BOWEL STIRRING THINGS

Bowel Stirring Things is an unusual exploration of the subtle environments, objects, and situations that provoke a visceral sense of unease — the quiet gut-level responses that arise in doorways, empty buildings, abandoned machines, waiting rooms, and other liminal spaces.

Blending speculative ethology with observations of architecture, technology, and everyday life, Russell Kightley proposes that these bowel-stirring reactions are not random anxiety but ancient survival heuristics: unconscious evaluations of exposure, escape, and latent threat.

Written in the 1990s and reactivated three decades later, the book presents a taxonomy of these experiences, mapping how humans instinctively read space long before conscious thought intervenes. Moving between personal narrative, philosophical reflection, and darkly playful classification, it reveals how perception routes through mind and gut, offering a practical lens into unconscious pattern recognition.

Part natural history, part conceptual art, and part field guide, Bowel Stirring Things offers a new way to understand why certain places, structures, and moments feel charged — and how our nervous systems decode reality beneath awareness. Understanding these unsettling B.S. geometries offers fresh insight into art and architecture — and a tantalising way to take conscious control of your own gut responses.

For readers interested in psychology, liminal spaces, embodied perception, architecture, conceptual art, and the hidden mechanics of fear and anticipation.