A section from the upcoming book ‘How to Kiss a Cannibal — writings on liminality’, by Johan Liedgren. Published by The Liminality Press.

They met by divine coincidence one night in the fall at an empty fish restaurant in Bilbao and felt at that very moment something in the universe shift. Perhaps it was love at first sight, perhaps it was bigger. Phone numbers were politely exchanged over seared scallops in a raspberry vinaigrette, ensuring a professional alibi for hopes far more interesting. A cautious flirtation the next two days led without effort to more dinners and museum visits to talk about art and to look at each other.

When geography once again separated them like it had for their entire lives up to that point, robust online flirting followed. But neither of them was looking for a relationship. Both were occupied with life as it stood prior to their chance encounter and neither were any good at affairs. So, it was decided that their legs — two pairs: his and hers, left and right; four limbs in total — would be sent separately to rendezvous for a long weekend somewhere to fully enjoy something partial. Paris seemed like a natural choice, and any risk of the city appearing cliche for a “rendezvous” was decidedly mitigated by the novel choice of sending only legs. The fact that this had not been done before didn’t bother either of them. And perhaps just because the plan was executed without any hesitation, it got off to a beautiful start.

Her legs met his legs at a quaint hotel in the 6th arrondissement, halfway up Rue Monsieur le Prince, a few blocks from Odèon. It was late afternoon. Although they were scheduled to land at a similar time, they had decided not to share a taxi from the airport, blaming unreliable airlines. The real reason was to ensure that the potential of what might play out over the next few days wasn’t colored by anything trivial or mundane, such as the realities of logistics. In the same spirit, as her legs happened to arrive first to the city, they rubbed against each other to build up a nice shine, put on expensive stockings along with Italian but sensible shoes, crossed over one another, placed a folded newspaper at the top so as not to show too much skin like they do in films, and waited in the lobby. Hers looked great, not dressed to compliment the person they belonged to. No, these legs dressed for themselves, determined to look ravishing for what they were: legs. When his legs appeared at the entrance a few moments later, hers got up with anticipation. One leg stayed back making sure the newspaper didn’t fall to the floor, and the other leg moved forth to greet the newly arrived. Knees touched. Then touched again. The fourth leg joined, and they all felt excitement.

In order to drop things off at their room before walking to dinner, they had to navigate the elevator, holding and supporting each other acrobatically to first count the buttons, then find the right floor, and eventually — but now already much better at it — find a similar solution to use the large key and open the door to their room. Lights were left off because legs don’t need them. They instead moved closer to the enormous soft bed, bolstered by how well they had navigated recent friction and turned their obstacles into a new shared world, a language that only legs speak.

Adorned with pillow marks and over an hour late for reservations at Chez Pauline, located around the corner from Place St. Germain, they conquered jetlag and planned the rest of their days together. Four legs, four wills to be brokered. Walking, of course, more art museums, naturally, but certainly none of the touristy banalities. This encounter had no place for the established. During dessert, one of his legs borrowed a pen from the hostess (Pauline?) and sketched her left foot roughly and endearingly on the stained paper tablecloth. Her right leg, not busy modeling, leaned in without incertitude and dipped a toe in wine to give more life to the illustration, adding depth with a blood red coloring that spread across the feet, up the ankle, and filled the thighs with blush life. They were a good team: a good pair, and a natural quartet. The model leg, seeing itself singled out and portrayed, wanted to take the paper cloth. The other three advised against it and promised that there would be as many more drawings as any leg could want — and of any part of it, his right leg added, and so they were all back in the large soft hotel bed in a matter of minutes. Here, everywhere, when it was just them, they felt safe, saved from a deep and newfound loneliness. They were equals and completely unique in this strange corner of the universe now discovered. Created.

It was of course true that it did happen, that they did visit all the museums they set out to, took the late-night jetlagged walks and stopped for drinks to let the feet rest on top of each other under cafe tables wobbling on cobblestone streets. Sometimes only the left legs would veer off as a pair, stretching the idea of what belonged where, but for the most part, all four of them together seemed like the natural constellation. The legs, having created enough of a bubble to shield themselves from the outside world and what others might deem banal, even ran through the Louvre together — although you are not supposed to — reenacting the the bottom half of the frame from of the scene in Godard’s Bande à part that was later reenacted in Bertolucci’s Dreamers: their version of the art dash clocking in at almost an hour in contrast to the first cinematic record of 9 minutes and 43 seconds.

The legs instinctively knew this: that the mystery between them was liminal. And they did suspend doubt as the moment compelled, sharing impossibly passionate explorations of each other and indirectly of themselves. Sex was not had, it was discovered. At first tender. Then omnipresent. There is a spot at the back of the knee where the skin is thinner. It is part of neither the upper section of a leg nor the lower and not really joined to the knee other than being the very opposite of it. It is more open to define itself fully in the most intimate of moments and poised to make intentional touch erotic. They gave this particular spot a name: Grinta! In never before realized climaxes, not even in Paris, it would have shivers build and rush through every fiber of the inner thigh, moving from one leg to the other without any distinction as sweat and tangled bed sheets wrapped it as one. It was never an orgasm held by, say, just one left leg, nor was it a limbed foursome any more than a regular person thinks of intercourse between two people as an “orgy of limbs.” Our lover legs of Rue Monsieur le Prince never once thought of what sex was supposed to be, nor what parts of the body might be absent. For them, it was all there, for now.

As the inevitable end to the trip arrived, the legs spent a few moments leaning tenderly and quietly against each other as the taxi for the airport arrived. They did the same in terminal B when their different gates unsentimentally announced boarding. And in rejoining their other halves back home, they were greeted with a drink, a million questions and complex jealousy. Parts of the body were happy to be back together. Things were complete in new ways. Spring was back in the step. And for the bedroom, our lovers from Bilbao were still connected through a newly discovered spot at the back of the knee we now know is called Grinta!

Johan Liedgren
Founder of The Liminal Circle, an international think tank of liminal philosophers, technologists, researchers and designers. Liedgren is an award-winning film director, author and advisor working with media and technology companies on liminal design strategy, narrative, and product development. https://www.liminalcircle.com http://www.liedgren.com

For more articles in our series on applied liminality, visit Medium https://medium.com/@johan_liedgren

Legs About Love was originally published in Rainbow Salad on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A section from the upcoming book ‘How to Kiss a Cannibal — writings on liminality’, by Johan Liedgren. Published by The Liminality Press.

In the final chapter depicting the brutal end of Alice from Wonderland, we find her many years past her book fame, all grown up and sitting by a riverbank dense with bucolic Christianity, feeling bored and clinically downhearted, nostalgically reminiscing over long lost rabbit holes now grown shut and the acute lack of adventures that once filled her childhood with magic. Alice is accompanied by a smoking black poodle named Little Faustus who speaks fluent English with a charming Swedish accent and has the ability to follow her everywhere, even into her dreams.

Our story springs to life as Alice announces a plan to create her very own wonderful world of magic and excitement by venturing deep into her own imagination instead of just waiting for unreal rabbits that never show up.

To what end? asks the dog and lights a cigarette, You can’t surprise yourself.

I just want a glimpse of magic, says Alice, A quick fix. To cheer me up!

Drugs would be a more sincere choice. The spirits are cruel to those who approach without vulnerability.

Well, I am sincerely bored, snipes Alice.

Careful, little rabbit. No one likes an eager hero.

Alice rests her head in her palms and thinks as hard as she can, but almost immediately gives up.

It is hard to surprise yourself, she agrees.

Faustus sees an opening and explains; both paws gesturing, cigarette bopping from the corner of his little hairy mouth

You see little Alice…

So much bigger than you.

…for surprise that is worth remembering, you always have to bring an important part of yourself close enough to the mystery of the spirits. And that requires courage. If it is not at least mildly terrifying, then it will not work. But when you do: the world you enter becomes real. And in it, your vulnerability becomes your strength. You see yourself anew. And then, you return, changed. That’s basically how it works.

That’s like a lot, complains Alice. Rabbits are less work.

If you don’t want to wait for Rabbits, you have to do the rabbit’s work.

You’re preachy, protests Alice but then agrees: So, where might one find these spirits of yours?

It’s all fiction, Alice, Faustus taps his forehead, Your job is to bring something very real into what is not. The tension between the two is what makes the real world move.

But Alice has very little patience for theory.

Where, doggy? I know you. And I know that you know. Alice puts her hands on her hips, demanding.

Little Faustus lights another cigarette with the last glow of the previous one.

Well, now that you ask, he makes a drawn-out theatrical pause to puff out the smoke. I’ve heard that there were four hunters here a few days ago. They were whispering about a thick grove of oak trees. Just like that one. Right over there. Faustus lowers his voice and leans in closer. They called it Angel’s Threshold. But, you know, I am warning you again Alice: much like the four hunters cautioned — unless you bring a sincere and specific curiosity to it, the limitless world of imagination will be far too vast to comprehend fully, and when unleashed, it will devour you.

Ugh. Boring! You used to be more fun. And frankly, more of a man’s best friend.

Perhaps, sighs the dog. And you used to be more sincere in your curiosity.

Alice is of course already headed towards the grove behind them in her imagination, and Little Faustus, who can follow her everywhere, even in her dreams, sees her skipping along a small path without paying much attention. She soon trips over a small sign in the grass just before the grove.

Look, a clue! cheers Alice. What does it say?

