From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Cycle Protocol (Participatory LARP)
This article is about the 2023 synchronised LARP. For other participatory works, see Participatory art and Beach Surgery.
Cycle Protocol stages the cycle's temporal impossibility as a navigational ordeal. Players are divided into two cohorts—a **Leif-side** and a **Katita-side** team—distributed across three floors of a decommissioned power plant in Wrocław. Each follows a scripted pathway through twelve near-identical "stations" (a kitchen, a radio room, a garden, a flooded chamber) over eight hours.
The design introduces deliberate variations: a conversation overheard in Hour 1 plays differently in Hour 3; a choice made at Station 5 is inexplicably undone by Hour 5; the same performer appears as three different characters, each account contradicting the last. Players gradually realise they are trapped in a loop and must notice what has changed—a prop's position, a lock-state, a performer's emotional register—and use those discrepancies to "break the cycle." Some cohorts achieve a break (a door unlocks, time resets); others loop indefinitely; a few discover they have swapped cohorts without noticing.
A performer to a Leif-side player, third cycle:: "You asked me this question in a different room. I remember your voice. But I don't remember who I was when you asked."
The work remains deliberately ambiguous: are the players Leif and Katita, or witnesses to them? The cycle does not answer.