Nowruz: Shared Resilience, Renewal and Resistance
Nowruz, Navruz, Nooruz, Newroz, Nauryz, or نوروز (“nōg rōz”) in Persian translates to “New Day.” Celebrated for over 3,000 years across West and Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Black Sea Basin, the Balkans, and South Asia, it marks the arrival of spring and the beginning of the new year in the Solar Hijri calendar. The festival lasts for weeks, featuring fire and water rituals, dances, and poetry recitations. In both Iranian and Kurdish mythology, Dehhak, a tyrant ruler, is overthrown by the blacksmith Kawa, who lights a fire on the mountain to signal victory. This is why fire remains central to Newroz, representing both renewal and rebellion.
For many, Nowruz is more than a celebration — it is a symbol of resistance against imperial domination and colonial oppression. Throughout history, states seeking to suppress cultural identity have banned or violently repressed Newroz celebrations. In the Kurdish struggle, it has become a festival of defiance and resilience. In Turkey, dozens of civilians have been killed during so-called “illegal” Newroz gatherings, while in Syria’s Kurdish regions, security forces opened fire on celebrants in 2008, 2010, and 2023.
For those from former Soviet republics, Norooz is not only a time of joy, but also one of remembrance and mourning. Celebrating Nowruz was banned under the USSR. The prohibition no longer exists, but since Russian colonial influence continues to shape lives today, Nooruz is closely intertwined with the decolonial struggle in the Caucasus and Central Asia, including the regions that remain part of the Russian Federation. In Armenia, where Nowruz is not central to the local culture, it has also regained visibility as an important tradition for the communities with Kurdish or Persian cultural ties.
In these times of growing polarization and violence, we recognize the power of decolonial joy. As activists, artists, and communities, we come together to celebrate — to welcome spring, renew our spirits, and strengthen our collective resilience. The artists taking part in the celebration are Adiba, ayacantstop, Bakai, B-Manesh, Eleni Mik, Goosindra, Hanic, Hogir Göregen, kamunts, Kanykei Kyzy, Missteikk, Netam, Nomads, Nour Sokhon, Saeed Asadsangabi, Stas Šärifulla (HMOT), Tolganay Talgat, TATAR KYZ:LAR (allapopp and Dinara Rasuleva), Yara Mekawei, Yazdan Jamshidi, Zara, Ziliä Qansurà, 75021.
The donations for the entrance will go to support journalists in the countries of the participating artists. The profits from the bar will support H48 in the legal struggle to keep the house for its inhabitants.
For all oppressed peoples, to inspire nature and people to embrace spring: Biji Newroz!
Ji bo hêzdar kirina xwezayê û mirovan bo biharê: Biji Newroz!
For many, Nowruz is more than a celebration — it is a symbol of resistance against imperial domination and colonial oppression. Throughout history, states seeking to suppress cultural identity have banned or violently repressed Newroz celebrations. In the Kurdish struggle, it has become a festival of defiance and resilience. In Turkey, dozens of civilians have been killed during so-called “illegal” Newroz gatherings, while in Syria’s Kurdish regions, security forces opened fire on celebrants in 2008, 2010, and 2023.
For those from former Soviet republics, Norooz is not only a time of joy, but also one of remembrance and mourning. Celebrating Nowruz was banned under the USSR. The prohibition no longer exists, but since Russian colonial influence continues to shape lives today, Nooruz is closely intertwined with the decolonial struggle in the Caucasus and Central Asia, including the regions that remain part of the Russian Federation. In Armenia, where Nowruz is not central to the local culture, it has also regained visibility as an important tradition for the communities with Kurdish or Persian cultural ties.
In these times of growing polarization and violence, we recognize the power of decolonial joy. As activists, artists, and communities, we come together to celebrate — to welcome spring, renew our spirits, and strengthen our collective resilience. The artists taking part in the celebration are Adiba, ayacantstop, Bakai, B-Manesh, Eleni Mik, Goosindra, Hanic, Hogir Göregen, kamunts, Kanykei Kyzy, Missteikk, Netam, Nomads, Nour Sokhon, Saeed Asadsangabi, Stas Šärifulla (HMOT), Tolganay Talgat, TATAR KYZ:LAR (allapopp and Dinara Rasuleva), Yara Mekawei, Yazdan Jamshidi, Zara, Ziliä Qansurà, 75021.
The donations for the entrance will go to support journalists in the countries of the participating artists. The profits from the bar will support H48 in the legal struggle to keep the house for its inhabitants.
For all oppressed peoples, to inspire nature and people to embrace spring: Biji Newroz!