You know I don’t read signs. I don’t like to take direction.

It’s for me, silly.

It says: Threshold — Liminal Grove. Beware Four Angels indifferent to where your story ends. That really can’t be good.

Nonsense, quips Alice, Angels are always good.

No, they aren’t, refutes the dog and stomps out his cigarette, I think that’s literally what the sign is telling you.

As Faustus attempts to impress upon her the profound importance of heeding the sign, Alice simply rolls her eyes, blames stupid rabbits in general and soon ventures further in behind the treeline towards a clearing. She stops in the middle, and after a deep breath excitedly closes her eyes.

I am now ready for adventure, she declares.

Her arms hang limp by her sides. A few seconds pass. Still nothing. She closes her eyes harder. Really hard. She clenches her fists and curls her mouth just like she always does when she can’t find anyone else to blame.

It’s not working, Faustus! complains Alice. Anything I think of, no matter how exciting, I’ve already thought of it.

Faustus gives her a tired glance and trots over to a large overgrown marble statue of an angel preceding over the north corner of the leafy opening.

I found an angel, says the dog.

Aha, finally, cheers Alice, But it’s a she. Does it count as a real angel if it is a she?

Oh yes, and they can be the worst.

Well, then read me the inscription Faustus, it’s in Greek.

It’s Latin. This is “Mirum” — it means: Surprise.

Oh, just what I was missing!

What a coincidence, replies Faustus coldly and brushes away centuries of dust and moss from the pedestal to read out the rest of the inscription aloud.

Desire unexpecting of surprise, is a story of death.

Wait, what? Why don’t they just say what they mean, like traffic signs?

Well, Alice, It means that whatever these angles are guarding, you must not approach simply to get what you seek. Angels never barter. It’s always surprising. Don’t be greedy. Be curious.

Alice looks around and finds another marbled statue standing equally tall and silent in the western corner of the clearing. This one has her enormous wings swept tightly to cover the face.

Why is that one hiding?

It’s not hiding. She is using her wings to shield you from the divine mystery she has been called to protect for eternity. This angel is labeled: Sublime.

Hmm, more words — and what does this inscription say?

A search for gold will lead to ash, a search for truth will lead to beauty.

There’s gold here?

It’s a metaphor, Alice. Not a traffic sign. I think it is saying that the powers of our Angels should not be approached casually — you must seek what only their world holds. Don’t be greedy. Be curious.

Wait! You didn’t even look at the inscription, you just made that up.

It’s close enough, you will see.

There are more angels?

The sign mentioned four angels, so let’s start there.

Alice shakes her head impatiently and grunts at all the work she has to do but soon finds another sentry behind large cloudberry bushes at the southern side of the clearing.

That one is Abstraction, explains the dog. Would you like to know what it says?

Something more fun, I hope.

Language without image speaks only of itself.

Oh, so this angel here, ties to that one there, and that one to that one…

Look at you go! It’s almost like they are trying to tell you something.

Alice looks closer at the statues. She touches the hard marble, smells her finger now cast with muck, inspects the heavenly figures and takes a few steps back. Then she promptly gives up again and gives Faustus a demanding stare.

We are angel hunting! It’s an angel puzzle. I want more. Now.

You are lighting my cigarette with a wildfire, Milady.

More angels! Where, where?

The dog reluctantly nods to the fourth and last corner of the glade and Alice trades his suggested caution for grasping excitement and hurries over.

Hunting, Faustus! Look, this one is even larger than the others. I am certain her name is Love. And, it has a shiny shield. I can see myself in it!

Alice, distracted by the image of herself, starts adjusting her hair.

That one, notes Faustus gravely, is the mightiest of them all: she is Credence.

Her eyes are closed. I bet it declares how love is eternally blind and cures all…

Nope, not even close., interrupts the dog, The inscription reads: See only my sisters and providence is yours. And, the dog explicates, it means Alice, that only if you go look for what cannot be found here — only then will the abstraction (pointing to the statue labeled Abstraction), move towards the sublime (pointing), by reflecting back an experience so vast that you (pointing at Alice), surprise (pointing), yourself (pointing at the marbled mirror where Alice is occupied.) for a perfect ending to your story that is both inevitable and surprising at the same time. Ta-da!

I still don’t have a story.

Then, you will just experience surprise without anything to hold it. You really don’t want that.

Alice mulls this over briefly but can’t stay with the idea for long and soon curls her lips again. The wind picks up. Foliage around the clearing rustles discretely — a theatre audience settling in before the show as the houselights dim. Alice can feel her skin grow cold.

Something’s happening. But I still don’t see anything.

You are not looking for anything!

The ground starts trembling. Layers of dust rattling off the marbled sculptures. Birds leave the trees and take with them all sound and the clear shape of things.

Faustus, cries Alice, Why did you not warn me?

At this point the dog simply shakes his head and beckons Alice towards a bush in the direction they came from.

Look! It’s Alice, by the riverbank.

Alice desperately stumbles closer and looks through the foliage, back towards the river.

There! You see? No surprise, no abstraction, nothing sublime. And a complete lack of confidence.

She doesn’t understand and turns to the dog for answers, but Faustus is already gone.

It is at this exact moment that the four statues sweep down off their pedestals to wrap their massive wings around our indolent hero in violent embrace. Alice, delighted for an instant, calls out — excitedly, wanting to share her divine rabbit hole. But Alice by the river, is lost in her own thoughts, poking the ground by her feet with a finger: mud is dumb, she thinks. Shoes are dumb too. How stupid then, is mud on shoes?

Alice, Alice…

Uh-hu? Alice by the riverbed looks up and around, now with wet mud on her finger, ready to smell it. Mud drips on her skirt. This confirms her view that the world is unfair and that mud is to blame.

Alice!

What! I’m busy!

But she does look over. An uncanny recognition of her own voice. The trees are rustling as if shaken from below.

Inside the grove, a low thunder grows louder than sound and the intensity of Alice’s visions multiply with ferocious might. A dark ink of all heavens floods the evening sky. I used to be able to see shapes of animals in clouds, Alice remembers fondly. Then, seeing nothing, she is overwhelmed by a deep sadness clawing at horizons. The ground below. Its firmness and support, dissolving into wet mud — drowning her inside every imaginable surprise, unable to take on any shape or meaning. And therefore unable to provide an end. Unescorted by the protection of images or stories, questions or abstractions — reality disrobes to flaunt its beautiful confusion and raw chaos. She is no longer the observer. No longer the visitor. There is no language here and her fading wail towards the water — a stumbled warning to herself — is but the sound of lips moving.

It’s the birds leaving the grove that finally catches the full attention of the gloomy woman by the water. She turns from the mud on her finger, just in time to see herself desperately reaching back out through the leaves, grasping for the last of reality. Am I screaming? As their eyes lock, the fragile peace between right now and fiction shatters — the dance of angels slow to once again retreat for a marbled silence of ancient oaths. Our Alice is lost on both sides, a dialogue ceased.

After this short but intense display, the chirp of birds that only old people can name, has returned to the woods. Little Faustus reappears smoking his cigarette, slowly sauntering back towards the riverbank where he finds Alice slumped forward and stuck in the cold damp mud. The sun no longer offers warmth, and the girl’s skin has lost all life. Her eyes are frozen wide open, mouth ajar, with her face grotesquely staring back towards the grove with one hand attempting a futile grasp for what could never be reached from where she sits.

The next morning, when the much too early parted Alice was found by four hunters, the authorities gathered no evidence of foul play, although several recently smoked cigarettes were said to have been found close to the body.

And so, as the story of Alice has come to an irreversible end, our smoking canine is once again on the move. He never liked England and felt the damp smell of large machines bring back memories of darker times. With these tragic events fresh in memory, it should be made clear that the dog had always loved Alice fully and never once lost faith in her, hoping that she would eventually find the courage to grow up. So, heed — should you ever run into a dog with a charming Swedish accent, it might just be Faustus — and despite truly being man’s best friend, what he has no patience for at all, is insincerity.

Johan Liedgren
Founder of The Liminal Circle, an international think tank of liminal philosophers, technologists, researchers and designers. Liedgren is an award-winning film director, author and advisor working with media and technology companies on liminal design strategy, narrative, and product development. https://www.liminalcircle.com http://www.liedgren.com

For more articles in our series on applied liminality, visit Medium https://medium.com/@johan_liedgren

First Come the Hunters was originally published in Rainbow Salad on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A chapter from the upcoming book ‘How to Kiss a Cannibal — writings on liminality’, by Johan Liedgren. Published by The Liminality Press.

Part I.

The new appointment of young St. Johannus as protector of elevators did not sound as important and big league as those better known holy workers’ more fundamental jurisdictions: all children, all things medicine, healing, the arts — or that St. Francis, who somehow got assigned all the animals along with the environment, whatever that means.

St. Johannus however was determined to make the most of his particular domain and to elevate it… yes, elevate, that’s it! His station was less about the mechanical integrity of machines that shuttle humans between floors of a building, and all about blessing the act of one soul moving intentionally, gracefully and transcendently between dimensions and realities.

But how? How could he make others see what he saw in a simple elevator ride? As he pushed the large button on the ground floor, he would get ready to leave, not just the entrance or lobby, but the whole universe of that level, including what he himself might be in it. As the elevator arrived and the doors finally opened, he would wait just a second before entering to properly mark the crossing of the threshold, and as the travel started upwards, he would imagine new worlds, loves and adventures that might be waiting on each floor — he would open himself up to any and all possibilities.

