Liminality in life and limbo
ACADEMIC ESSAY
KWAME ABRAHAMSE
21100457
1 NOVEMBER 2024
List of Figures
Figure 1 Kwame Abrahamse’s illustration “This must be the place” front page 9
Figure 2 Kwame Abrahamse’s illustration “This must be the place” back page 10
INTRODUCTION
Stoic philosophers believed that life is a constant internal journey, figuring out how you fit in relation to the world around you (Pfizenmaier, 2022 pg 141-142). They believe that reflecting on one’s own actions and reactions at the stages of uncertainty within this journey, is key to gaining an understanding of the self. These stages of uncertainty are what can be encapsulated in the subject of Liminality, as its study was made to examine individuals and societies going through small and large instances of being in between two known variables (Thomassen, 2015 pg 40-42). The study reveals patterns and structures of human behaviour that are developed within liminal stages in life. Common lived experiences are found and as the Stoics believed, knowledge and reflection of these experiences could bring one closer to an understanding of yourself as well as your surroundings (Szakolczai, 2015 pg 16-19). So throughout this paper, I will examine myself, my art and my surroundings with a liminal lens in order to gain some kind of insight into my own patterns and structures. I will use a third year project as the base of unpacking liminality within the context of the creative process. Thereafter I will examine large portions of my background and context as an artist to try to extract the most amount of understanding of the theory and my own process.
Note: Kwame Abrahamse, 2023, via Behance
Kwame Abrahamse’s illustration “This must be the place” front page
FIGURE
Note: Kwame Abrahamse, 2023, via Behance
Kwame Abrahamse’s illustration “This must be the place” back page
FIGURE
THEORY INTRODUCTION: STRUCTURE OF LIMINALITY
The term liminality started in philosophy with the purpose of making sense of the surrounding world by setting limits on it, so that a common understanding and order could be derived (Szakolczai, 2015 pg 11-14). This created social boundaries that are rooted deep within certain cultures, with the focus on what takes place within the boundaries themselves. However, liminalities’ current meaning started to take form when the focus shifted to what happens on the edge of these boundaries. When someone moves between what is known and enters a state of uncertainty, unbalance and unpredictability, a state of transition. This state of the unknown is the basis of liminality, and is where humans are malleable and vulnerable to the most amount of change (Szakolczai, 2015 pg 16-19). How one develops and transforms in the liminal state could only be studied through lived experience because of its lack of structure (Szakolczai, 2015 pg 14-16). This is how it developed into a sociological approach, by examining the individual to inform the whole. Despite this difference, the term still carries core values throughout its varied contexts, namely to identify patterns, structures and rhythms within the world to understand human behaviour (Thomassen, 2015 pg 40-42). This is the approach used by the anthropologists Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner, who solidified the meaning and importance of liminality. I will be using their writing for the majority and backbone of the paper as they procured structured ideas and further revelations about liminality. It will serve as strong points to extract my own processes, patterns and liminal states that went into my project, other projects and my general profession as an illustrator.
CASE STUDY: THIS MUST BE THE PLACE
The project I have selected to examine was from my third year at Open Window, for the illustration module, Artist Book. We were tasked with creating a leporello booklet—a long
double-sided page that is folded like an accordion—with the title “This must be the place”. The objective of this assignment was to illustrate a physical or metaphorical place, almost capturing a moment or event within a created world. The only limit placed was that words could not be used to explain anything to the reader, only if it was diegetic or the title itself. For my booklet the “place” I decided to depict is limbo and follows the perspective of a young girl who dies at the start. Stuck between death and the afterlife, she goes through stages of her own grief, finding acceptance in the end. Although there is a narrative for my booklet, that was not a requirement as I personally work better and am more invested in projects where I can create a story. This made the limit of no words even more exacting for myself, which is why I focused on conveying the story through expression and colour, and keeping the core structure based around the 5 stages of grief. Other line and texture techniques aided the idea that this was an imaginary, unstable, dream-like place.
