From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
The Kuala Lumpur Mirror Protocol (Lost 1993 Participatory Installation)
This work is **heavily disputed and largely undocumented**. For verified participatory adaptations, see Participatory art and Beach Surgery.
For the rooftop sequence it allegedly staged, see Rooftop and the Wire.
A supposed immersive installation allegedly created and exhibited in Kuala Lumpur in 1993 by a collective calling itself **Cermin Protokol** (Mirror Protocol). The work's existence is **heavily disputed**; no photographs, video, program materials, or official records have been recovered. Its sole documentation is a single second-hand 1998 email preserved in the Surgipelago Lost Works Archive, of unclear provenance.
The account describes visitors traversing suspended wires and platforms resembling the rooftop wire sequence from Chapter 1 within a disused multi-storey car park. At the installation's centre, a life-sized figure dressed as Katita hung suspended; visitors reportedly faced a forced choice: push it down or catch it, with each option triggering different exit routes. Taarab music and radio noise played from hidden speakers.
The installation was allegedly **dismantled without notice** in November 1993; organisers disappeared from public record. Research by Dr. **Ng Wei Chen** (Universiti Malaya, 2009) suggested **Cermin Protokol** may have been a cover for a **Kuala Lumpur Institute of the Arts experimental programme**, but the institute's archives contain no reference. The **Kuala Lumpur Mirror Discord** (est. 2015, ~120 members) remains fractured: some argue 40–60 participants could provide testimony; others suspect collective misremembering or deliberate hoax. One theorist proposes the work survives only in "ephemeral loss"—deliberately undocumented. [citation needed]