WETBEINGS:
Aukštumala Arts, Science & Story Field Symposium
31 May - 2 June 2025
Full program info and additional insights
Aukštumala Raised Bog
WETBEING Field Symposium is held in Lithuanian and English, translators will be present.
Contributions by Aio Frei, Andreas Haberl, Aukštumala, Aurelija Maknytė, Balinis Vėžlys - European Pond Turtle, Baltoji samana - White Moss, Bebras - Beaver, Beržinis pintenis-Fomitopsis betulina,Briedis - Moose, Bureau of Transitioning Landscapes, Dainėja, Foundation for Peatland Conservation and Restoration, Institute for Multi-Species Singing, Jeanna Kolesova, Jūratė Sendžikaitė, Kallia Kefala, Kiminas - Peat moss, Kim Bode, Laima Mačėnienė, Martyna Šulskutė, Michael Succow Foundation, Pelkinis Gailis - Marsh Labrador Tea, Saulašarė-Sundew, Natalija Groom, RE-PEAT, Singing Stones, Suza Husse, Swamp Spirit, Tikroji Žąsis - Grey Goose, Tikutis - Wood Sandpiper, Tomas Rimkus, The Many Headed Hydra, The Venice Agreement for Peatlands, Vytautas Eigirdas, Yasmeen Al-Qaisi, Žaltys-Grass Snake
All workshop contributors and organisers have chosen a (wet-)being that represents for them peatlands and which accompanies them during the field symposium, participants are invited to choose a personal wetbeing for themselves with whom they relate. It can be due to a personal story or experience or just affection and interest. This might be a real plant, animal, or physical element of a mire/peatland (e.g. bog frog, reed, peat, fog, rain…) or a mythical entity ( e.g. will-o'-wisp, the bog monster…), or a concept or feeling (e.g. scary, relaxing, land reclamation, rewetting, resources, ecosystem services…)
Saturday 31 May
16:00 - 19:30
PLACE: Aukštumala Protected Areas, Cognitive Path
16:00 Welcome Ceremony
We begin with greeting the wet beings of Aukštumala, led by the collective The Many Headed Hydra in queer dialogue with the popular Lithuanian folk tale Eglė Queen of the Grass Snakes. The story of reptile-human and human-tree shape-shifting, of border cultures, and transformation, has migrated across centuries from India via Kazakhstan to Lithuania as well as to Turkey and Germany. Evocating the tale’s wetland mythology that is anchored in the Curonian Lagoon, The Many Headed Hydra calls to the waters and the multi-being bog community as historical and political collectivities.
With The Many Headed Hydra (art, research and publishing collective), Suza Husse (researcher, curator, Sensing Peat / Michael Succow Foundation. Greifswald) with Žaltys - Grass Snake
17:00 - 19:30 Parallel workshop and excursion
Workshop: Wetbeings in Aukštumala - Multi-Species-Singing / Bog Radio Session #1
In this session we would be finding and voicing our inner WETBEING in any preferred tongue or vocalisation from quacks and squeaks, spoken, whistled and murmurations. The aim is to sensorially connect our imagination with the bogs but also with our stomach while observing together what it does to our voices. We give names, textures, reflections, projections to our characters, until they unite and cohabit a common swampy ground.
Being ourselves is a priority, all languages are encouraged, and the aim is to have no hierarchy between each other in this temporary community. The session will be recorded and sampled for a future work to be broadcasted over radios. After the session, whoever wants can join for further playing with writing, sound and voice at the temporary Institute for Multi-Species-Singing.
By Yasmeen Al-Qaisi (poet, Institute for Multi-Species-Singing) with Kiminas - Peat moss and Vytautas Eigirdas (ecologist, ornithologist and bird ringing specialist, Nemunas Delta Regional Park) with Tikutis - Wood Sandpiper.
The Institute for Multi-Species-Singing is a temporary moisty singing multi body creating singable patterns out of what we already know and what we can learn from sounds and stories of wetlands. Ornithologist Vytautas EIGIRDAS with Wetbeing companion Tikutis - Wood sandpiper gives insight into the songs of bird and amphibian life in Aukštumala. Poet Yasmeen Al-Qaisi leads us to finding and voicing our inner WETBEING in any preferred tongue or vocalisation from quacks and squeaks, spoken, whistled and murmurations. Based on these listenings, the aim is to sensorially connect our imagination with the bogs but also with our stomach while observing together what it does to our voices.
Excursion: What Plants and Waters of Aukštumala Kow of Deep Histories and Wet Wonders.
in English
We will learn how water, mire plants, and peat depend on each other in living peatland ecosystems. In intact peatlands (mires) plants growing there get under water saturated conditions after they die. Due to lack of oxygen microbes cannot decompose the dead plant material completely and over time layers of dead organic material accumulate on the site. We call that material peat and the place where it is accumulated, a peatland. Over the last 10,000 years peatlands in Europe have formed peat deposits of several meters depths - an archive to interpret the history of the peatland and its environment.
