The purpose of this creative exercise is to explore the unity of opposites through the plurality of the in-between-ness in architecture. The exploration holds the promise of revealing a larger and more complex reality that speaks to contemporary times and the making of contemporary architecture. To investigate this proposition a program has been created to bring multiple readings of singular objects including "dynamic pluralism between life and death".1As a consequence, this creative project will allow me to speculate on how physical space can be deliberately experienced simultaneously. As a result, the building will service my proposition in light of liminal-driven architecture and how this proposal will contribute, to some extent, to enrich our world, our society through architecture by making the practice more challenging and motivating.The term threshold evokes images of entering and leaving, passages, crossings and change. It marks the point at which choices and decisions must be made in order to move on, and it would be unusual to think of it as a place to stay, a place of permanent existence. There are, however, situations in the lives of people in which transitions from an old situation to a new one, one social position to another, are hampered or cannot be completed successfully. In this case, Architecture has the potential to make people engage with the space, having the ability to speak to a person and stir their emotions. In the case of absence, the atmosphere of the space plays an important role in suggesting this attitude of meditation. Adjectives such as somber, solemn, reverent, joyful, etc. come to mind. In creating a space described by these terms, light and darkness might become the key. Natural, artificial, and hidden source lighting all can be utilized in various ways in defining the atmosphere of the space as somber, joyful, etc. Another key component in giving a space a certain feel is materiality. Concrete, wood, sheetrock, glass, etc. all change the mood of a space dramatically. The approach and progression to and through the building can also serve and important role in establishing the atmosphere as well as preparing the individual for reflection and/or celebration. The space in which one approaches, enters, and reflects in can make a significant difference in their spiritual experience. This begins to relate to the ideas of "transition, thresholds, boundaries" relevant to interstitial spaces, spaces of the in-between.1 Kisho Kurokawa & Associates <http://www.kisho.co.io/003 BooksAndThesis.htm> (12.17.06) / Department of Architecture

It is the aim of this practice-led PhD to explore the processes that attend to the production of a linocut relief print through a framework whose key concepts are liminality and embodiment. In this pursuit the thesis investigates the subjects of skin and surface as well as cuts and cutting through themes and issues of touch and time that include connection and continuity, 'direct' creative touch, artist-tool/technology relations, memory, repetition and rhythmicity, transmissions of time, translation, tracking, chronology and equivalence. These subjects and themes' liminal qualities and characteristics are mirrored by a methodology devised and employed throughout the research. This methodology employs the interpenetrative, interconnected, reflexive and autoethnographic methods of a durational, physically challenging repeat printmaking project, longhand letter writing, and the multiple-register writing of this thesis. It does so in a purposely oblique and 'wayfaring' (Tim Ingold, 2011) approach. Binaries and boundaries are thus explored without risking their further enforcement, allowing diverse aspects and subjects to flow into and between one another with the freedom to contrast, contradict, and manifest inconsistently whilst ultimately moving towards a more comprehensive understanding of the thesis' subjects. This liminal methodology contributes a set of research tools and framework propositions to the existing field of research in and of creative practice, including printmaking, and its embodiment.

This document explores and questions notions of place, identity, and transformation caused by displacement.

As a point of political and ethical contestation in U.S. American discourse, the “abortion debate” asks us to consider questions of choice, life, morality, and identity embedded with/in unequivocally conflicting axiological matrices. Consequentially, women who’ve had abortions are left caught in-between the cultural chasm between stigmatizing discourses. Framing abortion narratives within Turner’s (1969) conceptualization of liminality, this project aims to nuance the conversation from a performative autoethnographic orientation (Spry, 2011) which attends to ethical, aesthetic, and epistemic dimensions of narrative (re)construction. Layered narrative and poetic fragments (re)constitute the ruptured “truthfulness” of my abortion experience (Žižek, 2008) while (re)centering epistemological foundations of abortion discourse through subjugated corporeal knowledges (Foucault, 1980). By “talking back” (hooks, 1989) to neoliberal postfeminist discourses, this autoethnographic project seeks to performatively (re)construct the abortion experience through a language of liminality and explore the potentials of an alternative “imaginary” (Irigaray, 1991; Cixous, 1976, 1998).

