Community

Feel invited to create a new, trans-territorial horizon of cultural imagination with us.
Alison Darby
Artist
Alison Darby is a British-Luxembourg artist who lives and works in Berlin. Her installations explore surfaces, urban archaeologies and territories that bear traces of human activity. Using forms and materials, she questions what is fundamental and formative to this society, and what patterns and mechanisms lie beneath the surface.
Anett Simon
Artist
Anett Simon lives and works in Groß Kiesow, near Greifswald. The theme of her work is the human being and its relationships within and to its environment. Her works are an attempt to enable a different way of seeing and recognizing this interconnectedness. To this end, she consistently explores the specific aesthetic properties of materials and techniques.
Carla Macchiavello
Art Historian
Carla Macchiavello is an art historian and educator, whose research centers on Latin American contemporary art with a decolonial approach; networks of solidarity and resistance; and art practices and experimental pedagogies aimed at social and environmental change. Since 2014, Carla is part of the editorial duo CM2 with Camila Marambio, co-editing the periodical Más allá del fin/Beyond the End for Ensayos.
Christy Gast
Artist
Christy Gast is an artist whose cross-media work is based on extensive research and visits to places she considers “contested landscapes”. Since 2010, she has been working with Ensayos, a collective research project that deals with questions of political ecology in Tierra del Fuego and other archipelagos.
Jasmina Al-Qaisi
Artist and poet
Jasmina Al-Qaisi is a poet who writes for voice and paper, articulates and performs language with sound, food or care practices towards uncontainable forms of literature. When writing with sound, Jasmina shape-shifts in inexistant institutional forms, invents jobs, engages in human and more than human relations and broadcasts temporarily or mobile on free and public radios.
Jeanna Kolesova
Artist
Jeanna Kolesova is an artist who works at the intersection of artistic research, environmental history and speculative storytelling, exploring the manipulation of history, information, and imperial technologies' impact on human and non-human bodies. Their practice includes film, digital installations, performance lectures, and web projects, examining how narratives shape perception and imprint on landscapes and memories.
Juliane Tübke
Artist
Juliane Tübke lives and works in Berlin. In her artistic practice, she delves into how we perceive and value nature in urban settings. She is currently exploring the sensory interaction between water, weather, and both human and more-than-human beings through various media.
Karolin Tampere
Artist and curator
Karolin Tampere is an artist and curator based in Romsa/Tromsø, Sápmi. She has a particular interest in collaborative and socially engaged practices, sound and listening. Since 2004 she has regularly contributed to Sørfinnset skole/the nord land and together with Åse Løvgren the ongoing collaboration Rakett begun in 2003. Karolin is since 2011 part of Ensayos and is currently a PhD Research fellow at Tromsø Art Academy, UiT - The Arctic University of Norway and Faculty of Fine Art, University of Bergen. Tampere is part of the research group Worlding Northern Art (WONA) at the Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education at UiT - The Arctic University of Norway.
Lene Schwarz
Artist
Lene Schwarz, freelance painter, lives and works in and around Greifswald. She studied at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen and the Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle (Saale) and translates nature, landscape, village and urban forms into watercolor – preferably en plein air. By the means of her paintings she investigates the sublime and non-visible within the ordinary.
Philipp Modersohn
Artist
Philipp Modersohn's sculptures and animated films highlight the vibrancy of things and matter. By confronting these with human-made structures and systems of social organization, he questions the division between biology and geology,life and non-life, and the resulting hierarchy of forms of existence.
Siljarosa Schletterer
Artist
Siljarosa Schletterer lives and works in Tyrol. She focuses on the interplay between society, nature and language, as well as the communication of (contemporary) poetry. In “azur ton nähe - flussdiktate” (published by Limbus Lyrik in 2022), she directs her attention to the socio-ecological weight of bodies of water.
WETBEINGS Contributors
Artists, Scientists, People
Andreas Haberl grew up near the Murnauer Moos in Bavaria, one of the most beautiful peatlands in southwest Germany, where he developed a deep, intuitive connection to the unique wetland landscape and its wildlife from an early age. This personal bond later evolved into a scientific pursuit when he studied landscape ecology and nature conservation at Greifswald University, with a focus on the paleoecology of peatlands. For the past 20 years, Andreas has been working with various institutions within the Greifswald Mire Center, contributing his expertise to numerous national and international projects related to peatland paleoecology, nature conservation, and paludiculture.
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. www.maknyte.com / https://maknyte.com/castor-fiber-krastovaizdzio-partizanas/
Aio Frei is a non-binary sound artist, relational listener, sonic community organizer, collaborator, sonic researcher and graphic designer based in Zürich. They co-founded the experimental record- and artbook store OOR Records, and co-curated OOR Saloon, a production context for queer-feminist listening practices.