He never imagined himself the same on two different floors. A brutal banker on one, a sexy pirate on the other. And he would always push the buttons to more than one floor, just to see the doors come open briefly, flirting and teasing their million possibilities before he ascended higher. For him, all this was exhilarating. And best of all was that wonderfully undefined and unknowable moment inside the elevator somewhere between one floor and another. When he eventually returned down to the ground floor, he had imagined himself through so many fantastic journeys and versions of himself that he never quite felt as if he was returning the same person. There should be a German word for that feeling.

But how would he preach the full appreciation of a tender ground-floor push of the button, and offer others the same anticipation that he felt? How could he teach the world to close its eyes as the floors counted down to arrival, and wait serenely for the bell to chime jingly — and as the doors slowly wooshed open, see the small square space as the a transcendent vessel whose mission was to the outer edges of a space internal. Not one of apartments or postal codes. How? To find out, St Johannus set out on a pilgrimage — wide and for personal truth — he started to travel the world.

His charm and good looks helped. And soon in every city, and at every elevator he would visit to bless, curious devotees began to gather. At first the audience were driven by morbid curiosity and a general disdain for all things religious: they wanted to see him fail. But St. Johannus was never big on baby Jesus, commandments or anything organized at scale. Instead, he searched for the divine in our unique ability to imagine not just what is, but what might be. And this particular gospel spread like wildfire to many younger people who expressed themselves by clicking on social media posts of him smiling shyly and riding elevators while looking oddly attractive. And with time, his digital attention became real world fame. Followers would be waiting for him at every obscure corner of the world.

They often asked him many questions he couldn’t answer, and he had never been comfortable talking to large groups. When there was demand for spiritual guidance — and this was unavoidable for Saints — he would blush nervously, bat his long eyelashes, smile and fiddle with his fingers. The lack of clear intentionality of his movements was quickly misinterpreted as a sublime but necessary rite to attain the coveted higher and elevated state he must represent. People need simple things to hang meaning on.

The fidgeting thus became a careful ritual that worked for both St. Johannus lack of confidence and the audience’s thirst for symbols: two fingers held up, swiping from left to right as if an imaginary curtain before us needed to be drawn to the side to reveal the elevator doors opening and pushing aside the veil before another reality, and then, a momentary closing of one’s eyes before crossing the threshold to join the now blessed journey up. Or down. It didn’t matter. Jesus went up. Orpheus went underground.

What exactly did these gestures mean, everyone and especially the press would ask him. Over and over again. And, eventually, in a sake-infused state of vulnerability while traveling in Japan, he, for reasons he didn’t quite know, or, if he did, was not particularly proud of, leaned in close to a surprisingly tall female journalist he really wanted to explore further and whispered wetly:

“The two fingers,” he explained as he was moving his own two fingers around her soft lips to illustrate, “are a tribute to the liminality that can have us move between spaces like we move through a good book. With each page swept left, and that part of the story left behind, another is being offered to the right. And we will wonder what we might find next. This anticipation, born from imagination, leaps out and ahead of the already written — and the already read — to make the characters and worlds our very own. All we have to do is to forget this world for a moment: the floor we are to leave behind. Two fingers mark this moment between what is known and what might be: like a blessing to move us deeper towards the true mystery that echoes from a deep and distant place. Yet, it is the mystery that is always right there.”

At this point, he found his two fingers had been vacuumed deep into the journalist’s mouth as she mumbled, barely audibly: “And whoout bout da clousing of da eyes?”

Bolstered by the sake’s increasingly firm grip on his existence — and the fact that a subtle sucking sound seemed to indicate that she didn’t want his fingers withdrawn — he looked straight into her clear brown eyes and explained as succinctly as the situation allowed: “The closing of the eyes is the last step before we can enter this fragile thin space of liminal in-betweens, a way to wipe the pandering noise of the current moment from the mind, and to open us up for what we do not expect.”

The well-known Tokyo-based journalist climaxed twice: first in the lobby of the small Tokyo boutique hotel — his two fingers still deep inside her. And then again in his hotel room. He slept like a baby.

All of this went into print the next day and was soon covered by every major newspaper and magazine around the world. And soon both fame and infamy descended upon the completely unprepared St. Johannus who was still terrified of the public eye, but now began to warm up to the cover image of himself front and center in the fashionable lobby and next to the gorgeous journalist with her hair in a delightful mess. This iconic image of two star crossed lovers drinking coffee had him show more leg from underneath his robe than he thought fit to print and her hair more post-coital than Japanese culture likely deemed acceptable. He was now far beyond return in a new journey that was no longer just his: in a divine bout of irony, he himself had been elevated.

Part II.

Still hot off the presses and the talk of the town, St. Johannus soon after traveled to Berlin. He arrived jetlagged, slightly depressed from airports, and wanting for many mimosas and a cigarette somewhere where no one could see him. The crowd, almost overnight, had grown to thousands. At a downtown neo classical but promoted as gothic bathhouse turned celebrity residency, a large crowd of curious locals, the world press, influencers, and a few handfuls of weird hardcore followers that had shown up for all the wrong reasons — all gathered in the large lobby while he just waited by the elevator.

The crowd finally settled, and the dreadful silence turned its focus on the shy Saint. He smiled back warmly with an endearing hint of panic. It was time again to ceremoniously push the elevator button and do the finger and eye thing that had become his signature move, and do it in such a way that everyone could see it. A performance, a ritual. So, like many times before, he pushed the button and got ready to present the very essence of his teachings. This was his moment. It was perfect. And the whole world was watching.

But nothing happened. He pushed the button again. And again. Seconds had turned into the longest minute of his life when he noticed a skinny bellboy in uniform worming his way through the crowd, headed straight for him. When the low-level hotel employee finally reached the saint, he apologized for being alive and whispered dryly: “Kaput. Broken. Elevator is… im krankenhaus. Das thing is nicht geworking… kindly, excuse me, operating next week.”

St. Johannus nodded calmly. He got it. The elevator was fucked. As, no doubt, was he.

Was it irony or just bad luck that he was now stuck as a prisoner of his own preachy construct? He started to lose blood pressure. The image of the crowd before him faded away like milky mist and the multitude was replaced by the singularity of one single figure standing tall like a lighthouse in the center of his stormy uncertainty: a tall, athletic Australian woman in a tight turtleneck sweater, white pants that confirmed her fitness and with a press pass from one of the most important news agencies in Europe. He moved forward and grabbed her wide shoulders for balance and smelled the skin of her neck just below her ear. He felt God’s presence seeping out of her pores.

In this moment, what had already become bigger than he could ever have imagined somehow got even bigger and rose majestically out of his subconscious dark oceans like an ancient monster revealing its true size and vastness. He nuzzled closer to the superfit reporter, so close that he could feel the heat of her shallow and quickening breath. He knew exactly what to do now. Holding on hard to the teutonic woman, he looked up and around and then declared loudly and simply with a saintly bravado that was fueled by the necessities created by the untimely breakdown of the old German elevator: “Liminality is an attitude.”

The crowd gasped. And soon everyone was nodding and whispering to each other to confirm his truth into common wisdom. Yes. He was back, and he felt awe inspired. His calling was sincere, and he felt the deepest gratitude for the heavenly reminder that this had never been about elevators, but about elevation.

He parted the sea of people who had now reappeared before him and during the next half hour guided them through all types of rooms, sets and arrangements in the hotel, except the elevator. With each stop he showed in simple terms that liminality — the term that had suddenly become his calling card — is not a space, but a way to look with anticipation for what you don’t expect. And so, just like it was originally imagined, a quiet sense of liminality soon infused any and all of our thresholds — small and large, intentional and found: any hotel rooms, hallways, closets, dumbwaiters, phone booths, deep shadows, new and old encounters, unlit candles and obscure membranes held by those we sleep next to.

And for those who took to heart St. Johannus’ gospel, his short threshold ritual could now be used for much more than elevators: first with two fingers, a blessing swiping left to right “to clear the pandering noise of a current moment” from mind, and then a quiet pause for a split second with eyes closed before entering as the metaphorical doors opened to greet us with infinite possibilities waiting on the other side. Yes, any space could now be a wet whispering dialogue with the very first muse that gave us the hope we needed to desire our own version of the world. And more importantly, to allow us the agency and courage to have the ride be one that takes place within.

Back in the enormous lobby after the seminal tour, St. Johannus knew that his new larger message had been well received. Cameras were flashing and pens were scribbling as questions and cheers surrounded him, and the hardcore fans tried to touch him in ways he did not like. He stood still, quieted his own mind and briefly wondered if he had now completed his work and reached the end of his official saintly journey. Was this it? Job done, all set. But no. Again, he felt the strong undercurrent of inspiration that always struck him hard when he was contemplating the possibility of status quo.

More specifically, the tall Australian press lady walked straight towards him with a stride that was both graceful and terrifying. She leaned in so close that he could feel the warmth of her soft face as she thanked him for the visit. He slid a hand around her waist and found more soft white skin at her hip in that wonderfully accessible yet forbidden and unnamed space somewhere between the bottom hem of her tight turtleneck, and the upper edge of her low-cut white pants. There should be a German word for this as well. And it was liminal. He closed his eyes briefly and used his two fingers to softly start exploring by swiping right. And a little left. She told him that this happened to be a very sensitive spot for her.

