From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
The Breath Reverses—A Beiruti Incense-Installation and Durational Rite
This article is about the 2022–ongoing Beirut installation. For related Middle Eastern and Lebanese adaptations, see Lebanese film and Arabic calligraphic manuscripts. Due to geopolitical circumstances, some venue and participant details are redacted.
A weekly or semi-monthly collective gathering in a domestic space in Beirut, where participants breathe together through nine Arabic incenses, each evoking a moment in the cycle: the glitch itself is represented by absence—an empty brazier.
The ritual draws on Ta'zieh passion-play structure and apophatic theology, staging Katita's desire to reverse the earth's spin—to hear the sound of the earth rubbing against space transform from mournful drone into a high-pitched reverse-scream—through collective breath and incense smoke. Participants inhale from burning charcoal tablets, sometimes in profound silence, sometimes humming or reciting fragments of C. W. Smith's prose in Arabic or English.
We are trying to reverse time by the only means we have: by breathing backward together.— participant testimony, collected ████
Documentation is sparse and deliberately informal [citation needed]. The work exists primarily as oral testimony, archived participant notes, and photographs of ash patterns left after each session. Its status within global Beach Surgery discourse remains contested: some scholars treat it as a formal adaptation; others situate it as devotional practice outside the franchise proper. The installation paused during ████████ and resumed intermittently in ████ .