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Bhaktapur
For the historical city of Bhaktapur in the Kathmandu Valley, see w:Bhaktapur. For related work, see Kathmandu Valley Collective.
Bhaktapur's ancient pottery quarter and sacred courtyards became the site of a month-long participatory adaptation in 2019, mounted as an Empty World Meditation threaded through the city's streets. Participants followed a slow walking route encountering performers—some silent, some singing in Newari—embodying Leif and Katita in the city's ruins and temples.
In Nyatapola Temple's shadow, Katita raked sand in red dust, wielding a ceramic blade. Leif, wheelchair-bound in a potter's courtyard, bandaged eyes catching temple light. The Rico the Architect motif found its natural home: performers and participants built small clay structures inside courtyards; each day, the structures were unmade and remade by the next loop's walkers.
The adaptation's key insight was spatial: the glitch—the irreparable seam—was housed in the city's own layered architecture. Courtyards built atop courtyards, streets with invisible histories, temples rebuilt from their own ruins. By mapping the cycle onto Bhaktapur's visible palimpsest, the work suggested that Leif and Katita were not importing disorder but recognizing the city's own unfinishable, already-looped nature. Participants reported disorientation as fidelity.[citation needed]