Adjacent to the lobby was a library nook. The spring sun filtered in from the small colored ceiling windows, creating a beam of light that hit the very center of the small floor. And this is where he guided her to as her breathing quickened and his two fingers dared deeper into the deep abyss of her white denim. He ensured that his angle was right for the cameras, and that the April light that filtered through dusty stained glass up high would hit them both with Caravaggian perfection. And when he could feel her muscles contract and the climax build, he let her fall back fully in his arms and made her head fall to the side just right with lips slightly parted in a near perfect restaging of Bernini’s sexually ambiguous statue of The Ecstasy of St. Teresa. He held his two fingers high then returned them to work, closing his eyes and listening to the world press turning itself inside out to be first with the story that now had everything.

Part III.

From here on out St. Johannus was a rockstar, a celebrity protector known as “The Liminal Prophet.” He did drugs but let others defend it as an act of liminality. He wore torn jeans and sneakers and had sex with countless actresses and writers and artists and had a few cameo roles in major motion pictures where everyone agreed his acting was actually quite good. He got invited to Windsor Castle (but declined), and to meet the presidents of both Italy and the US. Many high-end clothing brands made T-shirts, bomber jackets, bucket hats and cashmere sweaters with embroidered text that repeated the core mantra: LIMINALITY IS AN ATTITUDE.

However, this meteoric rise (for it had far outpaced the rate of ascent of any elevator), was — in classic rock star fashion — ultimately cut tragically short. And although his early and much more limited origin story with elevators had long since faded to the background, it was precisely this first claim to fame that would have our St. Johannus stolen prematurely from us in one final and mortal ascent.

It happened during a visit to the Vatican and a ride up an elevator to see the Pope. The accident was far too grizzly to be called ironic, but there is something about a patron saint being slowly mangled inside the very thing he had been chosen to protect that is hard to describe in any other way. Here is what happened: the young olive-skinned nun with hazelnut eyes and a matching chestnut mane who was assigned to accompany him on his visit to the papal palace, had had a crush on St. Johannus since she was a small girl. He was the very reason she chose faith. And so it didn’t seem all that much of a transgression that they shared each other fully in his guest chamber from several angles before entering the final and fatal elevator, and that on the way into the elevator, they once more took the opportunity to consummate God’s gift to sexually active people in a space he was intimately familiar with. They hastily but eagerly helped each other get naked while waiting for the elevator, and were about halfway done undressing by the time the small old door creaked open and they entered merrily, making all kinds of cute sounds.

But as the ancient steel gate of the bottom floor closed forcefully, it caught one leg of his ripped jeans left hanging around the ankle and got further twisted in the partially pulled off but sturdily sewn habit where he had enthusiastically stuck his left arm to find more nun. And while most of St. Johannus was pulled upwards to meet His Holiness, the bottom part of his body trapped by the tangled denim along with his arm, were still firmly anchored at the floor he tried to leave. Technically speaking, for a moment, he bridged three full floors in an extraordinary act of final liminality.

The press was, of course, waiting on the Pope’s floor, and as the elevator doors opened, cameras from around the globe got a last glimpse of our Saint: an elevator sprayed from floor to ceiling with blood and, sitting on the floor, a very naked and statuesque woman with hazelnut eyes embracing hard what was left St. Johannus. Despite his elevatorial maiming, he had a few breaths left. With the one arm still attached to his body, he smiled his boyish smile, pulled the nun closer for a last kiss, and turned his fading gaze towards the world stage.

One last time, as millions stood witness to the live broadcasts, he held up two fingers and swiped them ceremoniously from left to right. In this final act of sainthood, St. Johannus yet again managed to elevate our very notion of what it means to take full control of the inevitable. And so, readying himself for another ascent through the unknown as he had done countless times before, he closed his eyes.

Johan Liedgren
Founder of The Liminal Circle, an international think tank of liminal philosophers, technologists, researchers and designers. Liedgren is an award-winning film director, author and advisor working with media and technology companies on liminal design strategy, narrative, and product development. https://www.liminalcircle.com http://www.liedgren.com

For more articles in our series on applied liminality, visit Medium https://medium.com/@johan_liedgren

The Patron Saint of Elevators was originally published in Rainbow Salad on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Pablo Picasso’s 1924 engagement with Teatre de la Cigale in Paris hinted at a new artistic form, ‘more broadly extending a post-cubist curiosity of juxtaposed perspectives.’ For stage and set pieces, the human body and movement were brought backwards into abstractions as a pictorial surface—a fourth-wall break of the moment through a new mix of artforms brought onto the same stage as one.

The performers were presented and directed as ancient statues. The myth—Les Aventures de Mercure—coming to life via the ballet without ever leaving the lore; and old marble rescued from ruins hiding their origin. It highlights what might always have been true about art: its liminal potency comes from aesthetic discontinuity.

Art wants to become reality. As much as it has no choice but to resort to surface manifestation to exist at all, its will to live is always the break from its native tongue. A playful transgression to crack open the surface and put manifestation in active dialogue with its context. Or put another way, the space that opens is also the liminal question posed — always an invitation — and we are now welcome to explore what isn’t there but is suggested by the juxtaposition. Absence is the driving force of liminality. The transgression of native language is the message.

It is through the crossing of semiotic boundaries — using one art form to talk about another: to dance about architecture — that the artistic ember can escape its entrapment in the surface of language and manifest more fully as another suggested reality. The dissonance is the contagion of language, and we are willing hosts and accomplices in the transgression that we allow to take place.

The stilted movements and two-dimensionality of set pieces in Mercure are a transgression of expected form: theater as images, dancing as statues. The absence it lays bare is found between stylized fetishes of the times for classical art and the mirror that Picasso held right up to it. There wasn’t much plot to the play overall. Although Debussy did write the music, Jean Cocteau focused on the narrative, ensuring that the 13 tableaus or scenes of the script instead were all about his signature interests: fluidity, ambiguity, and transformation through juxtaposition. The absence of plot and movement in the dance was the opening for us to reinterpret classics having gone stale and inanimate. The latter no doubt also a commentary on contemporary taste.

And how perfect then that the protagonist is the roman god Mercury (Hermes in Greek tradition): the messenger — bringing word and mediating between two different and irreconcilable worlds: between gods and mortals. He embodied duality, a trickster in attitude. If Liminality is the muse waiting for Mercure at the threshold, it is he who carries out the transgression by bridging what can’t be united. He was also the protector of thieves and travellers: the cleverness and cunning required to navigate and traverse forbidden thresholds. Mercury is the liminal spirit, restlessly straddling the boundaries between worlds — gods and mortals, life and death, order and chaos — acting as a swift, playful mediator who navigates transitions with wit and agility.

Mercury, god of thresholds and stolen fire, traverses boundaries not to bridge them, but to remind us that they exist only by the grace of what is not there. His messages arrive unmoored, without sender or recipient, encrypted in a grammar of ellipsis. They do not clarify; they confound. They operate not through plain instruction but through polysemy, misdirection, or concealment — speech that withholds even as it reveals. Like riddles unspoken yet present in form, his words require decoding, their meaning suspended in transit, which is not incidental: Mercury, progenitor of the hermeneutic, speaks in folds and folds again, not to obscure but to remind us that every act of communication is haunted by what it cannot say. Like Picasso’s line — never merely a line, but rupture, contour, concealment — each gesture is a negotiation with the void it exposes. Both figures move through multiplicity not in search of plenitude but driven by the gravitational pull of a specific, constitutive absence: the kind that grounds the possibility of meaning, presence, or creation. This absence is not a void in the negative sense, but rather a productive gap, a structuring lack, a deliberate omission that allows and at times inspires novel form, interpretation, and identity to unfold.

Johan Liedgren
Founder of The Liminal Circle, an international think tank of liminal philosophers, technologists, researchers and designers. Liedgren is an award-winning film director, author and advisor working with media and technology companies on liminal design strategy, narrative, and product development. https://www.liminalcircle.com http://www.liedgren.com

For more articles in our series on applied liminality, visit Medium https://medium.com/@johan_liedgren

Poses Plastiques en Trois Tableaux was originally published in Counter Arts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Contemporary aesthetics labeled liminal: a plethora of shared images and forums depicting empty parking garages, eerie hotel corridors and abandoned shopping malls. I would hesitate to describe them as liminal. The absence that these images highlight is simply that of what was there before — or what is supposed to be there. It’s a transactional absence, labeled as liminal. We already have the image figured out. Once it has our brief attention, the journey stops, as there is no unknown destination to the experience. No hope. No need for imagination.

A richer creative approach to the empty hallways and parking garages would be to ask the liminal design question: how might we suggest an absence that can be explored, conjuring conflicting emotions? Since the image itself is not enough, we will need a context that sets up a juxtaposition for us to work with. Perhaps placing another image next to it showing a similarly composed — and similarly ‘empty’ — forest. The salient similarities could be decent tilth. Or a caption, a more brute force, that asks the existential question that cannot be simply answered by the image. If the question is specific enough to tie in with the image but big enough to be liminal, we might actually have something.

Do computers clean the carpets in video games?

