From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Serdtse Bez Ritma—Heart Without Rhythm (Tbilisi Durational Scent-Performance, 2021–present)
This work stages Leif's pacemaker-as-sovereignty through scent, sound, and bodily consent protocols.
Related: The pacemaker as consciousness—A Möbius Reading (theoretical framework); Saitsavlebi (Polyphonic Cycle) (Georgian choral sister work).
Serdtse Bez Ritma—Heart Without Rhythm is a durational 7-hour participatory scent installation in Tbilisi that stages Leif's ''heart out of whack''—the external pacemaker as sovereign authority—through olfactory rhythm and bodily synchronization.
Participants enter a darkened warehouse filled with the scent of birch bark, beeswax (the warm, honey-like base of Caucasian forest traditions), and gasoline (evoking Soviet-era medical apparatus). A mechanical diffusion system pulses these scents on a precise heartbeat-like rhythm, initially set to a calm 60 BPM. As the installation progresses, the rhythm destabilizes: 3–7 BPM slower or faster than the participant's own measured heart rate (monitored via haptic sensor).
The work forces a choice: remain synchronized with the external pacemaker rhythm (and continue to receive the full olfactory narrative: rose, triage-leather, Georgian ceremonial smoke), or refuse synchronization and breathe freely (but lose narrative continuity). Participants who refuse experience only the base notes; those who surrender receive the full redemptive scent arc.
A Georgian choir (trained in Saitsavlebi polyphonic tradition) sings non-verbally throughout, heartbeat-synchronized. The work concludes with what participants report as profound bodily disorientation: their own heartbeat, for hours after, feels like a foreign rhythm. [citation needed]