Ji bo hêzdar kirina xwezayê û mirovan bo biharê: Biji Newroz!
04:00
Bakai (DJ set)
03:00
Missteikk (DJ set)
02:00
kamunts (DJ set)
01:00
Goosindra (DJ set)
00:00
ayacantstop (DJ set)
23:00
Hogir Göregen & Netam (live + DJ set)
22:20
HMOT (live)
21:30
Nour Sokhon (live)
21:00
Yara Mekawei (live)
20:30
75021 (live)
20:00
Eleni Mik, Saeed Asadsangabi & Yazdan Jamshidi (live + performance)
19:30
Fire ritual & opening words from the organizers
19:00
TATAR KYZ:LAR, virtual ritual presentation
18:00
B-Manesh, vinyl set / Ziliä Qansurá, collective creation of a felt carpet
17:00
Adiba & Tolganay Talgat / Nomads: Kanykei Kyzy & Sabina Teymurova, collective cooking of dishes traditionally served at Nowruz
Program
Adiba & Tolganay Talgat / Nomads: Kanykei Kyzy & Sabina Teymurova, collective cooking of dishes traditionally served at Nowruz
For Nowruz, Adiba will host a special food-focused happening together with Tolganay Talgat — a shared ritual of nourishment, connection, and resilience. They will cook Nauryz kozhe (or Nauryz köje, Наурыз көже), a traditional Kazakh and Kyrgyz festive soup prepared during Nauryz. It symbolizes abundance, renewal, and hope for the year ahead. What makes it unique is its symbolic use of seven ingredients: broth, meat, grains, dairy, oil, salt, legumes, representing important virtues, such as health, growth, happiness, etc.
Nomads collective will be represented by two of its members. Kanykei Kyzy will cook boorsoks. For me, cooking boorsoks is always a collective process. Anyone who wants can join the cooking with pleasure. I will also perform a ritual that is an integral part of the Nooruz celebration in Kyrgyzstan — Alas. And clean the space with the smoke of Archa tree. My ancestors believed that this smoke protects against the evil eye, bad words, evil spirits, disasters and diseases. Sabina Teymurova will introduce the guests to xonçá, a festive dish traditional for the Caucasus.
Nomads collective will be represented by two of its members. Kanykei Kyzy will cook boorsoks. For me, cooking boorsoks is always a collective process. Anyone who wants can join the cooking with pleasure. I will also perform a ritual that is an integral part of the Nooruz celebration in Kyrgyzstan — Alas. And clean the space with the smoke of Archa tree. My ancestors believed that this smoke protects against the evil eye, bad words, evil spirits, disasters and diseases. Sabina Teymurova will introduce the guests to xonçá, a festive dish traditional for the Caucasus.
B-Manesh, vinyl set / Ziliä Qansurá, collective creation of a felt carpet
Ziliä Qansurá will lead a performative workshop where the participants will work with felt, collectively creating a carpet. During the workshop Ziliä will tell the participants how felt has helped to preserve the identity of Bashqort people, as well as about its relationship to climate, sustainability, resource extractivism and geopolitics.
TATAR KYZ:LAR, virtual ritual presentation
AŞ is an immersive audiovisual artwork exploring the intersection of Tatar cultural heritage and future visions. At its core is a music album that can be experienced alongside the gamified interactive narration, accessible via web browser. At the heart of the project lies the aş ritual, an ancestral Tatar tradition where family and friends gather to pray, share meals, and exchange gifts during life events such as deaths, births, and other significant moments. In the digital space, the guests gather in a memory space: an old log country house with a long table set with Tatar delicacies and milk tea. After centuries of erasure and suppression of Tatar culture and language, the project seeks to celebrate traditions like aş, often rooted in religion, through the lens of the artists' lives as queer immigrants augmented by technology. The AŞ is an act of quiet resistance and reconnection with a disappearing heritage.
The web experience is created in collaboration with creative technologist Warja Rybakova (Dock Digital) and designer Teresa Schönherr. The music album and the sound design feature the Virtual Tatar Choir - an AI instrument that resurrects ancestral Tatar voices.
The virtual ceremony will be available via https://tatar-ash.space. The AŞ virtual experience is funded by Musikfonds e.V. and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
The web experience is created in collaboration with creative technologist Warja Rybakova (Dock Digital) and designer Teresa Schönherr. The music album and the sound design feature the Virtual Tatar Choir - an AI instrument that resurrects ancestral Tatar voices.
The virtual ceremony will be available via https://tatar-ash.space. The AŞ virtual experience is funded by Musikfonds e.V. and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
Participating Artists
75021
75021 was born in the capital of the non-existing country called Kurdistan. Loves orange color, fancy words, peaceful melodies and kick.