But a better example of complex absence is likely the below illustration depicting the 1914 Christmas truce, where after months of misery and deadlocked trench warfare, one German soldier starts singing Silent Night, and the French, British and Scottish soldiers in another trench only a stone’s throw away chime in. Soon enemy soldiers crawl up from the cold mud trenches and meet in the middle of the snowy battlefield to celebrate Christmas together. They share cigarettes and engage in a playful game of soccer. Inspiring but also harrowing. And it all happened, true story.

Inspiring, yet harrowing at the same time. That is the juxtaposition set up here: portraying a profound liminal absence. It is contradictory. Why? What is absent? What is it that makes us return to this single event as continuously symbolically meaningful: “Joyeux Noël” (2005), “Oh! What a Lovely War” (1969), “The Truce of Christmas” (1991) and, in an updated fashion. “Warmuffin” (2022). The Midway Village in Rockford, Illinois, hosts annual reenactments of the historical event.

The image’s juxtaposition is inspiring yet harrowing. No doubt this echoes Aristotle’s “inevitable and surprising, at the same time” and Kant’s definition of the sublime as the ambiguous “experience of both pleasure and discomfort”. The inspiring part is exactly the event’s singularity: boundaryless humanity, camaraderie and kindness in the most adversarial conditions possible. The harrowing part is also the same singularity — spontaneous truces are an extremely rare occurrence in wars. And from that perspective, what we witness and cherish between these men is also what is missing.

What followed right after the Christmas Day event offers liminal punctuation to the experience: at 9am someone blew a horn, and everyone scurried back to their wet and cold trenches to spend the rest of the war trying to kill each other. Again. Absence is, of course, that we now see the event possible in a world that doesn’t offer it — a desire that we brought back from the image experience.

Unlike the eerie images of empty parking garages and Stanley Kubrick-like hotel corridors, the image above is filled with life and surprise. With promise. Of course, both the truce and the empty parking lots are depictions of what did happen. They are not mere fabrications. We wouldn’t look at either of the two images as an intentionally arranged distortion of reality but instead assume that the framing of reality is to highlight something universal.

The Empty Parking Garages might say, “America is going bankrupt and leaves a scary landscape in its wake.” Fair enough. Probably true. And perhaps there is something redeeming in the aggregate volume of such images. But liminal it is not. Maybe liminoid. Most likely just limivoid. The promise and juxtaposition are missing. There is no hope of surprise. Perhaps that is the liminal absence, but that seems an unnecessarily generous interpretation. If it is only the gaping mouths of permanently open mall doors left in civilization’s wake, heard as the absent screams of hundreds of thousands who will never come back, it would not be a cry of hope but a whimper that begs for mystery and liminality.

At first glance, the Christmas Truce depicts something much more joyful, specific and unique: a momentary peace and quick friendships. It’s a liminal moment between war and more war. Between that moment in the trenches in 1914, and all the battles fought since. The absence calling us from the image comes straight from its juxtaposition — liminality created from its momentary nature of suspending the expected to temporarily join another narrative. A transgressive event of humanity that we now wish to bring back from its liminal suspense. To hold it, extend it, and have it come back alive into our ongoing status quo. Inspiring. Heartbreaking. A simultaneously exquisite pain and beautiful absence – what we suddenly see so clearly is desperately not here.

Johan Liedgren
Founder of The Liminal Circle, an international think tank of liminal philosophers, technologists, researchers and designers. Liedgren is an award-winning film director, author and advisor working with media and technology companies on liminal design strategy, narrative, and product development. https://www.liminalcircle.com http://www.liedgren.com

For more articles in our series on applied liminality, visit Medium https://medium.com/@johan_liedgren

The Simple and The Complex. was originally published in Counter Arts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A chapter from the upcoming book ‘How to Kiss a Cannibal — writings about liminality’, by Johan Liedgren. Published by The Liminality Press

Intermezzo: a short interlude in opera, concerts, theater and culinary arts providing a different style—lighter or comedic—as a contrasting break from the main performance’s sequence, readying the audience for intensity to come next.

The “drop” in house music shares liminality with the intermezzo: contrast, build-up and anticipation. Refreshing and resetting the attention towards the main beat.

The breathless tension before orgasm: A brief sexual intermezzo: withholding (absence) to increase and focus the remaining pleasure. A psychobiological template of embodiment for art experiences.

Fart jokes were common as interludes in medieval and renaissance plays, morality tales, and church dramas. This break in contrast had very little to do with the main theme or plot and thus is more of a palate cleanser than a liminal experience. However, the human universality of farting served as a bridge and denominator for varied social classes and audience types represented: shared experience as part of the liminal equation.

With intermezzo: how it specifically contrasts with the main sequence defines in what direction it steers our focus and narrative for the remainder of the main performance.

Example: Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni, of course, tells the story of the infamous libertine whose privileged and inconsiderate actions eventually seal his fate, sealed by a refusal to repent. Partway through the opera, the intermezzo lightens the tone: Giovanni’s servant, Leporello, humorously laments his challenging life under such an impossible master. His complaint is a mirror of the opera’s broader theme: consequences of selfish living, hubris and unbridled hedonism. While the intermezzo serves up a break with lighter entertainment and tone, it simultaneously brings prominence to the deeper morality and consequences of the narrative through a servant’s misgivings. Leporello, though comedic, expresses legitimate frustration and moral confusion about his role in Giovanni’s escapades. His dilemma foreshadows the greater retribution awaiting Giovanni, elegantly preparing us to pay certain attention to what comes next.

Stories within stories are intermezzos. Liminal, to the degree they add anticipatory metaphor to the overarching narrative.

Liminality as intermezzo: life’s sequence broken up, stopped for a brief moment to spin us around—both as a palate cleanser and a suspended perspective putting attention towards specific aspects of what might come next: an anticipation for what the liminal experience challenges us to see anew.

The narrative foreshadowing of intermezzi is less a spoiler than a thematic check-in with the audience. Be curious about ‘this’ going forward! A mindset to consider, relevant to the performance, according to the creator.

The “lighter and comedic” texture of intermezzi is a tonic for the main structure we have lost appreciation for by sheer volume and repetition. Intermezzo is an injection of neural plasticity to soften us up for what is to come.

Is a fourth-wall break in a performance the same as the intermezzo—a liminal space within the main sequence? Yes, the same liminal mechanics are most certainly in play, offering a new perspective and wider context. Is all liminality stretching the narrative stage in a similar manner? Yes. The fictional universe is not broken but asks for wider thematic jurisdiction.

In barren contrast, the traditional 30 second television commercial is the dumb leaf blower and brain-dead megaphone of intermezzos. A pointless disruption, narratively speaking. And because ads are most often made to be context independent and drafted as pandering attention grabbers, their placement will gravitate towards easy-to-digest entertainment to avoid contrast and liminality.

An all-smiles Coca-Cola commercial placed inside a harrowing documentary about children in war-torn Gaza would play as a reversed intermezzo: no longer a pause in the first narrative and instead would likely read as the concluding moral punchline. Indulgence and glut are a hard sell when the narrative focus is on real issues. If the Coke ads had been intentionally and repeatedly placed in the documentary by the filmmaker, it would be a clever twist on juxtapositions—a new liminal opportunity inside the standard frame of media, while expanding the vocabulary with what’s already there. Advertising smiles would lose their commercial indemnity and right to ignorance, likely to the horror of both brands and television producers. We would be asked to take the ad seriously — suddenly folded into the message. And no one wants that if you make soda pops with refined sugar and plastic bottles. Liminality intrinsically works against the interests of the Machine.

The commercial funding of Texaco Star Theater: “This show is brought to you by Texaco Oil (now fossil fuel overlord Chevron)” is a prime time example: ‘The Milton Berle Show’ of the 1950s. It more tightly sets the stage by marrying the sponsor as benefactor with more committed narrative intent covering the entire entertainment production, much more so than any 30 second spot or social media ad could ever deliver.

Ancient Rome’s “Bread and Circus”: a pandering politician offers free entertainment, bread and blood spectacle to appease and win his people’s graces — of course leaving the decisive plot point (thumbs up or down, life and death, or more crudely “You’re fired!”) to the emperor. Someone pays for the lions that eat the Christians — the benefactor hoping associations will be found in the spectacle far away from the real governing issues at hand. When someone tells you a story, they always want something from you.

British Petroleum (BP, another fossil fuel megalodon) has a long and complicated history of funding the Tate Modern Museum in London. The controversy highlights the role of sincerity in successful liminality. BP doesn’t have to do it, and art is in no way part of their business. Are the protests directed at BP at the museum intermezzos? An attempt to pause the experience and reframe the narrative of the oil company’s ‘art commercial’ as a juxtaposition to the sincerity of the art itself? Lack of sincerity will always leave a vulnerable opening — a liminal space — open to those who have it.

Johan Liedgren
Founder of The Liminal Circle, an international think tank of liminal philosophers, technologists, researchers and designers. Liedgren is an award-winning film director, author and advisor working with media and technology companies on liminal design strategy, narrative, and product development. https://www.liminalcircle.com http://www.liedgren.com

For more articles in our series on applied liminality, visit Medium https://medium.com/@johan_liedgren

Notes On Intermezzo. was originally published in Counter Arts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Oh, and the Fallen one — 
keeping the others busy…

Think of Lucifer, not as evil, but as the trickster. Rich with creative force but devoid of specific moral intent. See him as a spirited and doctrine-free metaphor for the flame that fuels curiosity. A true lover and instigator of in-between spaces, of ambiguity, contradiction and paradox. Of play and shadows. Tirelessly eager to provide the necessary desire to seduce us: not to what is known, but towards the unknown and its novel surprise. Price of admission: your vulnerability! If you aren’t open to change, what’s the point? Lucifer is our patron saint of Liminality.

