Artist Spotlight: Steve Bennett
Word of the Day: Liminal
ARTIST COMMENTS
This composite image, which I created a year ago, was meant to depict the concept of being suspended in liminal space. The crosswalk is the ultimate symbol of liminality. When you’re in a crosswalk, you’re nowhere, really, trying to get from one block to another. In “Liminal Space,” there is no discernible destination, no “here.”
Today, I feel that there is no “here,” either, in terms of where we go as a nation so divided, how we survive a raging pandemic, and how we foster understanding when everyone is so angry.
I believe that “Liminal Space” has the same quality of disharmony and confusion as the experimental film Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance. It conveys a sense of nervous energy, of a mind about to dissolve into irreconcilable shards, of a world on the verge of exploding. It is an image of what our country is going through right now.
"If you're in between two places or experiences, especially if you're transitioning between them, you're in a liminal place. Teenagers are in that liminal stage between childhood and adulthood — not always an easy place to be!
A liminal space is a kind of threshold or doorway to a new experience, and the word's root reflects that idea. The Latin root, limen, means "sill, cross-piece, or threshold." This can be a meaningful transition, like the liminal moments between life and death.
It can also be the beginning of perception, that first moment you can sense something; when something is instead subliminal, it's too far below that threshold for you to sense it." - Vocabulary.com
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