liminal

: an intermediate state, phase, or condition: in-between, transitional

“At the moment we’re all bombarded by bad portents, trying to dowse out what the future will be. We’re all reduced to the bare facts of our bodies, a vulnerability that centuries of human ingenuity designed to mitigate or transcend, if not obliviate entirely.” Olivia Laing

We live suspended between the digital and the physical, in a liminal space, unable to fully enter the digital yet increasingly denying the physical. As we increasingly inhabit stories, our social political constructs, we retreat yet further from reality. Digital landscapes unfettered by physical constraints further embed us, stretching their reach into our most private spaces. Increasingly we are separated from the reality of our embodiment in the environment with our story’s fictitious priorities (profit, economic growth, political ambitions) guiding our interactions with catastrophic consequences – biodiversity loss, environmental damage, pollution, climate change. There is a vital need for change, for reconnection.

The current crisis has torn away the fictions and uncomfortably revealed that “we’re all reduced the bare facts of our bodies”. In so doing the stories have been torn away, the reality of our integration within the world laid bare.

Our liminal realm need not be one of disconnection or destruction. Our digital landscape is fabricated by our own hands, it has the capacity to enhance our embodiment within the world. Even without universal reformulation, and in the face of the growing mirror world, there are spaces between physical and digital we might begin to occupy; glitches and gaps which offer potential opportunity for resistance.

Within abandoned shops, causalities of our consumerist story, we will construct frameworks of reconnection, re-embedding these past hearts of consumerism within the reality of the planetary system we are within.

Site: There are reportedly 265 empty business units in Brighton, including numerous empty shops around Western Road which will be the focus for the studio work. How can there be an excuse to build, to use more resources when existing fabric discarded by our fantasy of reality lies empty.