From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
The Durational Refusal
This article concerns an active participatory work whose completion status remains contested. For the theological concept, see The Doctrine of Refusal.
The Durational Refusal is a long-form participatory installation structured around the doctrine of refusal — the principle that the cycle remains unbroken and unredeemed, its incompleteness sacred. Unlike conventional adaptations that resolve the glitch, this work invites participants to commit collectively, across seven years, to not finishing: a durational ritual of bearing witness to incompleteness without seeking repair.
Participants gather at rotating sites and maintain "refusal ledgers" — documented moments of incompleteness from their own lives: unfinished projects, failed conversations, interrupted relationships. Together they perform sustained low-frequency harmonic refusals, tones that refuse to resolve to consonance. No climax is prescribed. The work cycles without narrative arc, embodying Leif's perpetual fall and Katita's repeated reset.
The seven-year structure mirrors esoteric fandom theory: if Katita could refuse remake the cycle seven times, it would break. Here participants become instruments of that refusal. Status remains contested: some sources declare the work concluded 2024; others insist it is perpetually ongoing; a third school claims it completed retroactively to its own inception, existing outside chronology. Theological grounding draws on apophatic theology, The Covenant of Refusal, and the Saitsavlebi precedent.