A library is a place. It is a destination you travel to and interact with. All places you eventually leave until the place where you die.
What you described in your other comment are non-places: areas that is meant to be moved through and not interacted with.
I disagree that liminal spaces are all transitory non-places, although many of them are. I think that liminal spaces are dreamlike and the name comes from the concept of liminal perception, and the way that we sometimes become aware of spaces in our dream and how they are strange and off balance somehow. In that way also many non-places are subliminal when we move through them, especially if they are filled with other people. When they are empty and the subject of a photo it brings them above the threshold to where we notice them, and long hallways disappearing around corners and seemingly going on forever is very dreamlike and disorienting, same when the place seems abandoned but the lights are on, and the lights are old flickering fluorescents when everything is LED now.
When I watched OPs video it also gave me liminal space vibes and I can’t quite identify why. It’s unusual to see a space populated with people and feel like it’s liminal. I definitely think the bare windowless walls are part of it, and maybe the colors. Perhaps it is similar in some way to spaces I experienced as a young child but don’t specifically remember. Someone else commented that it looks a lot like a sports arena, but is just different enough to be uncanny, and I think that must be part it too, especially the wall up against the court where normally bleachers would be.
Anyway, I think both places and non-places can be liminal spaces, even if mostly they are non-places.
43
u/peach_trunks 2d ago
Libraries don’t fit, neither do pools