one time, years ago, spent an afternoon totally alone in a mostly unused upper floor of the landmark center in boston, probably sometime after blue cross blue shield left but before they got a new tenant to take the place. so there was some inscrutable startup clustered around some desks in one corner of the floor and from there just, like, a football field's worth of office infrastructure. arranged quite orderly in some places, half-assembled in others. rows of all-set-up cubicles next to bundles of wires dangling from the ceiling. it was really cool and pretty uncanny.
back before i started treating my insomnia, there would be nights where i'd get bored out of my skull at 3 in the morning and decide to do shit like walk a mile and a half to the nearest store that's still open in order to buy chips & salsa, then walk halfway back and sit next to some statue in a park to eat them all in one sitting. everything wet from dew, dimly lit by the ambient light from streetlamps and windows, alone next to some cold dead dude from the 1800s and a flagpole.
when 'liminal spaces' came en vogue i was hoping they would capture these feelings, but nope. almost none of the stuff i've come across -- and certainly nothing being shit out by the big accounts -- really hits that particular feeling of an encounter with the utility-driven manmade world on terms that expose it for the inhuman, alienating space it is. it's so underwhelming to me that i have to wonder what most people are getting out of it.
my guess is that people aren't looking for that sort of aesthetic because they've never had that kind of experience -- people who don't wander, who don't interact with the world in non-prescribed ways, are getting their first exposure to that feeling vicariously through 'liminal spaces'.
i guess what i'm saying here is that if you like the backrooms, you'll love just kind of walking around aimlessly on your own in places nobody has any legitimate business going at this time of night.
