WETSOUND is an artistic radio action that sonified the Venice Agreement for Peatlands Global Workshop in the papyrus peatlands of Nam Lolwe / Lake Victoria, 2-5 June 2026 – a four-day gathering of peatland custodians from around the world. A co-production by The Venice Agreement for Peatlands, Ecofinder Kenya, Sensing Peat/The Michael Succow Foundation, The Institute for Multispecies Singing, pantea, Uhenga, Mama Grace Onyango Cultural and Social Center and Radio Nam Lolwe. 

The WETSOUND Live Radio show interweaves swamp stories, lake songs, fisherfolk, tales by custodians, scientists, artists, community workers of wetlands, sound art, poetry, and music with local multi-species sound worlds from Dunga Swamp. The live mobile radio was moderated by the Institute for Multispecies Singing (Yasmeen Al Qaisi) with Ecofinder Kenya, Sensing Peat and pantea. the live radio show features:

• Peatland custodians gathering in Kisumu for the Venice Agreement on Peatlands celebrating the last day of the convergences of streams from different peatlands of planet Earth: Listening to the wounded and wondrous universes of swamps, WETSOUND connects struggles across these wet ecosystems for imagining otherwise. Voicings from the complex entanglements of peatland justice with major climate and social urgencies of our time, radio waves open wet pathways between memory, future, local and planetary.

• Sound worlds from Dunga Swamp from a live stream via a streambox installed in the papyrus peatland from 31 May to 5 June. This box is a work by sound art collaborative Associació So and Soundcamp Cooperative, which was left with custodians of Dunga Swamp, facilitated by pantea and her research into wetlands as sites of social, biological, and epistemic diversity.

• Contributions created during the WETSOUND Radio Workshop hosted at Board Walk in Dunga Swamp which brought together Ecofinder ecologists with Kisumu and Dunga conservation workers, musicians and artists from Mama Grace Onyango Cultural and Social Center, fisherpeople and guides at the Board Walk Dunga, radiomakers, young journalists training at Nam Lolwe radio and Nyalenda Young Turks CBO. Invited to imagine themselves as part of the swamp ecosystem, beneath the surface, on it, or above it, the group developed improvisations through music, conversation, poetry, fiction, theatre and sound. 

• The feminist pan African feminist ancestry documentation group Uhenga from Dar es Salaam, shares a first part from an extended sound composition in the making as part of the Swamp Cosmologies, about wetland ecologies of the Asu region in the northern highlands of Tanzania as sites of survival, epistemic resistance, and intergenerational knowledge production.
  

The Venice Agreement on Peatlands was first signed on June 2, 2022 during a historic assembly in Venice. The Venice Agreement (VA) represents a commitment by peatland custodians from around the world to shift the ecological and cultural management of these wetland ecosystems towards effective convivial conservation. By recognizing local initiatives as key collaborators in the international process, the VA set a new standard for protecting and restoring our planet’s peatlands from the ground up. https://theveniceagreement.net

The Institute for Multi-Species-Singing is a temporary moisty singing multi body creating singable patterns out of sounds and stories of wetlands, initiated by poet and radio artist Yasmeen Al-Qaisi joined by pantea, artist and cultural worker whose interdisciplinary work explores ecological narratives, listening practices, and more-than-human relations through sound and more. Special thanks to Soundcamp cooperative / Acoustic Commons, Verein gegen Müdigkeit, radio art friends and lovers. 

Ecofinder Kenya is a local based organization working towards conservation of Lake Victoria aquatic environment including wetlands, peatlands, fisheries and watersheds. www.ecofinderkenya.org

Sensing Peat is an arts and research platform at the Michael Succow Foundation / Greifswald Mire Center, co-initiating localized arts, community and research formats with different peatlands. https://www.sensingpeat.net/

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Sounds, songs, and radio art from a variety of contributors. Tune in for something you've never heard before with familiar classics and transmission art mixed in.