Peatlands are ancestors, are memory, are futures - entities which exist and continue to develop all over our planet for millennia. Swamp, mire and bog beings, including human people shared fates and created cultures in and around peatlands long before colonization and industrialization distributed technologies and ideologies for drainage, extraction, destruction, displacement and (re)settlement. WETBEING is a transdisciplinary program rooted in the biodiverse organism and troubled ecosystem of the Aukštumala raised bog, a peatland in the Nemunas river delta, at the Baltic coast. From and for this wetbeing, WETBEINGS gathers approaches and examples of contemporary, historical and future forms of living in and with peatlands which are based on mutuality and sustainable survival of humans and peatlands.

We call on a forgotten bird god, Didydis baublys (Eurasian Bittern) to guide us. Didydis baublys is an ancestral peatland spirit whose call tells of how swamps once formed from clouds: In one of the old Lithuanian cosmologies, special clouds were sometimes passing over the land. They took on the shapes of animals and made their sounds. When the people on the land called the cloud by its right name, the cloud descended and a lake was born. Swamps are clouds whose name was never guessed or lakes whose name was forgotten. From the inbetween spaces of water and land, the Baublys calls the swamp and lake clouds by their names so that wetness continues to feed the earth. 

Aukštumala is a 9000 years old living archive stretching themselves between the lake Krokų Lanka and the lower reaches of the rivers Tenenis and Minija in the delta of the Nemunas river.  And Aukštumala is one of the largest peat extraction sites in the Baltics. Bogs are some of the oldest beings in our environments. How can we listen to the stories they carry, and together craft what the Potawatomi botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer calls “old stories and new ones that can be medicine for our broken relationship with earth”? WETBEINGS wonders, what is the ecosystem memory that returns with the waters in rewetting these amphibian spaces?

Through an online gathering in spring and an open air symposium in and around Aukštumala in early summer 2025, WETBEINGS brings together peatland people, artists, scientists, environmental and cultural workers and researchers. The gatherings are extended by a series of radio collaborations.

WETBEINGS is organized by the arts and research platform Sensing Peat at Michael Succow Foundation, Partner in the Greifswald Mire Centre, and the Foundation for Peatland Conservation and Restoration, Lithuania in cooperation with Allianz Foundation. Co-hosted by RE-PEAT and The Venice Agreement for Peatlands. Supported by the Andrea von Braun Foundation, the Administration of Lithuania Minor Protected Areas and Nemunas Delta Regional Park.

AUKŠTUMALA - A LIVING PEATLAND ARCHIVE

The Aukštumala raised bog has existed for more than 9,000 years. Spanning over 3,000 hectares between lake Krokų Lanka and the lower reaches of the rivers Tenenis and Minija in the Nemunas river delta, it is one of the largest in Western Lithuania. Over millennia, it has adapted to shifts in the natural environment including fluctuations in the Baltic Sea’s water levels, the repetitive risings and sinkings of the land, and climate change. Throughout the post-glacial period, it served as a safe refuge for specific plants and animals and eventually became a chronicle of the region’s natural histories, and later, of human life. Everything that has unfolded in Aukštumala and its surroundings over millennia remains preserved within the thick peat layers of the raised bog – like in a chronicle meticulously written by Mother Nature. 

The Aukštumala peatland is a living archive of globally connected histories and realities. Throughout the 20th century, Aukštumala mire was designated for industrial peat extraction and unfortunately lost two-thirds of its original bog body due to this destruction. Peat extraction and related intensive human activities have been carried out continuously since the establishment of Prussian mire colonies in 1882. Under Bismarck, huge capacities and resources were put into land reclamation efforts in the Nemunas Delta. With Dutch knowledge on peatland drainage, the leading narrative was to drain “unhealthy wet badlands” and make them arable for human well being. The biggest interventions in peatland history were made during the Soviet modern peat harvesting era in the 1960s.  

As the first scientifically studied Raised Bog, Aukštumala is an example of the material consequences of scientific and cultural narratives and the need for old and new positive narratives to achieve wet cultures in peatlands. The investigations of German early modern peatland scientist Dr. Carl Albert WeberWeber’s opened Aukštumala for intense “cultivation” with industrial economic exploitation for peat mining which destroyed two thirds of the organism of the formerly pristine raised bog and continues to this day, resulting in large dark desertified stretches of land. 

Conservation and restoration efforts for the remaining nature near the raised bog part are led since recent years by the Foundation for Peatland Restoration and Conservation, Lithuania (FPRC). Despite more than a century-long drainage, Aukštumala raised bog has preserved rich biological diversity. Since 1996, the remaining, though still affected by draining, part of the bog has Telmological Reserve’s status. Large areas of open raised bog habitats, plenty of dystrophic lakes and abundance of rare and endangered plant and animal species are the main reasons why this area is protected not only nationally, but also internationally. In order to preserve the remaining natural habitats and biodiversity, the Aukštumala Telmological Reserve, together with the entire Nemunas River Delta, was included into the European ecological network of protected areas Natura 2000.