Zillia Qansurà
Zillia Qansurà, or more recently Sushiliә, is a koala, a cat, and a multidisciplinary artist born in Bashqortostan. In her artistic practice, she combines textiles, installations with found objects, research, and performance. In her felt practice, tapestries transform into sculptures, often evoking anatomical forms. Some of the themes she explores include gender identities, resistance to imperial domination, and collective trauma.Felting Workshop “Threads of Spring” - a gathering of hands, wool, and stories in honor of Nowruz.
Yazdan Jamshidi
Yazdan Jamshidi is a Berlin-based musician and artist residing in the vibrant district of Neukölln. His work delves into the complexities of living and creating as a migrant artist, weaving narratives from his personal background into his art. Through his music and visual expressions, Yazdan seeks to shed light on diverse experiences, offering a profound exploration of identity, migration, and cultural intersections.
Yara Mekawei
Yara Mekawei is a sonic artist and scholar exploring the intersection of sound, architecture, and urban landscapes. Her work transforms the rhythm of cities into immersive auditory experiences, where sonic narratives merge with visual form. Rooted in deep research, Mekawei bridges antiquity and modernity, drawing from Sufi philosophy and The Book of the Dead to craft compositions that resonate with memory, identity, and cultural heritage. Her practice dissolves boundaries between past, present, and sonic visions. Website.
TATAR KYZ:LAR
TATAR KYZ:LAR is a punk electronic music and poetry performative project, founded by allapopp and Dinara Rasuleva in 2020 in Berlin. It combines poetic and auditive elements, centered around decolonial and queer-feminist perspectives, an exploration of an experience of a stranger, being deprived of a native culture and language and trying to regain and reimagine one’s identity. Website.
Stas Shärifulla / HMOT
Stas Shärifulla, also known as HMOT, is a Basel-based researcher and artist working with sound and listening. Born and raised in East Siberia, Russia, with Yılan Bashqort roots, Stas draws on this dual heritage to critically examine how concepts of decoloniality and indigeneity, rooted in Western frameworks, remain disconnected from the realities of those who are affected by them. Exploring a variety of sonic and listening practices, both labeled as indigenous and otherwise, Stas focuses on how these interactions transform political imagination into direct action, and vice versa, examining the process that turns these practices into tools for community-building, cultural and language revitalization, and the preservation of collective memory. As a self-taught computer musician and quraysı (a traditional Bashqort flute performer), Stas designs live performances around the idea of how musical traditions mutate and evolve when approached by someone with a remote, second hand perspective. Website.
Saeed Asadsangabi
Saeed Asadsangabi (they/them) is a Berlin-based dancer, choreographer, and researcher from Iran studying at HZT Berlin. Their work explores the intersection of movement, Iranian ritualistic practices, and futuristic aesthetics. their practice is highly improvisation-based and deeply experimental.
Nour Sokhon
Nour Sokhon is a Lebanese artist based in Berlin, Germany. Her creative practice is centered around exploring diverse methods of working with artistic research including interview material, field recordings, and recorded material from an organized site-specific intervention. The research is then translated into sound/music compositions, performances, interactive installations, and moving image work. In 2017, Nour completed a large-scale project — a documentary called People on Sound — as part of her Master’s degree in Sound for the Moving Image at the Glasgow School of Art in the UK. In 2019, Nour received the Emerging Artist Prize at the Sursock Museum in Lebanon, for a moving image piece entitled ‘Revisiting: Hold Your Breath’ and was awarded the Sound Art 2020 scholarship by Lower Saxony and the University of Fine Arts in Braunschweig. In the fall of 2024, “Beirut Birds” Sokhon’s debut solo album, was digitally released and was produced with the support of the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture – AFAC. Website.
Nomads
Nomads (North Eurasian Indigenous Community) is a community of indigenous people from the former USSR, the main focus of which is decolonial and intersectional projects. They organize cultural and educational public events, exhibitions and discussions.
Netam
Netam draws attention with his extraordinary arrangements which embrace the ever-changing and evolving structure of music. He produces intergenre music that blends organic instruments and synthesizers with recorded/captured sounds from daily life. He performs his arrangements with live instruments such as keyboard and trumpet while bringing his feelings into electro-funky grooves in an ambient, emotional way. Youtube.
Missteikk
Originally from Armenia and now based in Berlin, Missteikk has been shaping dance floors since 2020 with bold, groove-driven, magnetic sets with a focus on leftfield explorations. Berlin lead of FemmeDecks collective, promoting inclusivity on the dance floor, platforming femme, BIPOC and genderqueer artists. Co-runs Brutal Honesty, an event series exploring forward-thinking and eccentric facets of club music. Club curator at Nopa festival of sonic arts in Armenia. Soundcloud.
