Liminality is the in-between moments, the space between an inciting incident in a story and the protagonist’s resolution. Why do stories haunt the liminal spaces that imperceptibly surround us? While things seemed to be at a stand-still, a worldwide lockdown served as the perfect time for developing, refining and executing everything we had learned. Rodwell, I. The most important news stories … Yet it carries other resonances. Socio-petal arrangements ‘produce spaces where people are encouraged to gather together’ (Dale and Burrell, p.26). On the fourth floor of a corporate HQ, there is a long, open corridor that leads past a café and then forms a ‘crossroads’ with passages that continue to the restaurant and meeting spaces. Taylor, S. and Spicer, A. The Thimble Press. Bailey, P. (2004), ‘Adventures in Space: Victorian Railway Erotics, or Taking Alienation For a Ride’, Journal of Victorian Culture , 9(1), pp. It spans diverse inter-generational perspectives—from those who leave Guyana, and those who are left—and seven seminal decades of Guyana’s history—from the 1950s to the present day—bringing the voices … ‘Cross Road Blues’ (2018) Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_Road_Blues (Accessed: 30 March, 2018). Welcome to Liminal box. There is a final irony. At the junction, there is a widening of the corridor – often used for displays – but, always occupied by small groups, talking, chatting, laughing. Carter, I. A snow-bound lodge; revenants from a tainted past; and, of course, corridors. Dale, K. and Burrell, G. (2010) ‘All together, altogether better’: the ideal of ‘community’ in the spatial reorganization of the workplace’, in van Marrewijk, A. and Yanow, D. A space where you don’t know what is coming, but where many things are possible in the near future “Liminal” is Latin for “threshold”. (For the devil can be found anywhere!). Transient Space, 21 July – 16 September 2017. And now the stories can begin. In others, the mode is tragic. The meanings fog and coalesce – this is Lefebvre’s ‘lived space’ where ‘phenomenologically experienced space’ is ‘overlaid with ‘imaginary spaces’ whereby the material and the cultural are fused’ (Dale and Burrell, p.10). 45–64. (Gabriel, pp. We are a Design Consultancy consisting of Canadian design professionals, bringing you collective solutions for a humanity forward world. That one liminal spaces story. Such stories suggest that while transgression brings creativity, release and the frisson of Simmel’s ‘adventure’, it also carries a darkling side of danger, anxiety and humiliation. It is a ‘real place between imaginary places – points of departure and arrival’ (Komunyakaa, p.5). 1467–1485. So, the next time you walk along a corridor, just pause. Head, T. (1982) Transient Space 3 [Hand tinted photographic collage]. It brings people into constant contact yet then provokes them to linger and commune. Think of a young bluesman meeting the devil at a Mississippi crossroads to seal his own Faustian pact. So, for those drawn to the ‘thin places’ where worlds elide and interlace, step across the threshold into the betwixt and between. Puhvel, M. (1976) ‘The mystery of the cross-roads’, Folklore, 87(2), pp. As such I belonged nowhere and instead occupied a haunting liminal space. Such routing can also reflect a particular narrative about the exhibits and artefacts that we are encouraged to absorb. And like any fragile and threatened ecology, these are valuable spaces we need to recognise and protect. Fisher, M. (2012) ‘What is Hauntology’, Film Quarterly, 66(1), pp. I have heard many such narratives in every organisation I have known. a private space. We follow the mercurial whims of our driver. Sturdy, A. Liminal is the moniker for the musical creative, but just as its very meaning is ever changing, Liminal is non-dualistic. Our taxi experience is also liminal in other ways. Turner, V. (1982), From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play: PAJ Publications. There's something going happening on the internet right now with the idea of liminal spaces. We all, I suspect, have such stories. Forestier, A. Jackson, J. This is where we transgress boundaries to contract with higher powers. (ed.) The roles, identities and behaviours of everyday life could, for the duration of the journey, be altered or even abandoned. Available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b095tkgx (Accessed: 30 September 2017). Finally, there is a place for no words, a place where the light shines through and the film stories speak for themselves. They are sombre, besuited, the ties and haircuts indicative of past decades. In one of the most famous ghost stories, Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, the ‘ghosts’ are only perceived within the liminal – the ‘tops of towers, the roof of houses, the outside of windows, the further edge of pools’ (Klapcsik, p.5). For your guest, experiencing this space for the first time, it is like any other meeting room: neutral in its ubiquity. This ‘organised walking’ is a ‘form of control that incorporates both mind and body.’ (Dale and Burrell, p.72). Should we ever visit after hours or at the week-end, they always invoke, I feel, a sense of the strange. (ed.) The room is a palimpsest of recalled conversations, arguments, emotions and the tone of those meetings (productive, boring, confrontational) now begins to affect your mood. Waiting in the liminal space provides room for creativity and growth. Dale, K. and Burrell, G. (2008), The Spaces of Organisation & the Organisation of Space: Palsgrave Macmillan. Hurdley, R. (2010) ‘The Power of Corridors: Connecting Doors, Mobilising Materials, Plotting Openness’, The Sociological Review, 58(1), pp. To start with, what is a liminal space and what kind of knowledge sharing occurs there? It spans diverse inter-generational perspectives – from those who leave Guyana, and those who are left – and seven seminal decades of Guyana’s history – from the 1950s to the present day – bringing the voices of women to the fore. As we sit (or pace), vainly attempting to control our nerves, perceptions are disturbed – like static on a badly tuned radio station – by recollections of previous meetings. Just as the latter are ecologically acclaimed as places where ‘a small nature reserve flourishes’ (Clifford and King, p.205), so the former are equally fertile: seeding communication and harvesting knowledge, insight and experience. They can ‘elide the distance between the actual and the imagined’ so that ‘frail and cherished distinctions collapse’ (Beer, quoted by Jackson, p.69). The Bible repeats three liminal themes which create a paradigm of ongoing Christian formation. Poised between public and private; open and closed; movement and stasis; the pragmatic and the eerie, corridors are ‘time and ‘matter out of place” (Hurdley, p.50). The journey through transition holds both turbulence and opportunity. MIT Press. Look around you – as we sit on our compact seats, we are divided by a screen from a silent other. Such ‘interstitial spaces, city fords and thresholds, it is said, confuse the evil spirits and ghosts, and they cannot find their way back to their bearer’ (Ghassem-Fachandi, p.24). For the Victorians however, the modern railway carriage was, as John Bailey intriguingly explores, liminal in many other ways. A place for transit is simultaneously one of congregation. In other grand houses, corridors are used to demonstrate monetary wealth and cultural learning. Orr, K. (2014) ‘Local Government Chief Executives ’ Everyday Hauntings : Towards a Theory of Organizational Ghosts’, Organization Studies, 35(7), pp. Shadows are the result of the misinterpreted messages and the cause of any roadblocks you have today. And listen to the stories they whisper. Based out of Los Angeles, California, Tom Crouch is a British multifaceted songwriter dedicated to exploring the liminal space through music. This ambiguity is characterised by De Certeau as a ‘incarceration-vacation’ (De Certeau, p.114). Clifford, S. and King, A. Allen notes how organisational traffic patterns directly influence communication by promoting chance encounters and aiding ‘the accomplishment of intended contacts’ (Allen, p.248). Via a study of hospital staff interactions, Gonzalez-Martinez explores how medical staff use the corridors for brief and frequent conversations that rarely involve stops. No experience is wholly in the present – the past intrudes, whispers, infects. Narratives where morality and rationality are subverted. could acknowledge, support, and educate those in liminal spaces. Yet, look carefully enough, and you will find ghosts, tricksters and graveyards. And these edgelands are both troubling and seductive. Creative consultancy The Liminal Space has designed Life Support, a mobile-first website designed to help people deal with death using their smartphones. Each time he saw it, he took strength from the memory of his mentor, guide and protector.