Since many years they are deeply interested in questions concerning «ethics of listening» – in socio-political, environmental, non-extractivist, mindful, embodied and queer practices of listening within its situated contexts, emancipatory possibilities within the sonic realm, forms of non-verbal communication/improvisation and relational composition. Aio's transdisciplinary practice interweaves sonic organizing, electroacoustic and attentive communal forms of composition, listening-workshops and graphic design/printed matter. They organize experimental and discursive audio formats and collaborate on listening performances and collective listening settings. www.aiofrei.net / www.oor-rec.ch
Dr. Dr. Kallia Kefala holds dual doctorates in psychical research and paranatural environmental studies. Her work focuses on liminal spatial configurations and the entrancement triggered by spectral ecologies. She examines how supernatural presences interact with attention, behavior, and belief across unstable landscapes.
Jeanna Kolesova is an artist, filmmaker, and researcher working across moving images, performance, installation, and text. Their practice investigates the violent manipulation of history, information, and narratives, focusing on how imperial technologies have shaped—and continue to shape—bodies, landscapes, and collective memory. Grounded in personal experience and critical research, their work bridges the intimate and the political, searching for alternative futures through the lens of trauma and resistance. https://jeannakolesova.com/info/
Jūratė Sendžikaitė took her first steps onto real mire ground as a city kid, only a few years after completing her PhD studies in Natural Sciences. It was in Aukštumala in 2005. Since then, the peatlands have been an enduring part of her life. With a background in Geography and Biology, defending PhD, over 20 years of research at the Institute of Botany, as well as 17 years of experience in non-governmental nature protection organizations, she has gained expertise in ecological restoration, protection and conservation of biodiversity and public education. She is the scientific editor of the Lithuanian edition (2016) of C.A. Weber’s foundational monograph on the Aukštumala raised bog (Weber, 1902).
Kim Bode (they / them) is a research associate at the Bureau of Transitioning Landscapes, which studies terrains not only as geographies but as metabolizing archives. Their work merges hydroacoustic sensing, landscape anthropology, and speculative ecology—tracing residual signals and disturbances across wetland systems and submerged zones. https://bureau-of-transitioning-landscapes.net/
Laima Mačėnienė is a local farmer and a descendant of the old residents of Vabalai, a village on the edge of the Aukštumala raised bog. She feels privileged to live in the most beautiful place in the world, cherished by her family for generations. Since childhood, she has nurtured the spoken dialect of the old Vabalai village and is not only the heart and soul of this community but also serves as the chairwoman of the Kintai Evangelical Lutheran community.
RE-PEAT - Bobbi (she/they) is a young peatland, climate, and social justice advocate living in the Netherlands and part of RE-PEAT. With RE-PEAT, she works on pushing for deep shifts in public perceptions of peatlands using tools of public education, community building and campaigning. Currently, her focus is with the Peatland Justice project, which investigates injustices at play in the trade of peat in Europe and envisions a just transition in this system, particularly in the Dutch context.
RE-PEAT - Lara-Lane (she/her) is a writer, researcher and cultural worker. Since childhood, she has found the more-than-human world around her to be her most generous support. Sensitive to the injustices and violence around, she turned toward political engagement beginning with climate and social justice activism in 2018. Since then, her path has been leading back to her ancestral landscapes: peatlands.
Suza Husse is a researcher, writer and curator with an interest in collaborative and performative practices that bridge knowledges from different social, ecological and historical environments. Suza coordinates the arts and peatland ecology platform Sensing Peat at the Michael Succow Foundation, facilitating transdisciplinary arts and community based approaches towards alive and emancipatory swamp, bog, wetland and peatland cultures. Sensing Peat is rooted in the Venice Agreement, a bottom-up network of peatland custodians dedicated to protecting and restoring peatlands globally through local initiatives and decolonial tools. Suza is a member of the transnational Organising Committee of The Venice Agreement, where scientists, community organisers, Indigenous and environmental advocacy representatives, artists and researchers from three continents organise transdisciplinary peatland protection together.
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.
The Many Headed Hydra (TMHH) is dedicated to queer ecologies, myth making and situated practices that emerge from bodies of water. TMHH collaborates with inhabitants of different lands and seas to cross-connect queer*feminist and decolonial research, art making, and publishing. TMHH uses ritual and fiction, shape-shifting collectivities and storytelling to set resistant knowledges into motion. TMHH’s magazines are a performative device – they circulate as rumors, gatherings, printed matter, performances, exhibitions, radio broadcasts, evocations...
Vytautas Eigirdas is an ecologist, ornithologist and bird ringing specialist. He works at the Vente Cape Ornithological Station (Nemunas delta) as Senior Ornithologist and participate in various conservation projects, mainly related to bird conservation.
