Non-Space

The whole idea of a liminal space can be directly applied to Fisher’s concepts of the “Weird and the Eerie”.

“The feeling of the eerie is very different from that of the weird. The simplest way to get to this difference is by thinking about the (highly metaphysically freighted) opposition — perhaps it is the most fundamental opposition of all — between presence and absence. As we have seen, the weird is constituted by a presence — the presence of that which does not belong. In some cases of the weird (those with which Lovecraft was obsessed) the weird is marked by an exorbitant presence, a teeming which exceeds our capacity to represent it. The eerie, by contrast, is constituted by a failure of absence or by a failure of presence. The sensation of the eerie occurs either when there is something present where there should be nothing, or is there is nothing present when there should be something.” -Mark Fisher

The importance of liminal spaces as memetic nonplaces is directly connected with the unconscious. These images are deeply familiar to some because no places have infiltrated our understanding of inhabited space under capitalism. These places as “clipping spaces” as a reference to video games illustrate a surreal understanding, perhaps even an “intuition of the outside.”

The “Outside” can be thought of as that which is outside of human understanding. That which can not be conceptualized since its very nature exists outside of the faculties of pure intuition in the Kantian sense. To use the Kantian jargon, the “outside” is just the thing in itself or Noumena. They are the forces that restrict our phenomenological understanding of reality (if we can even call it/them forces).

Of course, this conceptualization is still an attempt to make sense of the “outside,” in other words, abducting or putting the outside inside the conceptual theater. My interest in this abduction of the unknown lies in a possible intuition, an intuition of these “spaces” as something uncanny a #hyperstition with all too real effects. These non-spaces not only make themselves, “real” but they have always been here from the start.

The weird and the eerie should be understood not as ontological modes of being but instead as aesthetic, conceptual tools to make sense of that which eludes intelligibility, as modes of understanding. Capitalism creates these “monstrous” places because without them being habitable by entities, they become non-sensical spaces of excess or waste. What’s the function of a shopping mall with no people? What’s the point of a multilevel parking lot if it’s empty? How much waste is created from an abandoned warehouse or a retail store like Target?

If these structures share anything at all, they are exalted hallways, simply connecting one space to another. To illustrate it, it’s what a loading screen would be like in a video game if it was materialized. Interpassivity made real. And yet it’s not that these empty places are part of the “outside” itself, as mentioned but generated by it.

Covid-19 has only exacerbated the frequency in which images like the one presented on this article’s cover are becoming more and more real. It’s not that these places exist in the imagination; we are always unconsciously aware that these places shouldn’t exist in the first place. It’s weird and eerie in the most human way possible. It is the absence of humans that makes these places alien to us,

“The eerie,(…), is constituted by a failure of absence or by a failure of presence. The sensation of the eerie occurs either when there is something present where there should be nothing, or is there is nothing present when there should be something.” -Mark Fisher.

An overabundance of Non-Space.