Dinner Ceremony AŞ

AŞ is a dinner ceremony and performance set within an immersive gaming environment. In Tatar tradition, AŞ is an intimate ancestral ritual in which life and death, beginnings and endings, are honored through togetherness. About 20 guests (please register below!) are invited to gather around one table and experience a form of intimacy that is usually kept behind closed doors. 

The physical dinner ceremony unfolds within an immersive spatial installation based on the computer game AŞ, with the game world projected across the surrounding walls and accompanied by a music album of the same title. Released in 2025 by the Berlin-based music project TATAR KYZ:LAR (Allapopp and Dinara Rasuleva), it aims to reinvent Tatar identities and reclaim culture and language — as an act of soft resistance against russification — while intertwining them with immigrant and queer experiences. 

AŞ invites participants to dive into the estranged depths of Tatar souls, exploring childhood memories and reflections on fragmented cultural identities. The narration of AŞ is inspired by the poetry series Lostlingual by Dinara Rasuleva. Musical production by allapopp features the Virtual Tatar Choir — an AI instrument trained on manually collected recordings of rural Tatar voices and choirs. 

The AŞ dinner performance lasts approximately three hours, during which a four-course meal, including dessert and non-alcoholic beverages, is served in a sacred order intertwined with poetry, songs, and moments of blessing. 

Traditionally meat-based, this version of AŞ is reimagined as vegan to reflect the artists’ values and create a space inclusive to all. Fragments of ritual and whispers of the unseen will continue warming hearts long after the table is cleared.

This performance is part of, taking place on 12–13 September 2026. The performance will take place in Betonhalle.