Yasmeen Al-Qaisi is a poet who writes for voice and paper, articulates and performs language with sound, food or care practices towards uncontainable forms of literature. When writing with sound, Jasmina shape-shifts in inexistant institutional forms, invents jobs, engages in human and more than human relations and broadcasts temporarily or mobile on free and public radios. https://jasminescu.com
Collaborators
Camila Marambio
Curator
Steering Group Member, Ensayos
Camila Marambio is a transdisciplinary curator, storyteller, and private investigator. Her writing, research, and various projects traverse the fields of environmental humanities, decolonial nature conservation, contemporary art, and performance studies. In 2010, she founded Ensayos in partnership with the Wildlife Conservation Society of Chile. Ensayos is a collective research practice that brings together artists, scientists, and activists to conceptualize long-term, process-based projects focused on eco-cultural conservation work in Tierra del Fuego and other archipelagos. Since 2011, she has been experimenting with performance, creating solo and collaborative pieces dealing mostly with human and non-human health. Her writing has been published in Third Text, Australian Feminist Studies, Discipline, The River Rail, Art+ Australia, and Kerb Journal, among others. I am co-author of Slow Down Fast, A Toda Raja with Cecilia Vicuña (Errant Bodies Press, 2019) and the forthcoming Cancer Ecologies: A Queer Femme Proposition (Bloomsbury 2025).
Jan Peters
Ecologist
Managing Director at the Michael Succow Foundation, Greifswald Mire Centre; Sensing Peat Project Lead; Steering Group Member.
As a landscape ecologist by training, he acts as managing director at Michael Succow Foundation, Partner in the Greifswald Mire Centre. His work focuses on peatlands and climate change with main expertise on policy analysis and advocacy, peatland management strategies incl. paludiculture and stakeholder co-creation processes. He holds rich experiences in national and international projects on climate change mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity conservation and development cooperation connected to peatlands in Europe (e.g. Germany, Baltic States), Asia, Africa, and South America. Additionally, he is chair of the board of Wetlands International European Association.
Nicole Püschel Hoeneisen
Environmental Biologist
Steering Group Member, Wildlife Conservation Society Chile
Nicole Püschel Hoeneisen is a mother, daughter, sister, and wife, born and raised in southern Chile. Nicole is an environmental biologist by training from the University of Chile and holds a Master's degree in Conservation Science from Imperial College London. She has developed an interdisciplinary theoretical and practical understanding of conservation during her professional career, focusing on early planning and engagement with society. Her current work focuses on climate change integration into conservation planning. In her workspace at Wildlife Conservation Society Chile, Nicole has been able to deepen her technical knowledge around peatlands, which, together with her deep love for these ecosystems, she makes available by working for the local and global protection of these important wetlands.
Susanne Abel
Biologist
Sensing Peat Initiator, Biologist at the Michael Succow Foundation, Greifswald Mire Centre
Susanne Abel is a biologist and has been working for 15 years at the Greifswald Mire Centre (GMC) as a scientist and project coordinator on the subject of peatland and climate protection and paludiculture. She analyzes the challenges in the implementation of peatland protection in Germany and how we can work with the locals, the practitioners and politicians to find solutions for implementation. She developed the Database of potential paludiculture plants (DPPP) and initiated several art and peatland collaborations of the GMC.
Suza Husse
Curator
Sensing Peat Project Coordinator, Research Associate at the Michael Succow Foundation, Greifswald Mire Centre (since 2024)
Suza Husse is a curator, researcher and writer with a focus on visual and performative cultures of memory, resistance and re/imagination. Their work is based in queer, feminist and anti-colonial approaches, collaborative processes, co-learning and transdisciplinary research across different fields of knowledge and practice, multiple authorship and politics of listening, speculation and embodied narratives. Since 2012, Suza has been co-shaping the arts and community space District * School Without Center in Berlin with an emphasis on artistic and activist research and pedagogies of political imagination. In 2016 Suza co-founded the collective The Many Headed Hydra whose arts and publishing work interconnects dissident mythmaking, queer ecologies and transformative practices that emanate from bodies of water.
Ulrike Gerhardt
Scientist and curator
Sensing Peat Former Project Coordinator and Research Associate at the Michael Succow Foundation, Greifswald Mire Centre (2023-2024)
Ulrike Gerhardt is an art and cultural scientist and curator who researches on endangered ecosystems, intergenerational memory transmission, and unsettling materialities after 1989/1991 from an alter-global, horizontal and feminist perspective. Until spring 2024, she worked as a project coordinator for Sensing Peat at the Michael Succow Foundation / Greifswald Mire Centre, initiating multiple international collaborations, workshops and exchange formats with different ecological communities of theory and practice. Currently she is researching virtual reality art at the Institute for Art and Visual Culture at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg. In 2024, her dissertation on Easternfuturist memory practices within post-socialist video art will be published (Berlin: De Gruyter). Together with art scholar Julia Wolf, she also works on an upcoming issue on Troubled Matter for the INSERT. Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries publication platform.