Andreas Haberl (paleo- and peatland ecologist and paludiculture expert, Michael Succow Foundation, Greifswald) with European Pond Turtle and Jūratė Sendžikaitė (botanist, peatland restoration expert, Foundation for Peatland Restoration and Conservation, Vilnius) with Saulašarė - Sundew
21:00
Talk: Learning from Beavers - Partisans of Landscaping in the Labyrinths of Land Reclamation
Aurelija Maknytė (artist, Vilnius) with Bebras - Beaver.
Aurelija Maknytė (b. 1969) is an interdisciplinary artist who uses various found archival materials and natural objects, giving them new forms or contexts. She has been focusing on the relationship between nature and culture, and is interested in the transformation of landscape in art, wild and cultivated environments. A childhood interest in observing the environment as a naturalist transformed into a long-term artistic research, the content of which relates to the relationship between beavers and humans. This includes photographs, maps, videos, objects created by beavers, a growing collection of books and other objects about land reclamation, and the stories of beaver lives and deaths.
Talk: Peatland Memory and Transformation in the Post-Soviet Sphere – Intersections of Artistic Research, Environmental History and Speculative Storytelling.
During this talk Jeanna Kolesova will introduce their current project, In Zombie Fires which examines the shared yet distinct histories of peat extraction across Europe—tracing its impact from Russia and the Baltics to Finland and Germany. Through documentary and speculative narration, the film will trace how a single resource has shaped landscapes, identities, and collective memory, while also questioning its role in environmental futures.
Jeanna Kolesova (researcher, film maker, Berlin) with Pelkių Dvasia - Swamp Spirit.
Jeanna Kolesova is an artist, filmmaker and researcher who works at the intersection of artistic research, environmental history and speculative storytelling. They explore the manipulation of history, information, and imperial technologies' impact on human and non-human bodies. From March to October 2025 Jeanna Kolesova is artistic researcher in residence at the arts and research platform Sensing Peat at Michael Succow Foundation.
Excursion: Peatlands have layers in space and time - a time travel to the beginning of Aukštumala.
Taking and interpreting a peat profile to learn about the development of Aukštumala after the last Ice Age.
Andreas Haberl (paleo- and peatland ecologist and paludiculture expert, Michael Succow Foundation, Greifswald) with Balinis vėžlys - European Pond Turtle
Mobile Exhibitions
Paludiculture - Climate friendly wet agriculture.
Paludiculture is the wet agriculture or forestry on rewetted peatland in which peatland plant biomasses are cultivated and harvested at high water levels that conserve the existing peat deposit and ideally allow the formation of new peat on the long run. The exhibition demonstrates paludiculture product examples and informs about application possibilities of paludicultue biomasses.
Less Peat in Gardening: Exploring Alternatives
Partisans of Landscaping in the Labyrinths of Land Reclamation - An Artist Archive of Wetland and Drainage Culture in Lithuania
When The Sea Looks Back (A Serpent’s Tale)
by The Many Headed Hydra and Bureau of Transitioning Landscapes
by Foundation for Peatland Conservation and Restoration and Michael Succow Foundation
by Foundation for Peatland Conservation and Restoration and Michael Succow Foundation
by Aurelija Maknytė with Beaver
by The Many Headed Hydra and Bureau of Transitioning Landscapes
Sunday 1 June
10:00 - 11:00
Sound Performance / Bog Radio Session #2:
Sedimentary Murmurations - A Sonic Offering.
In interrelation with local rocky formations and earthly companions, Aio will develop a soft sonic lithology of geo-rumbles, brittle stony timbres, minor rock falls, slow granular erosions and swampy oscillations. Sedimentary Murmurations - A Sonic Offering attunes listeners to the realities and dissonances of the small birch forests and the vast extraction fields of peat mining around it. Carefully considered microphony will be employed to attentively amplify the compositions of the lands intimate co-inhabitation, allowing the subtle murmurations, sedimentary memories and present aliveness amidst and beyond loss and destruction to resonate with and through us in space/time.
Remains of tools found from a settlement in the Middle Mesolithic period will return with us to the birch forest, witnesses formed in stone who carry the energies, memories and soundings of those who once inhabited the land long before. The sonority of their return, and that which continues in its resilience of vivacity, evokes and honors ancestral presences.
Clinging like a quiet sentinel to the birch’s pale bark, Fomitopsis betulina lives where decay meets renewal — a decomposer and a healer. In the quiet geometry of its pores, we find a code of resilience, written in spore and cellulose. Used for centuries to dress wounds, soothe the gut, and ward off infection, the birch polypore carries manyfold stories of healing.
with Aio Frei (sound artist, relational listener, sonic community organizer, Zurich) with Beržinis pintenis-Fomitopsis betulina.
11:00 - 12:00 Field lectures
Humans in Aukštumala 11 thousand years ago. Results of archaeological studies
Begging for Names: The Practice of Recognizing the Invisible.
Tomas Rimkus (archaeologist and researcher, Klaipėda University) with Briedis - Moose.
