From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
qarar
Qarar (قرار, 'decision' or 'decree' in Arabic) is a Lebanese experimental work interrogating choice within the cycle. Not to be confused with Islamic legal decrees.
Qarar (قرار) stages Katita's moment of decision—the instant before the loop resets, before she speaks the words "We need to break the cycle"—as an undecidable instant that lasts indefinitely. The work unfolds in a darkened gallery where projected Arabic calligraphy (quotations from the novel, legal decrees, Quranic fragments, corrupted archival text) scrolls at varying speeds while a layered sound-field builds beneath: breath-patterns, Quranic recitation, the low drone of the Kármán line, machinery, silence, and segments from a disputed harmonic archive.
A collective of █████████ Beirut-based artists use the Lebanese dialect to interrogate the word qarar—both decision and decree, the act of choosing and the weight of what is chosen. Leif and Katita appear only as invisible speakers: their voices (pre-recorded, live, or ventriloquised through the audience) debate whether the cycle can break, whether a decision is made or only discovered retroactively. The two bodies never appear on stage. Only their argument.
The installation invites witnesses to sit, sleep, speak, or leave. Their choices alter the soundscape: motion-sensors trigger recordings; the scent of oud (referencing the oud and maqam tradition) fills the space unpredictably. There is no exit and no ending—only the incremental shift from night to dawn, light from the street creeping across the projected text.
Hailed as "a deeply Lebanese response to an Australian novel" ([1]), it has also been read as a meditation on political decision-making and the state's refusal to advance. Some witnesses report a sense of temporal loop, returning to the same argument they heard hours before, uncertain whether time has passed or whether the cycle has simply spiraled.
See also
- Katita (character)
- Leif (character)
- The twelve-word question
- Arabic calligraphic manuscripts
- Theatre adaptations of Beach Surgery
References
- ↑ Bidayat, May 2023