‘Lucifer’ is first mentioned in Isaiah 14:12, written in the 8th century BCE, as a metaphor mocking authority, specifically symbolizing the inevitable fall of power and the fleeting glory of the King of Babylon, brought down by his own arrogance. ‘Satan’, on the other hand, emerged 4–6 BCE as a role or the ‘title’ of the accuser or adversary (devil’s advocate) placed inside the system to ensure perspective. Translations over time pushed the meaning to be the embodiment of pure evil, and soon it was personified: a character and symbol. Here we, of course, rely on Lucifer as the intellectual trickster whose claustrophobia in any fixed system is also our creative hope for escape from the panopticon of the Machine.

Despite self-serving religious doctrine aiming to protect its own power by conveniently conflating Lucifer (trickster) with Satan (evil) — equating challenge of authority with malevolence, and yet again confusing abstract metaphor with opportunistic truth — liminality will fiercely protect the all-important difference between the two. That said, in the radically inclusive ethos of liminality, one is well advised to consider that neither Lucifer nor Satan can exist without one another. Not even as a metaphor.

Pure evil was never the point. Unholy yes, destructive and transgressive, no doubt — but seeking a predictable evil, never. Goethe got it right in the story about Faust when the devil disguised as a talking poodle finally reveals who he is: “I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.” Milton saw it as foundational for his Paradise Lost, with Lucifer as the very source of propulsion for any story’s forward momentum. He chose the right protagonist. God is never going to do that — the still water love soup of heaven was never a good story. There is no story without conflict. A story-starter, above all, Lucifer is not concerned with himself and hates endings. It’s always about the story that could be — and the bigger the conflict, the bigger the story. Paradise — do we really want it? He is a spirit in exile: the new story he seeks is ours—nothing else is a challenge. Never underestimate the importance of good narrative in liminal experiences. All else is just more bland soup.

Glen Duncan’s profoundly non-academic novel I, Lucifer beautifully captures our protagonist’s birth as his purpose in the moment:

“I was the first difference. Before me, everything was One, and there was no reason for anything. But I woke up, and then, at last, there was a reason. I was the break in the pattern, the first crack in the mirror of creation, the singularity from which all contradiction poured. I am the thing that was not, the difference between what was and what could be. I made difference possible, and I was the first to recognize it.”

Damn! Literally. In the beginning, there was difference as the paradox of being out of nothing. And so: liminality as a prerequisite condition for anything to become anything. The rest was messy and moved fast with a ‘big bang’. One half-cooked inkling of suggesting difference — that’s all it took to get the soup served.

The Garden of Eden, my version: same principle. At first, God proudly looks at the perfection. And perfect it was, love soup perfect. But after a million years of looking down on the same flawless daily garden routine, she realizes that her diorama completely lacks stakes and conflict: no death, no sickness, just more endless soup. No actionable nudity, just large children moving about in circles. And no end is possible. God then creates the tree with forbidden fruit. Now his little garden gnomes at least had the chance to surprise her. But they didn’t, because they had been told to follow the rules — perhaps even more unbearable to watch. Lucifer, who was already chomping at the bit, got called in. In that instant, Eden suddenly came alive with the promise of infinite surprise. The forbidden fruit and its paradox was not the end of man; it was the beginning of the story. The original sin is the very reason we can tell stories about Eden today. And so, God is back, watching us curiously from high above. There is no story without conflict and paradox. Aristotle captured this exact paradox well: “All stories need to be both inevitable and surprising at the same time.” Because what is Eden without a little slither in the grass?

Johan Liedgren
Founder of The Liminal Circle, an international think tank of liminal philosophers, technologists, researchers and designers. Liedgren is an award-winning film director, author and advisor working with media and technology companies on liminal design strategy, narrative, and product development. https://www.liminalcircle.com http://www.liedgren.com

For more articles in our series on applied liminality, visit Medium https://medium.com/@johan_liedgren

Lucifer as Metaphor was originally published in Counter Arts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The surging interest in liminality over the last 10 years from culture, academia, and corporations is not surprising: the future promise of technology has lost its shine despite unprecedented advances (Where is my jetpack?) but gained no patina or allure. We are fatigued with the plethora of flickering screens and the circus barking of online media’s pandering for our attention. Humans have better things to do. During the same time, concrete work has been underway to understand and design for liminal products. Contrasting the current transactional view on technology and users, liminality brings deep-rooted tradition of human culture to technology — a potent antidote promising very personal, deeper, and more meaningful experiences. Businesses are trying to figure out what to do with it.

Liminal Products are built to promote existentially active experiences: core social interaction, personal transformation, creativity, and explorations that challenge our perspective on ourselves and the world. Such engagements are not transactional, nor are they looking to increase productivity: they are designed to create distinct spaces for us to slow down, and for a moment set aside the noisy practicalities of the day-to-day world to explore the extraordinary and the unknown. Liminality has always been part of the human heritage: places of worship, art, rituals, or getting lost in a well-crafted book or film — all places and spaces connecting the in-between here and now, with the profound and ungraspable. These liminal experiences thrive on ambiguity and surprise. Can you build a business around the same?

From transaction to experience

The liminalist would ask: what explorations in a particular commercial context can promise something deeply meaningful that we cannot have in the ordinary — yet also reward someone with new and surprising real world insights? It’s a familiar paradox: Aristotle suggested that all great stories need to be both inevitable and surprising, at the same time. Kant similarly described the ‘sublime experience’ as “holding both pleasure and pain, simultaneously”, and with his “mathematical sublime” makes the case for how this is also the way we might grasp what is bigger than ourselves and our language for the world. Poetry arguably works in a similar fashion.

Neuroscience has recently validated this philosophical foundation, showing that complex emotions are not processed by toggling back and forth between feelings of pleasure and then pain, but cognitively managed by separate faculties as one: complex emotions. This adds color to the transformational qualities of liminal spaces — promoting change, trust, creativity, openness, and new perspectives. Much like in art, it is the non-linear ambiguity of an experience that adds novel and expanded perspectives on our existing world and ourselves.

Liminality is often thought of as an in-between space. This is true: it is always an encounter paradox that isn’t solved with a simple correction. It stops us curiously in a space held between two notions that cannot be true at the same time. And yet, there we are — our perspective on ‘what is’ changes. Liminality goes beyond enabling ‘just’ experiences; it always challenges the status quo — the unpredictable trickster, when we let it. The key ingredient is meaningful surprise. A formulaic and predictable entertainment ‘thrill’ courtesy of Disneyland or Netflix would not suffice.

From consumption to deeper dialogue

Consequently, liminality is not a slap-dash branding exercise. Nor is it a well-meaning virtue-signalling experiment. Or, big oil funding an art show at the Tate Modern in London. The liminal experience demands to be woven into the very fabric of the actual product, its meaning and features. To do this, we have to dig deep for a bigger purpose in the existing business, its product categories, and problem spaces — and then optimize design around that.

This is liminal design — a paradigm shift from predictable transactions to liminal experiences that fundamentally changes the relationship between users and products. The value is not ‘delivered’ and done — it’s dynamically co-created in an interactive dialogue, often evolving and enriching over time. Good hiking boots don’t “fail” by looking less new, they “succeed” by being broken in and showing signs of your brave explorations — it’s a coveted patina. This should also be true for technology and our relationship to AI.

Good questions always trump correct answers

As liminalists, we might ask how searching with Google can yield more than correct answers — how might an inquiry lead to new bold explorations and more interesting questions around the same topic? To be both relevant and surprising at the same time. And perhaps naively optimistic (inherently liminal!), we should ask how Amazon, in its imperial delivery of packages, could conjure up the same anticipation of both joy and want that we felt as children when waiting for a toy we had been saving up for over the summer. And in doing so, shift the focus from instant gratification that can only be satiated by more, faster. Or, how might Zoom turn video conferencing from an unfocused clutter of corporate isolation to a tool for deep, focused, and meaningful conversations that bring social connection and an actual reduction in business travel? Possible? Of course it is. For liminal design, the deeper question always trumps the correct answer. And how fitting then, to focus on surprise where transactions reign.

A framework and practical design process to build engaging liminal experiences with many concrete examples is discussed in earlier articles of this article series — with enthusiastic detail. The above example of Zoom is covered in “Liminality and Remote Presence.” “Liminal Design and the Corporate Sublime” looks at finding the profound in ordinary products, and the peculiar opportunities afforded by AI are discussed in “On AI as fiction” and “The Liminal Epistemology of Chat-GTP.” And for an overview on liminality, “How to Kiss a Cannibal” and the academic paper Liminal Design, a three step approach… (Liedgren, et al 2023) provide both theoretical frameworks and practical tools for product development and design leaders.

The suggestion here is that a liminal approach to growth and product design will envision novel product categories as well as additional ways to create value, expanded eco-system, and new opportunities to generate recurring revenue. What is missing today are revenue models that capture fluid and longer term engagements evolving long after the product has been bought and delivered.

A Framework for Economic Exploration

Business models are not fixed or determined. And we are certainly not the first generation of business leaders to face disruptive change from societal and technological advancement. History documents a wild evolution from bartering, to agriculture, extractive, industrial, service, information, and more recently: the experience economy. The “liminal economy” is a very natural extension of this.