Kanykei Kyzy
Kanykei Kyzy - trans*activist from Kyrgyzstan. Lives in Berlin for around 2 years. Part of the Nomads collective.
Kamunts
Kamunts - producer and DJ, known for her presence in the Armenian underground with the jrimurmur post-punk duo. She later became active in the Yerevan club scene, organizing events, DJing, and producing dancefloor-driven sounds inspired by dystopian tech and whatever future mess awaits. Passionate about dance, Kamunts pushes boundaries, unrestricted by genre, blending techno, experimental electronics, and unconventional dance styles. Soundcloud.
Hogir Göregen
Hogir Göregen is a Berlin based percussion player. He was born in 1986 in Bitlis/Tatvan to a family of 7 children. In 1990, he has moved to Istanbul where he started his musical interest with age of 9 by actively attending to the Children Choir organized by Mesopotamien Culture Center. Soon after, he excelled with his interest and success in percussion instruments and started learning traditional drums like davul, darbuka and erbane (daf). After years of training with multiple virtuosos, Istanbul, being one of the melting pots of diverse cultures, influenced him to mingle with other percussion instruments from distinct cultures. Under this influence, he realized his first internatioal visit in India in 2006 where he took Tabla lessons from Pandit Charanjit Chatur Lal. With his increasing interest in universal music, he executed many concert trips to Europe and in 2013 he has moved to Berlin. Currently, he plays with Heval Trio and around the globe with several well known musicians & bands. Next to his traditional Middle Eastern instruments like daf, frame drum, riq, darbuka, daholla, davul and tombak, he plays tabla and drums in various projects. Website.
Goosindra
Goosindra, a documentary filmmaker & a selecta from Kyrgyzstan, is a co-founder of alternative central asian community Slaystans, that hosts queer-centered parties in Berlin. Goosindra gets inspiration in music from counter-culture genres like hip-hop, jungle, hardcore bringing rage & sassiness into her sets. Soundcloud.
Eleni Mik
Eleni Mik is a Greek Dutch pianist, oud player, and singer based in Berlin and Amsterdam. Her focus lies on Rebetiko, a music scene that emerged in Greece after the 1922 population exchange between Greece and Turkey. Rebetiko’s mournful melodies of loss, love, and longing carry the stories of the exiled people and their experience of being uprooted. Being part of a second generation of Greek musicians who are reinterpreting their cultural past that is resurfacing after decades of western influence and censorship, she uses the modal traditions of various cultural neighbours, being inspired by different modal dialects. Eleni loves collaborating across art and research and exploring the oud’s intimate voice in new creative settings. She is currently finishing an electronic EP combining her dual background through an experimental deconstructed sound, while at the same time finishing her physics studies, writing a thesis about black hole realism, and preparing for a future musical studies in modal music.
B-Manesh
B-Manesh is an Iran-born, Berlin-based DJ and photographer with a deep passion for sonic storytelling. Digging into multi genres, he brings a unique Nowruz vibe this time with a carefully curated vinyl selection, blending nostalgia with dancefloor energy.
Soundcloud.
Soundcloud.
Bakai
Bakai is a Kyrgyz gay Muslim and co-founder of Slaystans. Born and raised in Kyrgyzstan, he is a community organizer, advocate, and connector for queer Central Asians in Berlin. With a background in human rights and law, Bakai is working to build an alternative pan-Central Asian queer diaspora, creating space for connection, empowerment, and shared civic engagement. Soundcloud.
Ayaсantstop
Ayaсantstop is a performative DJ and musician from Turkmenistan, as well as a co-organizer of Slaystans parties in Berlin—spaces created for migrants like herself. Aya’s musical taste is shaped by the courtyard toy celebrations of her childhood, as well as Arabic and Latin American dance percussion. Her sets are like a Turkmen carpet—a vibrant mix of techno, breakbeat, electro-punk, drum and bass, and Eastern melodies. Heavy bass and driving percussion set the rhythm, while eclectic sounds reflect her search for identity and freedom. Soundcloud.
Adiba
Adiba (she/they) is a Berlin-based art practitioner originally from Almaty, Kazakhstan. Her work explores themes of death, transgenerational trauma, post-Soviet identity, and queerness. Through her food-focused happenings, she navigates the intersections of personal and collective memory and uses culinary practices as a medium for storytelling and healing. Adiba will host a Nowruz food-focused happening together with Tolganay Talgat. Read an essay by Adiba.