A collection of reflective essays on the personal relationship with identity, land and travel. All of the essays are united by common themes of liminality, transformation and neutral space, set against the backdrop of Iceland and Hawaii. Anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep writes how certain geographical "zones," those that are semi-civilized with less precise boundaries are neutral zones. For example, deserts, marshes and virgin forests equally accessible to everyone because they are places in between. Whoever passes through these sacred spaces finds herself physically and magico-religiously in a special situation for a length of time—wavering between two worlds. Travel neutralizes the traveler, forces her into a space of imbalance and liminality (i.e. the threshold), where as an outsider she is as equally weak as she is powerful. I am interested in exploring this liminal space as it relates to my own personal relationship with identity and belonging. Throughout my life the topic of symbolic and spatial liminality appears again and again: through my identity as a "third-culture kid" raised in Saudi Arabia; through my own biraciality; through travel in general or even the physical act of the journey. I imagine this self as part of the Earth (a secular relationship represented by Hawaii) and part of the Sky (a metaphysical relationship represented by Iceland).

Victor Turner (in Dodds, 1992: 82) suggests to take every day elements and rearrange them in ways not experienced every day is to create a “monster”, which will achieve liminality in architecture. The titel of this dissertation is a result of this phenomenon. In this design investigation ways to transform liminality into a building are explored. Smith (2000) states, “liminality or the liminal refers to transitional space; neither one place nor another; neither one discipline nor another; rather a thirdspace in-between”. Various devices were examined to facilitate the transition from abstract concept into architectural possibility. The following devices: typology, technology, spatial experience, interlocking volumes, superimposition, programmatic bands and atmospheric effects have been examined. The final product is a fusion of theoretical notions and technology expressed as a hybridized typology, all these qualities are arranged in ways not experienced every day, resulting in a building called the Monster. / Dissertation (MArch(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Architecture / unrestricted

Yes / Imagine that you’re entering a cave on a sunny, warm summer day. There is a swift, and distinct, change in the temperature as you walk into the darkness – a cold, dampness that cuts through to the bone. The lack of internal light immediately plunges you into darkness as you journey further into the cave, and the inherent stillness and silence means any noise you make is amplified twofold. If the Underworld exists, this is likely where it would be situated. And yet, if you simply turn around to face the entrance of the cave, you are greeted by a completely different setting; you can see the bright sun, the clear blue skies. By walking back to the start, you can already feel the warm air, hear the natural noises that one associates with the outdoors. But stop right in the middle, between the entrance of the cave and its deeper chambers – here, you’re in between what can only be described as two completely different worlds. This is a liminal space – and its where I exist, as a researcher and as a queer, mixed woman.

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The horror genre is obsessed with being treated as fact rather than fiction. From movies that plaster their title screens with "Based on actual events" to urban legends that happened to a friend of a friend, the horror genre thrives on being treated as fact even when it is more often fiction. Yet horror does more than claim verisimilitude. Whereas some stories are content to pass as reality, other stories question whether a boundary between fiction and reality even exists. They give us monsters that become real when their names are spoken (Tales from the Darkside) and generally undermine the boundaries we take for granted. Wes Craven's New Nightmare, for instance, shows a malevolent being forcibly blending the characters' reality with the fiction they themselves created. But why are scary stories concerned with seeming real and undermining our notions of reality? To answer this, I draw on various horror films and philosophical and psychological notions of the self and reality. Ultimately, I argue, horror is a didactic genre obsessed with showing us reality as it is, not as we wish it to be. Horror confronts us not only with our mortality (as in slasher films) but also with the truth that fiction and reality are not the easily divided categories we often take them to be. / Master of Arts

This thesis argues that JM Coetzee’s novels, in particular Foe, Disgrace, Elizabeth Costello, Slow Man and Diary of a Bad Year all illustrate the complexity of, and the ethical implications and far-reaching consequences resulting from an attempt to effect change in contemporary postcolonial societies. Coetzee represents contemporary postcolonial society, by using liminal characters and narrators who are required by personal or societal conflict and/or crises to make ethical choices with significant results. Various narrative conventions and strategies, all of which influence the ethical implications drawn up for the characters/narrators, are used by Coetzee. Reactions of these liminal characters to their crises of choice vary. The implications of relations between liminal characters, protagonists and narrators with regard to the Other are examined and evaluated. The study identifies the strategies used by Coetzee to subtly lure the reader into accepting co-responsibility for ethical choices required of the characters and narrators. The various reactions that a reader could have on the ethical imperative of formulating a personal stance on liminality, both in terms of the texts and in contemporary postcolonial society, are also evaluated. In the final instance the study indicates that a certain development in Coetzee’s own ethical views can possibly be linked to certain narrative patterns in the selected novels. / PhD (English), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015