THE CASE STUDY AS AN EXAMPLE OF MY PRACTICE
To me this project was a perfect culmination of displaying my profession as a storyteller, character and background artist, all the while experimenting with new techniques. Where possible, I usually start projects with the character design as I believe a character drives the story. This would mean sketching the character while figuring out the specific details and personality, however for this project I took a random character sketch I had done sometime prior in the year and ran with it. This was a purely aesthetic choice as I thought the character’s hair would look good in the falling motion of the book along with the colours I had in mind. This point in my creative process is in fact a liminal state, where nothing is concrete, ideas float around and I have yet to put anything on paper. Everything is subject to change, making it the most chaotic yet interesting stage in my process as the potential is limitless. Once I move beyond this initial liminal state and start sketching the whole thing, ideas for background and
extra details get added as I go along. The experimentation came with the execution of colour and line, as I usually draw the outlines and details first, then colour and lighting. However, the stages were switched as I wanted to find a style that reflected the looseness and fluidity within the sketches, while using colour to express emotion. A significant inspiration for this was SpiderMan: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), an animated film that was released earlier that year. The film played with background, texture and colour in order to display emotion, disregarding properties of the ‘physical world’. I was inspired by the layered animation techniques, and wanted to try to incorporate it into still images. So even though I passed the initial liminal state mentioned in the concepting phase, I still experience liminality in the broader sense (Thomassen, 2015 pg 46), as surrounding factors at the time influenced how I transformed my art style and process between the stages of creating and completing the project. This is what leads me to believe liminality is a necessity for creating new and innovative ideas, which is what Turner states in his early analysis of the Ndembu ritual in relation to rites of passage, as it displays “moments of creativity that freshened the societal makeup” (Thomassen, 2015 pg 46). Even if the ‘societal makeup’ is not affected, it still affected me as an individual as I questioned my own patterns and structures. Looking back, the whole process of this project also reflects van Genneps’ rites of passage (Pfizenmaier, 2022 pg 135), as I started with the stage of separation - leaving the safe boundaries I had set for myself - in order to enter the second stage of liminality. Then lastly the stage of incorporation - setting new boundaries with the knowledge gained - which is what I did and continue to do for some artworks I create, as I play around with the process where I feel necessary. Seeing similarities overlap in these two forms of liminality - rites of passage and my creative process - is something that speaks
to a realisation made by van Gennep in the lates stages of his study; that understanding the sociology of humans will connect us to the nature of life (Thomassen, 2024 pg 39-41).
THE NATURE OF LIMINALITY, LIFE AND THE SELF
Stages, transitions and resting moments are ideas of liminality that are shown in things that naturally occur in life, like social structures and nature (Thomassen, 2024 pg 39-41). Therefore the study of liminality is a science that would bring us closer to life. This is the idea that van Gennep expressed in his late studies, and made sure to not confine ideas of social order to nature, but to highlight the common threads that give insight to many things in life. So by way of virtue, exploring liminality within my case study should give insight into my societal standing. During this project, I approached the liminal stages with enthusiasm and embracing change, which allowed me to move forward without much hesitation and worry of failure. In hindsight, I approached other liminal stages in my life at the time with the same attitude, partially due to my parents being financially stable. Since about September 2021 the changes in my life have been for the better due to that financial stability, and in liminal stages where there was more uncertainty, there was still that financial safety net. Encountering transitional stages became embracive, and so did experimenting with my art at the time. A big factor to keep in mind is that I started Open Window in 2021, so I was being challenged to try new things as an artist in general. However this is just another surrounding element that still proves liminality is a tool in understanding human behaviour, as my actions and reactions were shaped in this transitional stage, while giving insight to my surrounding social structure (Thomassen, 2015 pg 46). It is further justified by looking at my life and my process as an artist in the past, where there was not as much financial stability, things like change and transformation would result in something negative. So my art style was never experimental, I still focused on character drawings and storytelling but I was not interested in things like colour and texture. I kept to a
kind of formula because the factor of uncertainty was much larger when approaching a stage of liminality at that time.
CONCLUSION
Through this exploration of my experiences of liminality, its natural occurrence and importance is evident within life. As humans who are always transforming and changing, transitional periods heavily influence one’s life during and after the process. It also reveals how much impact my personal life has on my professional life throughout the years without me knowing. Liminal states are something that I will keep in mind and hold in high regard, as reflecting on them reveal things I would have never seen otherwise. The reasons for my processes and structures were unveiled, allowing me to gain invaluable knowledge and understanding of my work, and life as a whole.
REFERENCES
Handelman, D. (2024). Liminality: Contemplating the Hypothetically Potent Conjunction of the Social and the Physical. In B. Kapferer & M. Gold (Eds.), Egalitarian Dynamics: Liminality, and Victor Turner’s Contribution to the Understanding of Socio-historical Process (1st ed., Vol. 2, pp. 356–378). Berghahn Books. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.14086448.22
Horvath, A, Thomassen, B, Wydra, H. (2015). Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality. Berghahn Books.
Pfizenmaier, R. (2022). From passage to maturity to liminal critique: Foucault’s care of the self as liminal practice. In E. Kovach, J. Kugele, & A. Nünning (Eds.), Passages: Moving beyond liminality in the study of literature and culture (pp. 134–154). UCL Press. https://doi. org/10.2307/j.ctv2kg15mb.14
Thomassen, B. (2024). The Pivoting of the Sacred: Arnold van Gennep’s Spatio-temporality of the Liminal. In B. Kapferer & M. Gold (Eds.), Egalitarian Dynamics: Liminality, and Victor Turner’s Contribution to the Understanding of Socio-historical Process (1st ed., Vol. 2, pp. 31–47). Berghahn Books. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.14086448.5
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