This thesis explores the idea of a liminal space, as being dreamlike, suspended in time and physically unlocatable. It questions and exploits the boundary between abstraction and figuration in painting. This investigation has been considered from a subjective viewpoint allowing a distancing of space to illuminate new perceptions and experiences through the language of painting. The project has sought to explore the relationship between the natural world and seeing, to deepen and emphasize the other worldliness of an in-between space. This third space has been evoked by a process of abstracting pictorial content, juxtaposition of elements, colour and composition. The thesis is constituted of practice-based 80%, accompanied by an exegesis 20%.

This dissertation explores the relationship between man, animal and architecture within the theoretical discourse of the liminal. This exploration comes to pass within the context of humanity’s on-going captivation with animals and the manifestation of this in typological architecture as Zoological Gardens. The National Zoological Gardens of Pretoria situated in within the Central Business District forms the proposed context of this dissertation. Potential manners in which the relationship between man and animal manifest as spatial construct or architecture are investigated, within the context of the Zoological Gardens. The strict boundary conditions that exist within this context are consequently criticised. The existing concrete palisade fence epitomises these strict boundaries; between man and animal, city and Zoological garden and observer and observed. The intervention considers the liminal space which is created due to these boundaries, and the possibilities of this liminal space, or third space, as a habitable threshold. The threshold is programmed as an urban intervention that addresses the boundary condition by facilitating public open space, public amenities, Zoo interface and a Gratis Observatory Route. The dissertation challenges conventional architectural typologies and proposes an intervention, a “third nature” that occupies this liminal space. The new condition attempts to blur the rigid boundaries between the existing conditions of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the Zoo. The intervention takes on the program of functioning as a public dwelling for man, in the form of public open space, while simultaneously offering an urban habitat for animals. The proposed intervention manifests as a typological architecture that creates thresholds over which to renegotiate the relation between man and his understanding of “Nature”. / Dissertation MArch(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Architecture / MArch(Prof) / Unrestricted

abstract: The world of speculative fiction infuses the soul with the hope of the imaginary. My dissertation examines Afrofuturistic liminal imaginary space and the ways it is experienced as life-giving spaces. The imaginary and the aesthetics it births are formularies for art forms that speak to the hope of a transformed future. Speculative fiction, although in the realm of the imaginary, is an enlivened approach to express in the present collective possibilities and hopes of the people within those very imagined futures. During the past three decades, particularly, Black speculative fiction has been increasingly at the core of the new cultural productions of literature, film, horror, comics, fantasy, and music which tell the story of African descendant people. Afrofuturism is an analytic for exploration of the liberative revisioning of Black humanity in the face of persistent practices of structural injustice. My project presents the phenomenological exploration of Black Speculative Thought (ST) as it comes alive through artistic liminal spaces of Afrofuturist comic and science fiction conventions. I argue that Black imaginary liminal spaces such as Comicon Culture offer respite, renewal, and locales for creative resistance to thwart persistent alienation and nihilism of Black humanity. Furthermore, it is within these spaces where intersubjective agency can be taken up as a countermeasure to the existential realities and dominant hegemonic existences of everyday life. I examine the process, events, and experience of Black imaginary as it comes alive as potentiated hope for alternative futures. My intention is to marshal the theoretical specters of Critical Afrofuturism, Africana Philosophy, and Womanist Thought in this task. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Women and Gender Studies 2019

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Media shapes and supports certain ideas about how we view ourselves and others. The narratives that we consume train us to desire a particular formula of what critic Lauren Berlant calls "the good life": growing up, becoming a man or a woman, getting married, having children, and retiring. People who fail to fit into these narratives are often punished and excluded from society. However, queer theorist Jack Halberstam asks us to reconsider failure as a means of resistance. The texts that I examine fail to conform to narrative expectations or to fit formulae that are easily consumable or defined. They present queer characters and relationships that exceed social norms and generic conventions. These characters and relationships encourage us to reconsider the models of desire given to us, and to embrace a more nebulous state of anxiety found in liminal space. In Chapter 1, I discuss Argentine-Spanish-French film XXY (2007), which follows the story of Alex, an intersex teen who refuses to fit within the binary of male or female. In Chapter 2, I argue that Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) lays the groundwork for the visual representation of anxiety and desire in the Japanese manga Aku no Hana (Flowers of Evil ), which explores non-monogamous relationships structured around sadistic voyeurism. In the conclusion I turn briefly to children's cartoons Steven Universe and Adventure Time, in which failure has been reimagined as queer utopia. By focusing on media that resist heteronormative conventions we can start to reimagine models for more empathetic and compassionate communities.

This thesis will prove how the male domestic servant shows a conservative evolution of class freedom through early American films. As an individual thrust into a liminal sphere, these characters paradoxically become a character type for both keeping class-consciousness as well as breaking up notions of class, albeit in a slow process. In comedy, domestic male servants have always been on duty to help their masters while also becoming sources of mischief as tricksters. In early American films, these characters embody the anxiety of a classless body of men who become scapegoats, trickster-figures, and mask-wearing sages in order to survive—attracting as many functions as possible in order to help society question notions of class. Although butlers and valets have existed for several centuries, the Victorian era molded the butler into a marginal existence, trapping this servant into a liminal, and therefore unlikable, sphere. Comedic writers in the Victorian era played the anxiety up—presenting butlers and valets as pompous and unintelligent scapegoats placed in texts to make their masters look good while becoming invisible themselves. Yet, by the time the stereotype reached America through P. G. Wodehouse, the butler became a trickster figure—ready to use the Victorian code as a way to gain monetary compensation and control of the private domain. Jeeves does in fact receive his desires, but he resorts back to set codes—becoming a character that subverts and maintains class structure simultaneously. Charlie Chaplin's butler in City Lights does the same in film. As the overly serious foil, Chaplin's butler controls the class hierarchy by keeping Chaplin away from his master; yet, the butler does this by copying his master's actions, putting himself on the same level as his master. It is only through Sturges films that butlers become relatively free from subordination and even more multivalent as these films delve into class reality versus desire. These butlers and valets continue to play the part of the Victorian butler, but they also become the pivotal characters that move plots in their intended course—becoming fatherly and less anxiety-ridden—creating a freedom unknown to their predecessors.

