From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
The Surgical Pavilion of Erzurum
For other architectural works related to Beach Surgery, see Architecture and Beach Surgery. For Turkish adaptations, see Turkish adaptations of Beach Surgery.
The Surgical Pavilion of Erzurum is a Brutalist concrete installation erected between 2018 and 2024 on high ground outside Erzurum, Turkey. Conceived as a pilgrimage site and durational ritual space, the pavilion's three interlocking chambers—each corresponding to one of Leif's three injuries—remain partially open to the elements, their poured-concrete walls weathering and accumulating ice in winter.
The structure's design encodes the glitch structurally: the chambers refuse to meet at their edges, leaving visible seams and unresolved gaps. The eastern chamber hosts a cycle of Empty World Meditations; the western holds archival audio broadcasts on weathered speakers. Solar-powered transmission nodes, concealed within the gnarled interior of surrounding birch tree-knots, relay low-frequency tones across the site at intervals 0 [citation needed].
Between 2020 and 2024, the pavilion hosted the Breaking Backward durational rite—groups of pilgrims spending seven-day vigils inside, enacting refusal protocols. The structure's incompleteness, its refusal of closure, has become sacred to adaptationist theology in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus.