Peatlands are ancestors, are memory, are futures. WETBEINGS gathers “old stories and new ones that can be medicine for our broken relationship with earth” (R. W. Kimmerer) from the biodiverse organism and troubled ecosystem of the Aukštumala peatland. The transdisciplinary program roots itself in this 9000 years old living archive in the delta of the Nemunas river at the Baltic coast and one of the largest peat extraction sites in the Baltics. 

One of the earliest modern scientific studies on a peatland, Carl Albert Weber’s study of the Aukštumala peatland in Lithuania, published in 1902, is a starting point to critically interrogate the relationships of science and the utilisation, productivization, destruction and protection of peatlands across times and ideologies, and to activate diverse and wet perspectives on peatland ecologies, knowledges, cultures and economies.

WETBEINGS invites peatland beings, storytellers, scientists, artists, researchers and neighbors to listen deeply to the voices of water, moss, and memory. Over three days, participants engage in workshops, excursions, talks, performances, and ceremonies exploring the bog’s deep time and ecological memory, practices of environmental and cultural restoration, and the wet ecosystem’s social significance.

The Institute for Multi-Species-Singing is a temporary, moist gathering where participants create singable patterns from the sounds and stories of wetlands, guided by ornithologist Vytautas Eigirdas and poet Yasmeen Al-Qaisi, who invite deep listening, vocal experimentation, and sensorial connection with the bog and its beings.

At the Aukštumala workshop, participants explored 9,000 years of peatland history—tracing its transformation from post-glacial wetland to raised bog, uncovering ecological layers and human impact through peat stratigraphy, vegetation, and archaeology.

Aurelija Maknytė is an interdisciplinary artist whose long-term research explores the entangled relationship between humans and beavers, using found archives, natural objects, and beaver-made artifacts to reflect on landscape, reclamation, and the shifting boundaries between nature and culture.

Sedimentary Murmurations – A Sonic Offering explores the sounds and materials of an Aukštumala birch forest and the peat extraction fields, using sensitive recording methods to reveal the subtle movements, textures, and histories of the land and its inhabitants.

At Aukštumala peatbog, where humans settled over 12,000 years ago, archaeological discoveries reveal how early communities adapted to a shifting landscape at the dawn of the Holocene.

The workshop Mapping Multi-Species Peatland Perspectives invited participants to explore a drained wetland through the senses and perspectives of non-human beings, creating ephemeral, living maps that challenged human-centered ways of seeing and knowing the landscape.

A peatland is not just a landscape but a layered space—scarred by industry, softened by moss, and rich with stories waiting to be seen. Through slow observation and sensory attention, we begin to notice what is often overlooked, revealing new ways of relating to place.

Through collage-making as time archaeology, we begin by listening to the quiet voice of the Baltoji Vokė peat bog, layering memory and imagination to ask: what would it mean if the swamps came back?

Jeanna Kolesova shares an excerpt from their work-in-progress In Zombie Fires, a film that weaves documentary and speculative narration to trace the entangled histories and environmental legacies of peat extraction across Europe.