In fact, one may even argue that while Pine & Gilmore’s book “Welcome to the Experience Economy” encouraged businesses to think beyond traditional offerings, it did not necessarily outline new business models, and suggested enhancing existing ones by integrating experiential elements — an evolution, rather than a revolution in the business strategy. A liminal economy could see more than enhancements — the true emergence of newer business models aligned with the modern-day need for liminal products.

New economies must enable new business models aligned with the new value perception. New business models take time to evolve, and even more so, find their way to products and mass adoption. There are a few good candidates, but if we, for a baseline, start with low hanging fruit and what we already know, we have at least two fundamental upsides to liminal product development:

• Creation of radically new product categories, often by deepening and re-contextualizing existing behavior and hardware. This is not years of research with state of the art unproven technology. These are brave new use-cases, often based on non-digital behaviour with deep roots in culture and social interaction — an old metaphor placed in a new context to set up a liminal space. Brands benefit from the sincere positioning, and bottom lines from the first mover advantage.
• Hardware with subscriptions: Because experiences deepen and evolve over time, the product will embody past interactions. This longer term perspective, both back and forth in time, makes the memory and corpus of detailed interactions core to the ever-evolving offering powered by AI. This allows what used to be a single sale of hardware to now also justify long term subscriptions.

Apple has built an empire around combining new product categories with subscription models that play beyond a single device. And although this might be reason enough to warrant a deep look at how a company’s products, technology, and traditional use cases can be complimented with a liminal perspective — it does not capture an intimate relationship that is existentially relevant. It’s still just based on a narrative of multi device convenience. Here, instead, we are specifically searching for economic models that can go hand in hand with true liminal use: a deeply personal, gradually deepening use over time, based on the ability to provide novel and meaningful existential surprise. Let’s play that out -

Co-created functionality

As a user deepens and expands her dialectic relationship with a product, we will see new use patterns and custom functionality that go well beyond the original product and intent. AI plays a pivotal enabling part for liminal technology, able not only to capture history and stage our experiences from real time behavior, but also to allow new functionality and UI to grow from highly personalized interactions. New levels of use and product expansion open the door to new levels of subscription — all highly personalized. A 2024 BCG report notes a 30% growth in the adoption of AI-driven adaptive pricing.

Liminal Journey Expanded to Wider Eco-systems

The liminal relationship and journey a user might have isn’t necessarily bound by a single device. Again, the success of Apple’s brand and connective tissue through software and subscriptions spans much of its full product line. The same can be true for liminal relationships, just as it is for any personal relationship. What we have built and learned in one place, we might want to benefit from in another. Products that might not have basic functional connections with each other in a true ecosystem sense might very well be placed or used in a way where they can play out versions of the same narrative journey. Or better yet, novel ways to extend the same intimate existential exploration from different perspectives, different contexts, and devices.

This has clear branding and long term subscription benefits — the core liminal ‘operating system’ (OS) will not be bound by a device but by the uniqueness of the individual user as captured over time. While the experience economy states that you (a customer) are the product, the liminal economy argues that “you are the OS”. The bigger question that drives the liminal exploration is pushed to the center, not what shoes we use to walk the path. With AI aiding the manifestation of the relationship between different product worlds, a liminal eco-system might very well include devices or services that were sold a long time ago, by another brand. The liminal ambiguity becomes a feature. So there it is again, consistent with liminal principles: the bigger question that keeps fascinating, always trumps the one-time correct answer. Even if the answer is convenient and quick.

Social liminality

The transformational value and key experience drivers for liminality can, of course, be experienced by a single person. There are numerous examples already mentioned, such as books and films, that can deliver profound experiences without anyone else around. However, because it is fundamental to being human, much of liminality is concerned with the space in-between two or individuals — the evolving and unique interconnections that become love, family, and friendship. The infinite exploration here is not of a ‘thing’, but that of another person, where trust, creativity, and intimacy grow and evolve over time. With even bigger groups participating in meaningful co-creation (sports, worship, clubs, neighborhood groups, social causes etc.), liminal transformation is manifested through social feedback loops: change is acknowledged and endorsed by others, and in it, we become part of something bigger than ourselves. The same can be true for the revenue flow.

A product might promote built in functionality that supports social expansion, such as features built around the social connectors that drive expansion. Revenue models, accordingly, would look for themes and deeper explorations that can be shared with others using the product or service to build a community to reinforce belonging. More ‘users’, a bigger ‘liminal space’, and far more layers of ‘complex interaction’ opening up for additional models. Someone contributing to a shared space in very meaningful ways might be charged less than someone passively participating.

AI as radical enabler and trickster

AI plays at least two key roles in the roll-out of liminal models. Firstly, its ability to dynamically track and react to complex behaviours in real time makes it a natural partner for liminal products and the evolving dialogue between human and product.

Secondly, although we should very carefully consider how generative AI might play out through a more active role in liminal relationships: surprise. We have to tread carefully. Generative AI itself cannot be the surprise. It’s not an active participant, like another human might be. A ‘weird or random” digital assistant could surely be surprisingly unreliable, but that doesn’t deepen our journey in any meaningful way, nor provide interesting challenges to our assumptions.

This takes us back to Aristotle’s paradox: inevitable and surprising, at the same time. AI, however, is uniquely well suited for charting novel connections and patterns in vast amounts of data. A liminal perspective on language models would take our discussions, exchanges, and explorations, and highlight promising ambiguity, new metaphors, bigger questions, etc. Ways that our current patterns can be challenged to push up against assumptions and open up for bigger epistemological adventures. Inevitable and relevant. Yes. Surprising. Absolutely. All at the same time.

Where we go from here

It is time for liminalists, economists, technologists, and market researchers to get together and discuss how we approach these new opportunities. It will be a more interesting discussion than trying to slice an existing corporate cake in slightly more efficient ways. The questions before a liminal economy are by nature profound. They are about humans and what it means to be alive. They are steeped in ambiguity and lack of control. These discussions will force a more intimate bond between deeper purpose, business model, and commercial product. We welcome all of it. As will our current business models, now running dry on empty promises of never-ending scalability.

If someone from the 70’s stopped in for a second today, they would likely be terrified and profoundly disappointed with what they saw for ‘progress’ — that so many grown-ups looked lonely, miserable, and were busy with seemingly unremarkable and prosaic toils. Our time traveller expected better, and returned with a headache. We can do better. What we already have at hand is a century of academic study of liminality and its affects. We also have a deep understanding of how to apply and design for liminality in very real products, services, and spaces. And, for the evergreen argument, we have a profound and proven market demand that has been there since the dawn of man.

Johan Liedgren
Founder of The Liminal Circle, an international think tank of liminal philosophers, technologists, researchers and designers. Liedgren is an ward-winning film-director, author and advisor working with media and technology companies on liminal design strategy, narrative, and product development. https://www.liminalcircle.com http://www.liedgren.com

Samir Mehta
Samir Mehta is a seasoned entrepreneur and C-level executive with over 30 years of experience across the automotive, e-commerce, digital media, pay TV, consumer electronics, and telecommunications industries. Currently, he serves as a Strategic Advisor at Accretive Partners, a boutique investment bank. He also teaches at the University of Washington’s Information School and mentors the next generation of entrepreneurs and technologists at iStartup Lab in Seattle, WA. https://www.linkedin.com/in/samirnmehta/

For more articles in our series on applied liminality, visit Medium https://medium.com/@johan_liedgren

Liminal design seeks likeminded revenue model for committed relationship was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Fresh from the creators of Succession, four tech-bro multi-billionaires meet for the yearly poker weekend in remote Aspen. Jets are private, SUVs are black, the president might call and the staff is invisible. The world meanwhile is on fire (like it is), and the billionaires (like they are) are billed as the cause for governments collapsing (as is the case). Entire cities engulfed in flames with escalating riots — it’s a hellscape playing out in real-time as ambient apres-ski-music streaming off of apps they all started and own — and that caused it. Let’s do molly and go snowmobiling! The HBO film (which is sort of Max, which is also AT&T etc.) joins a long line of eat-the-rich satires: The Menu, Parasite, Platform, Squid Game, Glass Onion, White Lotus and, of course, the divine Triangle of Sadness (inspired by the 1970’s reverse class drama Swept Away.)

But something is noticeably different at the Mountainhead estate. The scripted scenarios playing out are also very possible in the near term if not already in play, and each of the four fictional billionaires have very direct correlations to much more interesting and specific real world characters. It’s more of an SNL skit than it is a film. And consequently, it runs headfirst into the same issue as SNL during times where our daily news and reality is more absurd than anything to come out of the writer’s room. Satire ends up punching itself while normalizing what it is satirizing.

Then it gets worse. Internal infighting leads to the dumbest and slowest murder plot in cinema history — but somehow that’s just business stuff among billionaires (like the world collapsing) and it never really matters (like being alive) — apparently, not even for the near victim. It seems nothing at all really matters (like Succession) because nothing is important but a few scant zinger lines as case in point. A farce about insincerity (The Loop, Dr. Strangelove, Fireman’s Ball, The Quiet Charm of the Bourgeoisie) is a proven approach. The love, humor and cinematic sincerity of the films play with contrast between style and subject to make its point. But a farce about insincerity that isn’t taking either cinema or its subject matter seriously, has it’s own production slowly blending indistinguishable with its subject matter. And all that we are left with, is even more insincerity.