Hur uppstår kuslighet i liminala ytor bland spel som inte faller under genren skräck? Detta är frågan som kommer försöka besvaras i form av analyser med studier om diverse variabler som ljus, uppsikt, yta, kontext, m.m. Studierna har sina bakgrunder i evolution, psykologi och det kusliga vilket används för att försöka förstå djupare vad som leder till obehag i liminala ytor. Resultatet visar att många olika variabler kan samspela eller att enstaka uppnår obehag i dessa ytor. Ibland spelar bristen av uppsikt stor roll, ibland kan brottet från det normala vara viktigare, många gånger är kontexten viktig – både i form av spelets regler och platsens syfte. Mer djupgående studier behöver framföras för att vidare förstå ämnet. Detta arbete fungerar snarare som en guide för att få en vidare förståelse för kuslighet i liminala ytor eller dyka djupare i dess forskning.

This project investigates a specific concept within architecture: the portal. Divided into eight independent chapters, all possible to read as stand-alone parts, the thesis – a hybrid essay consisting of text, images, drawings and models – uses the portal as a springboard, or tool, for approaching existing theories on the invisible forces that shape the world and our built environment.    The chapter Nature approaches the portal and architecture as separator from "nature", the chapter Ritual as a ritual device for transition, the chapter Myth as a mythological archetype, the chapter Liminal as interstitial space and recursion, the chapter Depth as an enhancer of depth, the chapter Speed as a technological machine, and finally, the epilogue concludes that architectural practice in large can be interpreted as the creation of different types of portals.   Architecture, both as a subject and as a practice, has the potential to manifest and mediate between various supplementary relationships, such as interior and exterior, nature and culture, sacred and profane, heaven and earth, past and future, between sign and signified, us and them, between order and chaos, between subject and object, thought and action, private and public, rationality and imagination, flat and three-dimensional, flesh and matter (the list can go on forever).    The portal works both as an analogy for this and as an actual tool; partly by changing the character of adjacent spaces by such basic things as placing a door in a wall or placing a building in a landscape, but partly by finding new ways to bridge between extremities, without necessarily dissolving them completely.

"Where the power of the wall is to deny, the power of the door is to permit, and allow entry. 1" Borders are represented on maps as thick, predetermined lines that delineate, separate, and segregate one area from another. A whole is divided into two or more parts. Borders become boundaries and, in reality, are abstract and intangible, often responsible for creating both geographic and political havoc. In between a border are thresholds that signal a transition between layers, spaces, times, and countries. This project engages within this Liminal space, an in-between of the threshold. Prompted by humanitarian and political crises, thousands of people are fleeing their homes in search of safety and protection from danger, including persecution for protected reasons such as race, religion, nationality, or political opinion. Many, like unaccompanied minors, travel dangerous paths to seek asylum at one of these borders, which promise safety and security from the violent conditions in their countries. In the USA and elsewhere, seeking asylum is a human right. Simultaneously, thousands of people whose claims for asylum are unsuccessful are detained, deported, or repatriated. In 1873, Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada, the 27th President of Mexico (1872 to 1876) declared, "Let there be a desert between strength and weakness." The United States of America and the United Mexican States share a historically-contested 1,954-mile border. Any wall separating two countries belongs to both countries. This thesis considers borders as more than places that close or delimit one place from another, but also as opportunities to expand into living and organic spaces. Borders both delimit and negotiate between two sides of neither a single state nor a single place but as thresholds which hundreds of thousands of separate lives navigate every single day along the border regions. This thesis explores how architecture focused on empowering at-risk asylum seekers can shape the border space. In particular, the chosen design proposes a Halfway House on the threshold space between the twin-sister borderplex of Laredo, Texas, United States of America, and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico. / Master of Architecture / Borders are represented on maps as thick, predetermined lines that delineate, separate and segregate one area from another. A whole divided into two or more parts. Borders become boundaries and in reality, are abstract and intangible, often responsible for creating both geographic and political havoc. In between these borders, is where we find liminal space. Prompted by humanitarian and political crises, thousands of people are fleeing their homes in search of safety and protection from danger, including persecution of race, religion, nationality, or political opinion. Many people, including unaccompanied minors, travel dangerous paths to seek asylum at one of these borders, which promise safety and security from the violent conditions in their countries. In the USA and elsewhere, seeking asylum is a human right. Simultaneously, thousands of people whose claims for asylum are unsuccessful are detained, deported, or repatriated. This thesis considers borders as more than places that close or delimit one place from another, but also as opportunities to expand into living and organic spaces. Borders both delimit and negotiate between two sides of neither a single state, nor a single place but as thresholds which hundreds of thousands of separate lives navigate every single day along the border regions. This thesis explores how architecture focused on empowering at-risk asylum seekers can shape the border space. In particular, the chosen design proposes a halfway house between Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas.