WETSOUND Radio
listening to swamps for imagining otherwise
A mobile radio station airing from Dunga Swamp, Kisumu, Kenya
WETSOUND radio is an artistic radio action that sonifies the Third International Workshop of The Venice Agreement for Peatlands in Kisumu, Kenya - a four-day gathering of peatland custodians from around the world in the papyrus peatlands of Nam Lolwe / Lake Victoria. Starting on World Peatlands Day, 2 June 2026, the participatory mobile radio records sounds and music from the swamps as well as stories, knowledge, cultural practices, conservation and restoration experiences shared by peatland custodians from the region, the African continent and the world.
Local and international radio makers and artists interested in the relationships between ecology and culture - especially in regards to wetlands and peatlands - will set up a temporary radio station at Dunga Swamp in Kisumu. Through documentary formats, sound art, music and storytelling, WETSOUND attunes to peatlands as spaces of deep cultural, ecological, and ethical resonance: an invitation to listen deeply into the papyrus swamps’ complex, more-than-human communities of water, plants, fungi, animals, and ancestral sediments. The program offers pathways to the ancestral, local and planetary significance of these wet ecosystems and feel into their complex entanglements with major climate and social justice issues of our time.
Download WETSOUND radio workshop poster
WETSOUND Radio Workshop ~ 31 May
Live stream of Dunga Swamp sound worlds here and on Locus Sonus – Locustream – sound map ~ 31 May-5 June, 2026
WETSOUND Live Radio, show and broadcast ~ 4 June 2026
Recordings of the live radio will be later available here and Sensing Peat.
WETSOUND RADIO WORKSHOP
listening to swamps for imagining otherwise
COME BY, LET’S MAKE RADIO IN THE SWAMP TOGETHER
31 May 2026 10am - 1pm
Dunga Wetland Pedagogical Centre, Dunga Beach, Kisumu
No need to have previous experience with radio, just experience with Nam Lolwe / Lake Victoria.
Please register:
We invite you:
swamp, lake, river lovers, wetland workers, artists, storytellers, walkers, bird, plant, fish lovers to join us in Dunga Swamp and make radio together.
We will experiment with:
- radio as a tool to talk about environment
- microphones under water, over water, for voices
- local Kisumu stories to tell further in the world
- local swamp beings to work with, to listen to
- how to prepare to be live, multilingual, present.
What we imagine:
Through various audio formats, sound art, music and storytelling, WETSOUND attunes to peatlands as spaces of deep cultural, ecological, and ethical resonance: an invitation to listen deeply into the papyrus wetlands’ complex, more-than-human communities of water, plants, fungi, animals, and ancestral sediments. The program offers pathways to the ancestral, local and planetary significance of these wet ecosystems and feel into their complex entanglements with major climate and social justice issues of our time.
Who are we:
Local and international radio makers, artists and conservation workers interested in the relationships between ecology and culture - especially in regards to wetlands and peatlands. We are setting up a temporary radio station at Dunga Swamp on occasion of the Venice Agreement on Peatlands global meeting of peatland custodians in Kisumu.
The workshop is led by The Institute for Multispecies Singing, 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. Yasmeen will be joined by PANTEA, artist and cultural worker whose interdisciplinary work explores ecological narratives, listening practices, and more-than-human relations through sound and more.
What will happen with collective radio content:
We will live stream soundscapes on Locus Sonus – Locustream – sound map and together build a program for the WETSOUND LIVE RADIO SHOW on 4 June 2026 17:00 - 20:00 EAT. This program will be aired from Mama Grace Onyango Cultural and Social Center. Kisumu, and broadcast on local radio stations and worldwide.
WETSOUND LIVE RADIO SHOW
listening to swamps for imagining otherwise
A MOBILE RADIO ACTION LIVE FROM DUNGA SWAMP at the shores of Nam Lolwe / Lake Victoria
4 June 2026
17:00 - 20:00 EAT ~ 16:00 - 19:00 CET
at Mama Grace Onyango Cultural and Social Center
(Ochieng’ Avenue (next to the National Library), Kisumu)
in collaboration with Radio Nam Lolwe 97.3 FM Kisumu, Associació So and Soundcamp
live broadcast here and community radios around the world: Radio Tsonami - Valparaiso, Chile; WAVE FARM WGXC-90.7 FM - New York, USA; Tesla FM - Barcelona, Spain; ∏Node; WORM - Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Radio Calotropis - Nairobi, Kenya and more
WETSOUND is an artistic radio action that sonifies 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. Airing from Dunga Swamp in Kisumu, the participatory mobile radio records voices, sounds, stories, music and poetry from peatlands in the region, the African continent and elsewhere on planet Earth.
The WETSOUND Live Radio show at Mama Grace Onyango Cultural and Social Center 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.
It will feature contributions by WETSOUND Radio Workshop (seagal / Mama Grace, Rolliance Rayvin, Richard Ojijo, otos jalambwel aka jlm msc, Nicholas aka kokinya msc, Nathan Okello, Katharina Saur, Francis Samora, Evans Midika, Erick Hawi, Denzel Washington, Bosilyn Kheed) which brought together Kisumu and Dunga based conservation workers, musicians, fisherpeople, artists, radiomakers and scientists. 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. Facilitated by the Institute for Multispecies Singing and pantea, the group gave voice to the life of papyrus reeds, the wind, the water, the peat.
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 series at the arts and research platform Sensing Peat / Michael Succow Foundation: Ngae: A Mapping of an Ecosystem engages wetland ecologies of the Asu region in the northern highlands of Tanzania as sites of survival, epistemic resistance, and intergenerational knowledge production. This piece foregrounds wetlands as sensorial and mnemonic environments, weaving together voice, ambient sound, and poetic fragments (in Chasu, Kiswahili, and (maybe) English).
Peatland custodians gathering in Kisumu for the Venice Agreement on Peatlands are 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.
LIVE STREAM OF DUNGA SOUND WORLDS
here and on Locus Sonus – Locustream – sound map
~ 31 May-5 June, 2026
A live stream has been broadcasting continuously since May 31st, beginning with the WETSOUND Radio Workshop at Dunga Wetland Pedagogical Centre /Ecofinder Kenya.
The live stream is a work by Associació So and Soundcamp.
Associació So (Sound Association) is a sound art collaborative based in Catalunya, bringing together the Soundcamp Cooperative (London, Berlin, Glasgow, Crete, St Vincent, The Hague) and Barcelona-based Iranian artist pantea. So draws on over a decade of work by Soundcamp, including Reveil, a long-form live daybreak broadcast, and Soundcamp's model of distributed micro-festivals happening simultaneously across multiple locations. Working within the framework of acoustic justice (Brandon LaBelle), So explores DIY infrastructures capable of moving live sounds between places, and documenting under-heard acts of creative resistance.
The collaboration is also shaped by pantea's research into wetlands as sites of social, biological, and epistemic diversity, and her practice of creating welcoming, open-ended situations through walking and being outdoors. So includes members of the Acoustic Commons creative and technical network, which grew from the Acoustic Commons (2020–22) Creative Europe cooperation project, bringing deep experience with devices and methods for live environmental sound transmission. Together, the collaborators aim to revive esoteric DIY transmission systems from the past and develop new ones as prototypes and open recipes, supporting more-than-human performances, collaborations, and acts of care.
WETSOUND is 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 in collaboration with Radio Nam Lolwe, Associació So and Soundcamp, Radio Tsonami - Valparaiso, Chile; WAVE FARM WGXC-90.7 FM - New York, USA; Tesla FM - Barcelona, Spain; https://p-node.org/; WORM - Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and Radio Calotropis - Nairobi, Kenya.
Ecofinder Kenya is a local based organization working towards conservation of Lake Victoria aquatic environment including wetlands, peatlands, fisheries and watersheds.
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.
Uhenga is a pan African feminist ancestry documentation group. Uhenga loosely translates in Kiswahili as ancestry. Through a feminist lense, Uhenga reclaims and recreates language and herstory.