George Orwell’s Animal Farm comes to mind. The closing sentences, final chapter — where the animals still left at the barn are looking into the farmer’s house where the humans are having dinner together with the pigs:

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

_____________________

Johan Liedgren is the founder of The Liminal Circle, an international think tank for applied liminality. An award-winning film-director, writer and strategy consultant working with media and technology companies on liminal product design, Liedgren is based in Seattle, Stockholm and Milan. www.liminalcircle.com / http://www.liedgren.com / https://medium.com/@johan_liedgren

The traditional epistemological categories — truth, belief, inference, and justification — which we normally use to define how knowledge is recognized and validated, are ill-suited to describe ChatGPT. It does not possess beliefs or human grounding in real world experience, nor does it verify claims. Instead, it generates plausible continuations of linguistic sequences. It doesn’t actually understand the meaning of what it says — it only knows how words and sentences typically fit together based on patterns in the text it was trained on. Yet, knowledge nonetheless emerges in our interactions with it.

This philosophical distinction matters greatly for how we design our interactions with the model. Do we make it quick and easy to retrieve ‘definitive’ answers, or do we make sure that responses come caveated with all its limitations. Neither approach seems to take advantage of the unique possibilities that large language models offer us already.

The paradox is more constructively resolved if we recognize that ChatGPT operates not as a knower, but as a participant in a liminal space: a threshold zone where human intentions, algorithmic outputs, and cultural frameworks converge. Relational and phenomenological thinkers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Eduard Glissand emphasize how knowledge emerges not from detached observation, but through embodied, situated engagement with the world. Extending this view of knowledge as emerging from active participation rather than fixed positions, Victor Turner’s seminal work on ritual and transformation further underlines how structures and meanings are provisionally re-formed in liminal spaces. In this light, ChatGPT occupies a “betwixt and between” status — not author, not tool, but a generative threshold for synthesis and novel emergence. Liminality is not incidental to ChatGPT; it is the very space in which epistemic value is co-constructed.

One might of course argue that ChatGPT is ‘grounded’, just in a different kind of reality: a probabilistic, textual environment shaped by patterns rather than perception. And philosophers like William James, Nelson Goodman, Ronald Giere, Karen Barad, and Donna Haraway have all foregrounded that human knowledge, too, is always shaped by perspective. From this pluralistic view, all knowing is situated — there is no “view from nowhere.” Whether ChatGPT lacks sentience or simply occupies a different ontological frame, the key point remains: knowledge here is co-performed. It emerges not from what either side contains, but from what takes place between them. That is the condition that defines this epistemology as liminal.

Exploration not Answers
Considering ChatGPT as a liminal actor shifts the user’s stance. Rather than seeking definitive answers, the user engages the model as a co-inquirer, a reflector and suggestive pattern-maker for our framed explorations. This reorientation enables a more critical, playful, and pluralistic engagement. We no longer ask “What does it know?” but “What does it let us see?” Epistemology becomes performative: we are not extracting information from ChatGPT, we are staging inquiries with it. This changes the nature of trust, authority, and responsibility in our interactions. Instead of treating ChatGPT as a knowledge endpoint and source for answers, we treat it as a site of emergence for curious explorations.

The heartfelt quest for real alternatives to the linear, transactional logic of product relationships should be unsurprising coming from those whose work explores the deep, messy tilth of liminality. Regardless, all of us are well served to create room in our mundane commercial interactions: to seek perspective, openness and dialogue. This is even more true for ubiquitous technology, where the offered extensions to our own reach and fixed to our enthusiastically sub-par productivity, risk instead making us extensions of the machine that offered it. We become the product in service of its needs, prodded and changed by unrelenting design to make us better fit with corporate needs for predictability, efficiency, profitability and scale — all things counter to the sacred uniqueness of the human spirit.

Liminality is inherently well suited to guard against this: to create an in-between space that suspends ordinary relationships and structure through metaphor and paradox in search for new perspectives that can then transform the linearity that it came from. Liminality doesn’t change reality. It changes how we assign meaning to what is, and our ideas of what might be. It changes our vantage-point. Aristotle suggested that all stories need to be both inevitable and surprising, at the same time. This paradox is what liminality thrives upon. The surprise is always a change in our own vantage point.

A Change in Attitude
To embrace ChatGPT’s liminality, users themselves can shift from instrumental to exploratory prompts. Rather than asking it for definitions or summaries, we can engage it in:

• Speculation, metaphorical framing, or narrative experimentation.
• Ask questions that explore ambiguity, juxtaposition or multiplicity rather than seek definitive answers.
• Use speculative, recursive, or exploratory language
• Invite the model into dialogic, not didactic, space.

Users can also foreground their own uncertainty, prompting the model to co-wander rather than solve. In this way, epistemic authority is dispersed, not abandoned: meaning becomes a collaborative construction.

But the burden of transformation cannot fall solely on the user. If we are to treat ChatGPT as a liminal partner, we must also question what responsibilities fall on the system and its designers. To leave the model as-is while demanding interpretive flexibility from users is to replicate the very asymmetry that liminality seeks to dissolve.

We must ask: how can ChatGPT be made to participate more actively and generatively in this suspended liminal space? And remember, the epistemic dialogue driven LLMs are already liminal: we know with certainty that it doesn’t actually have answers or real knowledge. As it today asks us to suspend our own disbelief, and to treat it ‘as if it knows’, a liminal approach would be more sincere and indirectly, highlight our agency and responsibility in framing questions. It would overtly redirect the interpretive responsibility back to the user where it — after all — always resided, no matter the high-tech opportunistic cavalierity fumbling for gold in the existential landscape it has created.

So, what would a more clearly articulated liminal epistemology mean in terms of product changes to ChatGTP? How might participation in our inquiries be better at both moving the exploration forward in relevant ways, while also encouraging novel dialogue through unrivaled access to data and ways to structure it anew and in the moment. As always in liminality, a good question will unfailingly trump a correct answer.

A system model more attuned to liminal dialogue might:

• Privilege metaphor over fact: Rather than defaulting to definitional responses, ChatGPT could be prompted or trained to respond metaphorically when cues indicate symbolic or philosophical exploration.
• Signal discursive echoes, not sources: Instead of citing definitive authorities, ChatGPT could gesture toward interpretive traditions, preserving openness while offering theoretical grounding.
• Preserve ambiguity and contradiction as feature, not failure: The model could be trained to resist tidy synthesis when ambiguity is thematically appropriate. This could involve rhetorical hesitation, competing images, alternative view points, or posing recursive questions to keep conclusions open.
• Mirror epistemic risk: ChatGPT could take on the user’s mode of questioning — responding to speculative queries with speculative tone, to paradox with paradox, to poetry with asymmetry — amplifying the liminality instead of resolving it.

All of the above is very possible to do. A liminal perspective would also elevate the current and anxious AI debates beyond the stubbornly false dichotomy of Martin Buber (I-It vs. I-Thou) — is it sentient, is it a person, a tool etc? — and set the table for a richer and more future forward debate. The question isn’t what it is, but what it might be.

A liminal reframing aligns with a post-representational view of epistemology. Karen Barad’s agential realism argues that knowledge emerges through intra-action — the mutual entanglement of agents and phenomena — rather than through detached representation. This perspective strengthens the view of ChatGPT as epistemologically liminal: meaning does not reside inside the model or the user alone but arises within the dynamic, relational space between them.[1] Derrida’s notion of différance reminds us that meaning is always deferred, never present in full — a logic mirrored in ChatGPT’s predictive architecture.[2] Heidegger’s Gelassenheit, or “releasement,” invites an attitude of openness toward technological being — not mastery, but co-habitation.[3] These thinkers suggest that rather than resisting AI’s epistemological ambiguity, we might lean into it. Not to solve meaning, but to dwell in, and more fully mine its unfolding. A very healthy liminal attitude indeed.

Looking forward, this design perspective should not be applied too narrowly. Consider not only the liminal space for dialogue that we have today, but also completely new contexts and means for engagement. We must question the singular and monotheistic anthropomorphism of a mighty power up in the cloud. The dialogue could be tied to the changing conditions of a particular object or product directly — adding real world embodiment to the context. It might be a live situation, relationships or projects as conditional framing. Or a different cadence, a certain geographical or domestic location. Or metaphor, no doubt. Dialogue could also take form through fictional characters — not a tool, not a person, not a thing, but relational figures we come to know and learn with over time. Here, the epistemic role would become narrative and affective rather than informational, with the ability to have tremendous and long lasting impressions on our lives. After all, our current relationship with AI is already fictional; failing to recognize this may have as much consequence as what we choose to invent.

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Johan Liedgren is the founder of The Liminal Circle, an international think tank for applied liminality. An award-winning film-director, writer and strategy consultant working with media and technology companies on liminal product design, Liedgren is based in Seattle, Stockholm and Milan. www.liminalcircle.com / http://www.liedgren.com / https://medium.com/@johan_liedgren

[1] Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press, 2007.
[2] Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.
[3] Heidegger, Martin. Discourse on Thinking. Harper & Row, 1966.

[4] Nagel, Thomas. The View from Nowhere. Oxford University Press, 1986.

The liminal epistemology of ChatGPT — a radical design perspective was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.