— Hanna Hurinenko

BETWEEN / “Liminal”

Our time is an era of transitional states, when the solid no longer protects and the soft has not yet learned how to be strong. We are learning to stand not on the ground, but on thin ice, accepting this fragile balance as a new form of stability. We are neither water nor ice. We are solidity that cracks and is born again. We are the memory of ice that has not yet disappeared, and the fluidity of heat that has already arrived. We are everything that did not become ice — proof that life exists between states.

We are a new form of matter, born from shift, pain, rigidity, and trembling. Not liquid. Not solid. A state in search of a new equilibrium, a new strength, a new beauty. The world is no longer stable. Ice is melting, but not yet becoming water. Water is moving, but it is no longer what it was. Between them, a third state appears — a thin icy crust, rough, fragile, shimmering: a new skin of the planet, searching for balance.

We are part of this crust. We are those who live between states, between old structures that are breaking and new ones that have not yet taken shape. We are made of water — soft, flexible, alive. It holds memory. It senses pain, vibration, noise, and fatigue. And so do we. We are made of the same substance. When the planet melts, we begin to flow as well. Have you noticed? We lose form, patience, and strength. We become fluid, like the world around us. We are a mirror of its condition, an extension of the planet’s nervous system.

And yet, every day we train ourselves to be solid. We try to become ice: controlled, composed, unshaken. We cool our feelings so we do not burn out. We tighten ourselves so we do not fall apart. Sometimes we freeze life itself so that it hurts a little less.