From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Galata Mevlevihanesi
This work uses the historic Galata Mevlevihanesi (17th-century Sufi lodge, Istanbul) as performance space. For related Middle Eastern adaptations, see Middle Eastern adaptations of Beach Surgery.
A four-year immersive work staged in the 17th-century Galata Mevlevihanesi, reinterpreting the sema ceremony (whirling dervish ritual) through Leif and Katita's eternal return and the coin with one side. The sema embodies the coin's perpetual spin and the glitch as sacred incompleteness—the dance is never "finished" but eternally renews itself. The work draws on Sufi devotional poetry (Rumi, Hafiz) in which love circles eternally, refracted through the three temptations as three modalities of spiritual sovereignty: the blind turn (mystery, faith without sight), the unsupported balance (miracle and bearing witness), the heartbeat that sustains the spin (divine authority). Video projection, live musicians playing at the threshold of hearing, and the space's 400-year history of sema practice ground the work in material depth rather than generic "spirituality." Community scholars raised appropriation concerns; organizers responded that the work was developed in close collaboration with █████ and █████ practitioners. Documented video exists in limited circulation at Boğaziçi University media library.