Phantasmal Gallery

In 2019 an anonymous user posted a photograph in a 4chan thread under the subreddit /x/ of a fluorescent and dingy empty room. This image and others like it posted subsequentially went on to spark the creation of ‘the backrooms’. This collection of images consisting of empty hallways, superstores and office blocks was later popularised by the internet aesthetic ‘Liminal Spaces’ which Pitre observes ‘can be found across Twitter (@SpaceLiminalBot has 1.2 million followers), Reddit (r/LiminalSpace has about 526,000 members), and TikTok (the hashtag #liminalspaces has more than 2 billion views). Having amassed such a public following, the recognisability of these eerie images is undeniable yet enigmatically captivating. The images are not of the same location, but instead have in common their tertiary colour palette, repetitive forms, a notable absence of people, and a renewed prevalence in the wake of the COVID-19 global pandemic.











 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Pitre’s article for Pulse he highlights ‘In the fields of ethnology and anthropology, scholars such as Arnold van Gennep and, later, Victor Turner introduced liminality to describe the periods of ambiguity during rites of passage.’ Rites of passage such as birthdays, adulthood or parenthood are markers most, if not all people, will experience in their lifetimes. Regardless of how much we can depend on these so called certainties, passing through these temporal doorways always leads us to contemplate what we have come to know before this point and what the future holds after it. This innate awareness of uncertainty that Turner describes is simplified by Neumann in his article for Forbes Health, describing psychological liminal space as that which ‘may be recognized as more of a life transition or a shift between two ways of thinking’. The human brain is constantly forming new connections and develops throughout life. It is then part of the human experience to go through these periods of ambiguity. Perhaps these periods of confusion we all have in common are what is captured by the uncanny liminal. There is no doubt that Liminal Spaces contain something of the past, referencing visually the worn carpets and fluorescent hallways of public spaces. Simultaneously, the secluded sterile spaces also somehow embody the unknown anxieties that the future holds.