I was going for and I knew the word for it.
SuperEyepatchWolf does acknowledge that liminal images existed in the past, but in a very 'this is odd' way as opposed to part of an ongoing thing. He still frames 'which came first: liminal or backrooms' as a legit question when it's not. The subreddits started at about the same time, but that's just an artifact of reddit not typically being into aesthetic trends.
Like Natalie, I feel very hipster about the whole thing.
I'm sure that had no effect on me at all. Actually, growing up a New Englander a lot of art I saw was 'empty path on bleak coastline' or 'abandoned lighthouse'. This prevailing idea that the liminal art trend is new makes me very confused as someone from Connecticut whose first formal job was in a brutalist cement building. (It's a famous building but google is failing me. It's in the background of some scenes in The Stepford Wives)
We didn't have the original obviously, but one of those very high quality prints that can get mistaken for an original unless your nose is practically touching it. It's not a well-known Wyeth piece like Christina's World (link to MOMA page). A lot of ink has been spilled on every detail of the composition choices made there.
Anyway, yeah, liminal is not new, people just tend to mythologize 4chan as the 'start' of things, especially channers. Liminal did blow up in 2020 like never before, same time Backrooms took off. Tumblr also isn't the source, but Natalie doesn't present it as the source, more as this is what brought the academic term to a bunch of people saying 'places where reality feels altered'.
SuperEyepatchWolf does acknowledge that liminal images existed in the past, but in a very 'this is odd' way as opposed to part of an ongoing thing. He still frames 'which came first: liminal or backrooms' as a legit question when it's not. The subreddits started at about the same time, but that's just an artifact of reddit not typically being into aesthetic trends.
Like Natalie, I feel very hipster about the whole thing.
Also, growing up my family ate dinner sitting under this image
I'm sure that had no effect on me at all. Actually, growing up a New Englander a lot of art I saw was 'empty path on bleak coastline' or 'abandoned lighthouse'. This prevailing idea that the liminal art trend is new makes me very confused as someone from Connecticut whose first formal job was in a brutalist cement building. (It's a famous building but google is failing me. It's in the background of some scenes in The Stepford Wives)
We didn't have the original obviously, but one of those very high quality prints that can get mistaken for an original unless your nose is practically touching it. It's not a well-known Wyeth piece like Christina's World (link to MOMA page). A lot of ink has been spilled on every detail of the composition choices made there.
Anyway, yeah, liminal is not new, people just tend to mythologize 4chan as the 'start' of things, especially channers. Liminal did blow up in 2020 like never before, same time Backrooms took off. Tumblr also isn't the source, but Natalie doesn't present it as the source, more as this is what brought the academic term to a bunch of people saying 'places where reality feels altered'.
