Swamp Cosmologies is a series of peatland community based and transdisciplinary projects and processes which takes place across four different bogs, swamps, and diversely named peatlands connected by rich wet realities.

Pakeliah is a peatland located in Tierra del Fuego, Chile, in the Karukinka park. The name was given by the community in a joint effort with the park rangers. Pakeliah Hol Hol means “Healing Peatland” (turbera que sana). The Selk’nam community feel a special ancestral bond with this particular peatland.

Lake Victoria Papyrus Peatlands stretch along the lake’s edge, deeply interwoven with the lives, traditions, and memories of riparian communities. In places like Yala Swamp, the papyrus grows dense and rooted, holding stories of craft, subsistence, and seasonal rhythms. 

Medio Mundo y Daguao contains the second largest mangrove forest of all the islands of Puerto Rico. This, along with the terrestrial, coastal, transitional, estuarine and aquatic ecosystems found in the area, provides habitat for a total of 26 rare, endemic, vulnerable and endangered species. Among the documented species are the West Indian manatee, the mariquita, the Puerto Rican boa and several species of sea turtles that depend on these ecosystems. Medio Mundo y Daguao Natural Protected Area is managed by Para La Naturaleza.

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. 

In a field workshop blending acoustic ecology, speculative research, and participatory ritual, Kim Bode and Dr. Dr. Kallia Kefala invited participants to attune to the raised bog of Aukštumala as a living archive—listening for the presence of Dainėja through shifting signals, crafting symbolic offerings, and returning gesture and voice to the wetland in a shared act of attention and reciprocity.

The Venice Agreement, translated through the making of reed hanging gardens, becomes a living manifesto that grounds global peatland protection in the local knowledge and ancestral relations of the Aukštumala Raised Bog.

From March to October 2025 artist, filmmaker and researcher Jeanna Kolesova is Sensing Peat’s artistic researcher in residence.

The exhibition Down in the Bog: Hibernation takes us on a deep dive into the curious ecosystem of peatlands. It is an exhibition and a place for learning and sharing from peatlands around the world, arguing for the need for increased attention and care, located at Tromsø Kunstforening from March 22 to May 5, 2024, curated by Karolin Tampere.

In their duo exhibition Am Ryck, artists Juliane Tübke and Alison Darby explore innovative ways to draw attention to the significance of peatland landscapes from June 16 – Sept 15, 2024.

The four artistic workshops from the series PEAToresk: Artistic Perspectives on the Drained Peatland Meadows near Greifswald are related to peatlands and landscapes. The en plein air workshops will take place in the Polder Steinbeckervorstadt from May 25 to September 8, 2024.

Lene Schwarz invites her participants to explore the “quiet greatness” of nature and the traces of its human shaping. The watercolor painting workshop with Lene Schwarz will take place on May 25, 2024, from 2 - 6 pm.

What is the relationship between the peatland landscape, nature, and humans? The en plein air workshop with Anett Simon on May 26, 2024, from 11 am to 6 pm invites interested participants to develop individual answers.

Juliane Tübke and Alison Darby explore ways to transform the vegetation of the Steinbecker Vorstadt Polder into sustainable materials. An experimental peatland workshop with the artists on June 22, 2024 from 1 to 6 pm.

What can we learn from landscapes and bodies of water? A creative writing workshop in the peatland with the poet Siljarosa Schletterer on June 23, 2024, from 2 pm to 6 pm will look into answers to this question. 

Mexican choreographer Yolanda Morales and her international team imagine a natural scenario on stage and become masters of ceremony from March 20-24, 2024.