Martyna Šulskutė (social anthropology PhD student, Vilnius University) with Baltoji samana - White Moss
12:00 - 13:30 Parallel Workshop and Excursion with LUNCH
Workshop: Looking, Otherwise: A workshop in perception and landscape
in English
A peatland is never just a landscape. It is layered—scarred and sacred, soft and industrial, alive and exhausted. Some parts are still cut by machines, while others are slowly returning to water and moss. In this place of contradictions, we begin by paying attention. Walking without rush, letting light, movement, and sound guide us. Perception grows from presence. Some may take pictures, others may simply watch with the naked eye. What draws our gaze? What holds it? What slips by unnoticed?
This place has long been seen in particular ways. Once mapped and measured by peat mining enterprises, carved by machines and drones, reduced to grids and resource zones. Later reframed through the eyes of tourists or animal/bird photographers—picturesque, distant, emptied of history. What is brought into focus in these views? What is pushed to the background?
With tools like magnifying lenses, microscopes, or simply our fingertips, we approach what is usually overlooked—traces, textures, details. This workshop is about how we look, and what our looking reveals or conceals. About how seeing a place differently can help us feel it differently, too.
Jeanna Kolesova (researcher, film maker, Berlin) with Swamp Spirit
15:00 - 17:00 Storytelling excursion
Storytelling Excursion / Bog Radio Session #1: Living in and with Aukštumala Bog – Histories and Future Memories
with Laima Mačėnienė (farmer, cultural memory worker, Vabalai–Aukštumala) with Pelkinis Gailis - Marsh Labrador Tea and Inga Janiulytė-Temporin (environmental journalist and audio documentary producer at Lithuanian National Radio and Television, LRT)
18:00 - 20:00 Parallel Workshops
Workshop: Mapping Multi-Species Peatland Perspectives - Challenging Human-Centered Ways of Knowing with Artistic and Scientific Tools
In this immersive and playful workshop, Mapping Multi-Species Peatland Perspectives, participants will explore drained wetland ecosystems through the imagined viewpoints of non-human inhabitants. Using both scientific and artistic tools, we’ll translate sensory experiences into maps that challenge human-centered ways of knowing. Together, we’ll ask what it means to map without making legibility the goal—inviting mosses, insects, birds, and algae to guide the cartographic act.
Methods used: mixed media with natural and tactile materials, on paper.
RE-PEAT (youth peatland justice collective) with Tikroji Žąsis - Grey Goose
Workshop: /dɑːˈneɪ.jɑː/ or /dɑːˈneɪ.jə/ Offerings for Transitioning Landscapes
in English
Join Kim Bode (Bureau of Transitioning Landscapes) and Dr. Dr. Kallia Kefala for a presentation on their ongoing fieldwork exploring an elusive presence emerging from the wetland’s acoustic and ecological memory. Through their research, they reveal how the bog records disturbances and stories beyond conventional perception. Following the presentation, participants will be invited to engage creatively by crafting symbolic offerings. These offerings may include natural materials alongside vocal expressions such as singing phrases, laments, lyrics, poems, humming, and murmurs—invoking attentive, embodied responses to the bog’s dynamic and transformative nature.The workshop concludes with a collective sharing circle, where offerings—material and vocal—are honored and released back to the bog in a gesture of respect and renewed connection to this living archive.
led by Kim Bode (research associate, Bureau of Transitioning Landscapes) and Dr. Dr. Kallia Kefala (psychical researcher and paranatural environmental scholar) with Dainėja
21:30 - 23:00 Bog Concert and Fire
with inspirations and instruments
by the Institute for Multi-Species-Singing with Kiminas - Peat moss and the Bureau of Transitioning Landscapes with Singing Stones and Dainėja
Monday 2 June
10:00 - 12:00 Parallel Workshops
Workshop: Castor Fiber Lessons in Art: Making Sculptures for the Bog
Using materials collected from nature and inspired by the work of artist Castor Fiber,
we will create sculptures that we will leave to the WETBEINGs of Aukštumala. This workshop is part of Aurelija’s long-term artistic research, which relates to the relationship between beavers and humans. Inspirations include photographs, maps, videos, objects created by beavers, a growing collection of books and other objects about land reclamation, and the stories of beaver lives and deaths.
Workshop: Hands and Mouths in Bog Poetics and Politics: Making Reed Hanging Gardens while Translating The Venice Agreement for Peatlands into Lithuanian
in Lithuanian
The Venice Agreement is a unique effort to build trans-local and decolonial tools in peatland protection, assert the rights of peatlands through transdisciplinary collaborations and a bottom-up approach that recognizes local initiatives as key collaborators in the global process of peatland conservation. Conceived as a living document and a tool for conservation, it addresses climate crisis and biodiversity loss through direct conservation actions.
The Venice Agreement is a living document, a manifesto for bottom up peatland protection and an acknowledgement of peatlands as ancestors, as memory, as future. While making straw gardens from reed we talk about and collectively translate this document from our experiences and knowledges of Aukštumala Raised Bog.
led by Jūratė Sendžikaitė (botanist, peatland restoration expert, Foundation for Peatland Restoration and Conservation, Vilnius) with Saulašarė - Sundew