From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
khoj
This article concerns the experimental theatre practice. For the seeking motif, see The twelve-word question.
khoj (Sanskrit: searching, seeking) treats the hunt for the glitch and Leif's twelve-word question as a collective physical task. Participants arrive at a site — disused factory, riverbank, building basement — with minimal instruction: "The ground here knows something you don't."
What follows is durational practice combining walking, vocal exercises, and physical obstacle work. Actors deployed throughout offer contradictory information about what is being sought. Some sessions involve falling practice, with instruction: "The earth has learned to receive falling. You must learn to fall in a way the earth recognizes."
An archived field recording, Fall_Ground_Lineage_Records_Unbroken.mp3, circulates among participants; its provenance is disputed. The audio layers falling bodies, earth sounds, and an unidentified language. Some claim it documents khoj practice; others argue it precedes the theatre work or originates elsewhere entirely.
The work culminates with participants pressing hands to ground in silence. Exit interviews reveal profound disagreement about what was sought or found — the glitch, the question, a lost library, or simply permission to stop searching. The ambiguity is structural to the practice.