PROGRAM AND APPROACHES 

WETBEINGS gathers approaches and examples of contemporary, historical and future forms of living in and with peatlands which are based on mutuality and sustainable survival of humans and peatlands. WETBEINGS employs artistic, transdisciplinary and community-based practices to raise awareness on peatland ecosystems, to attune to our ecological interdependencies and WETBEING, and to foster transformative knowledge for wet peatlands that overcome colonial narratives of drained=progress.

With more than 95% of peatlands in Europe having been drained over the last centuries, the effects of modernist technologies for changing external and internal systems of peatlands beyond their ecosystem resilience capacities are contributing to today's climate crisis. With scientific and political recognition of the so-called ecosystem services that wet/healthy peatlands provide in binding large amounts of carbon and of the massive carbon release that drained peatlands do, peatland protection and conservation efforts are understood to be central for mitigating climate change effects. Despite the critical role peatlands play in biodiversity and climate regulation, and their alarming decline across the world, there is still a lack of political and cultural response to the urgency of protection and of reintegrating peatland WETBEINGS into larger cultural imaginaries. 

An online meeting and a transdisciplinary symposium in the natures of Aukštumala that combine presentations, workshops, field excursions, performances, talks and storytelling WETBEING brings together artists, researchers, peatland custodians and conservationists, peatland people living, working and making culture in peatlands. An accompanying participatory radio program that integrates peatland stories and sounds for diverse audiences in English and Lithuanian. 

WETBEINGS: TRANS-LOCAL WET CULTURES AND BOG KNOWLEDGES

 ~ SPRING ONLINE MEETINGS

26 APRIL 2025 6-9 PM CET

PLACE: Zoom Channel streamed from a cloud spirit floating over the Baltics 

LANGUAGES: English, Lithuanian

REGISTER: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/uiB36pTlQeqjOo9QQlwkvQ 

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. Research of the extraction and socio-ecological histories of Aukštumala and sharings from the current aliveness and challenges of this peatland ecosystem are connected with a focus on local expertises, community based and bottom up nature conservation approaches, multispecies concepts for peatland living and practices at the intersection of arts and ecological and decolonial activism, as well as indigenous and science based knowledge. This symposium takes place online to allow participation and dialogue across different peatlands globally. 

HOSTS: Organized by the arts and research platform Sensing Peat at Michael Succow Foundation, Greifswald, and the Foundation for Peatland Conservation and Restoration, Lithuania. Co-hosted by RE-PEAT and the Venice Agreement for Peatlands

CONTRIBUTIONS: Andreas Haberl / Michael Succow Foundation, European Pond Turtle, Banguolė Žalnieriūnaitė, Didydis baublys (Eurasian Bittern), Fernanda Olivares / The Venice Agreement, Pakeliah Hol Hol (Healing Peatland), Jeanna Kolesova, Swamp Spirit (Pelkės dvasia), Jūratė Sendžikaitė / Foundation for Peatland Restoration and Conservation, Saulašarė (Sundew), Laima Mačėnienė, Pelkinis gailis (Marsh Labrador Tea), RE-PEAT, Grey Goose, Suza Husse / Sensing Peat, Žaltys (Grass Snake)

FULL PROGRAM HERE

REGISTER: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/uiB36pTlQeqjOo9QQlwkvQ 

PEATLAND NATURES, ARTS, SCIENCES, AND LIFE IN AUKŠTUMALA ~ SUMMER SYMPOSIUM 

31 MAY - 2 JUNE  2025

PLACE: Aukštumala

LANGUAGES: English, Lithuanian

The symposium engages with Aukštumala as a living peatland archive with a focus on concrete experiences, challenges and histories of living with and from peatlands. Around World Peatlands Day on 2nd of June 2025 presentations and workshops by ecologists, artists, researchers and local peatland inhabitants will interact with the histories, nature memory, restoration and use of natural resources of the Aukštumala raised bog. Creating dialogues between local peatland people, cultures and economies and trans-local, scientific, artistic, eco-political and agro-economic expertise from different fields of peatland conservation and rewetting, this three-day-gathering integrates the living memory and biodiverse organism of Aukštumala with joined thinking about livable futures widening paludiculture and wet peatland horizons.

“Peatland Natures, Cultures, Arts, Sciences and Life in Aukštumala” takes place in different sites of Aukštumala: the swamps of the protected area, an ancestral site in a small birch forest which forms an island in the vast extraction fields of current peat mining, in a future museum located in an overgrown village that was established as part of Prussian mire colonies, and at the banks of one of the Aukštumala river. Each site accommodates a different focus within the old and new stories to be told and imagined from and for the histories, current lives and futures of the Aukštumala Raised Bog. 

Full program and registration info coming soon. 

For early registration please contact

Suza Husse suza.husse@succow-stiftung.de (English)

Jūratė Sendžikaitė jurate@pelkiufondas.lt (Lithuanian)

WETBEINGS is organized by the arts and research platform Sensing Peat at Michael Succow Foundation, Partner in the Greifswald Mire Centre, and the Foundation for Peatland Conservation and Restoration, Lithuania in cooperation with Allianz Foundation. Co-hosted by RE-PEAT and The Venice Agreement for Peatlands. Supported by the Andrea von Braun Foundation, the Administration of Lithuania Minor Protected Areas and Nemunas Delta Regional Park.