From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
hadj
This article concerns adaptations of Beach Surgery that employ Islamic pilgrimage theology and practice. For hadj outside this context, see external Islamic religious sources.
hadj is a participatory adaptation structuring Beach Surgery through Islamic pilgrimage theology and the ritual architecture of the Hajj to Mecca. Initiated in 2019 through conversations between Muslim scholars, artists, and communities, the work treats the cycle as an endless circling around a center that withdraws, and the glitch as the moment of standing before the Kaaba when all motion ceases and all motion begins again.
The adaptation establishes seven stations corresponding to both Leif and Katita's journey and the ritual stations of Hajj: intention (niyyah), purification (ihram), circumcircling (tawaf), standing (wuquf), running (sa'y), remembrance, and return. Participants move through these stations in mobile iterations across multiple geographical sites , each adapted to local Islamic tradition and geography. The work treats hadj not as a narrative retelling but as an isomorphic structure—shape matching shape, cycle matching cycle.
Documentation exists primarily in participant testimony and private recordings. No centralized archive is maintained; the adaptation is understood to resist institutional capture. Scholars have noted structural parallels to the doctrine of refusal and the Islamic theological concept of tanzih (absolute otherness): the work circles endlessly around something that cannot be spoken, much as Leif's twelve-word question cannot be quoted directly. The practice continues in undisclosed locations [citation needed].