Wency Mendes

Roots & Ruptures: Learning through Landscape at SARA Set within the agrarian and forested landscapes of the Western Ghats, SARA Centre is not simply a venue for the programme, but the ground from which the workshop emerges. Located in Dombekoppa village, SARA brings together ecology, agriculture, art, and community practice through long term engagement with place. Its work spans water conservation, biodiversity restoration, seed preservation, ecological learning, and collaborative cultural practice, shaped by the lived realities of the region. Participants will live and work within this environment, moving between forests, water systems, agricultural landscapes, and shared spaces of discussion, reflection, and making. Through field immersions, collective learning, and material engagement, the site itself becomes part of the process. SARA’s work also carries the memory of ecological disruption and displacement linked to large hydroelectric interventions across the Sharavati basin. These layered histories continue to shape questions of land, labour, sustainability, and survival within the region. More than a centre, SARA functions as an evolving space for dialogue, practice, and ecological inquiry, where knowledge emerges through lived experience, collaboration, and sustained attention to place. 📍 SARA Centre, Dombekoppa, Karnataka ⚪️ Limited seats 🗓️ Deadline to Apply: 15th May 2026 📩 To apply: Email: [email protected] Visit: /2026/04/19/roots-ruptures/ #RootsAndRuptures #SARACentre #WesternGhats #EcologyAndPractice #CollectiveLearning ArtAndEcology ClimatePractice SiteSpecificLearning

Tracing the Sharavati River: Program Highlight As part of Roots & Ruptures, we follow the Sharavati River trail from the Western Ghats to its estuary at Honnavar. The Sharavati is not just a river. It is an ecological corridor, a site of biodiversity, and a heavily engineered system. Flowing 128 km westward, it moves through dense evergreen forests, Myristica swamps, and endemic habitats before reaching the Arabian Sea. Along the way, it forms Jog Falls and powers major hydroelectric projects that generate a significant share of Karnataka’s electricity. This journey traces multiple conditions at once. A river that sustains rare species, including the lion tailed macaque and endemic fish. A basin altered by dams that have submerged forests, fragmented habitats, and displaced communities. An estuary where reduced salinity has reshaped aquatic life and livelihoods. Participants encounter the river not as a singular entity, but as a set of tensions between ecology and infrastructure, flow and control, abundance and loss. Moving from catchment to waterfall to estuary, the day unfolds as a study in scale, tracing how interventions upstream transform life downstream. This is not a site visit. It is an engagement with a living system under pressure. 📍 SARA Centre, Dombekoppa, Karnataka ⚪️ Limited seats (approx. 30 participants) 🗓️ Deadline to Apply: 15th May 2026 📩 To apply, email: [email protected] with a short note about your practice OR apply via the link in bio #RootsAndRuptures #Sharavati #WesternGhats #RiverEcology #Hydropower EcologyAndInfrastructure FieldImmersion ClimatePractice

Roots & Ruptures: Untangling Climate through Ecology, Power and Practice Introducing the interlocutors, mentors, and facilitators for the programme. A diverse group of practitioners comes together across ecology, art, research, policy, and grassroots engagement. From ecosophical inquiry into development and climate, to site-based artistic practices engaging material, memory, and landscape, the programme brings multiple ways of knowing and responding into dialogue. Ecological understanding is grounded through field-based research in forests, amphibians, and plant systems of the Western Ghats, alongside experiential modes of learning. This extends into critical engagements with water, pollution, and energy systems, examining infrastructure, governance, and environmental justice. The programme also draws from practices at the intersection of art and activism, as well as those rooted in indigenous and community-based knowledge, engaging with oral cultures, ethno-technologies, and collaborative processes. Together, these perspectives open a space for inquiry, reflection, and grounded engagement with climate as lived reality. 📍 SARA Centre, Dombekoppa, Karnataka ⚪️ Limited seats 🗓️ Deadline to Apply: 15th May 2026 📩 To apply: Email: [email protected] Visit: /2026/04/19/roots-ruptures/ #RootsAndRuptures #ArtAndEcology #ClimatePractice #WesternGhats #SiteSpecificPractice CollectiveLearning

Roots & Ruptures: Untangling Climate through Ecology, Power and Practice – a site-specific immersion at SARA Centre 3rd to 10th June 2026 | Dombekoppa, Karnataka A week-long ecological and material immersion exploring climate, water, and the entanglements of environment, power, and practice. SARA Centre, Dombekoppa, Karnataka Limited seats Deadline to Apply: 15th May 2026 To Apply: Email: [email protected] Visit: /2026/04/19/roots-ruptures/

Atul Bhalla is a New Delhi, based visual artist whose practice explores the political, ecological, and emotional dimensions of water, landscape, and public space. Working across photography, video, installation, and performance, Bhalla’s work reflects on how rivers, bodies of water, and urban ecologies shape collective memory, social relations, and environmental consciousness. Born in 1964, Bhalla received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the College of Art, University of Delhi, and his Master of Fine Arts from Northern Illinois University, USA. He is currently a Professor of Visual Art at Shiv Nadar University in India. His work has been presented internationally in solo and group exhibitions, including at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, Sharjah Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, and Harvard Radcliffe Institute. A recurring focus in Bhalla’s practice is water as both material presence and conceptual framework - an element through which histories of ecology, urbanisation, and human experience can be re-examined. For RUANG// Journal Issue #1, Wency Mendes’s article “Indigenous-Eco-Futurism: Embodied Ecologies and the Making of Futures” discusses how Bhalla’s work engages water as a site of memory, ecological relation, and future-thinking within South Asian and broader Global South contexts. Read the full article in RUANG// Journal Issue #1 via link in bio Image credits : 1. - Atul Bhalla, Adrift, 2013. Courtesy of Atul Bhalla. - Atul Bhalla, Deliverance, 2013. Courtesy of Atul Bhalla and sepiaEYE. 2,3: Atul Bhalla, ADRIFT-II, Archival Pigment Print (Diasec). Courtesy of Atul Bhalla and sepiaEYE. 4. Atul Bhalla, Deliverance, 2013. Courtesy of Atul Bhalla and sepiaEYE. 5. Atul Bhalla, Dhani, 2014. Courtesy of Atul Bhalla and sepiaEYE. 6. I Was Happy Only for 5 Minutes, 2014. Courtesy Atul Bhalla and sepiaEYE.

RUANG// Journal Issue #1 is now live. Are artists becoming the next scientists, finally producing the kinds of knowledge that might actually confront the climate crisis? At a time when knowledge systems are failing to account for the conditions they produce, this issue turns to artistic practice as a mode of research. Bringing together 8 writers from across Southeast Asia and beyond, the issue explores how artists in the region are engaging new technologies, environmental change, labour conditions, systems of surveillance and more. Across the issue, contributors discuss the work of 25 artists, from environmental fieldwork and archival research to site-based investigations and speculative practices. With contributions by: Yu Ke Dong, Annabelle Tan Kai Lin, Kenneth Wong See Huat, Elena Wise, Jaron Lua Jie Long, Wency Mendes, Chiara Serpani, and Isa Pengskul & Victoria Hertel. The Journal is issued both in print and online. Read the full online issue via the link in bio. Image credits: 1. Robert Zhao Renhui, Thermal image of a herd of deer in the field, still from The Owl, The Travellers and The Cement Drain, 2024. Courtesy of the artist, Singapore Art Museum, ShanghART Gallery. 2. ⁠Tuan Andrew Nguyen, The Island, 2017. Courtesy of the artist and Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. 3. ⁠Marcos Kueh, in collaboration with Hakan Demir and Vincent Wong, On Time, installation views. Photo by Koen Dijkman. 1 November 2025–16 January 2026. Courtesy of De Fabriek. 4. ⁠Robert Zhao Renhui, A Monitor Lizard Swims, still from Trash Stratum, 2024. Courtesy of the artist, Singapore Art Museum. 5. ⁠Isa Pengskul & Victoria Hertel, A Drop in the Ocean, 2026, experimental writing. Courtesy of the artists. 6. ⁠Derek Tumala, A warm orange colored liquid, 2024. Installation. Courtesy of the artist. 7. ⁠Annabelle Tan and Kai McLaughlin (Studio Mess), Tropicalia Vulgaris, 2025. Courtesy of Annabelle Tan, Kai McLaughlin, Finbarr Fallon. 8. ⁠Basia Irland, Ice Book, ephemeral ice sculpture project released into rivers. Courtesy of Basia Irland. 9. ⁠Agan Harahap, Sutirah: The First Woman Animal Tamer, ca. 1885, West Java. Digital photography, 2015. Courtesy of the artist.

Wency Mendes is a documentary filmmaker, artist, and researcher whose practice moves across journalism, theatre, and immersive media. His work engages indigenous and tribal communities in India around land, water, climate justice, caste, and labour through a collaborative methodology he calls “co-labour-abling.” For RUANG// Journal, Wency contributes “Indigenous-Eco-Futurism: The Lived Experience of Embodied Ecologies and the Making of Futures,” an essay that proposes ecology as lived and embodied knowledge. Drawing from the waterscapes of Goa and community-based practices, he reframes technology as everyday, place-based téchne, and positions art as a form of collective resistance and world-making grounded in relational ecologies. Read the full article in RUANG// Journal #1 via link in bio.

“The Sovereign Forest” is a long-term multimedia project by Indian artist Amar Kanwar that investigates ecological justice, state violence, and the rights of land and forest communities in Odisha, India. Developed over many years, the project brings together film, photographs, documents, texts, and archival materials that trace the ongoing struggles of Indigenous and rural communities resisting large-scale mining and industrial extraction. Through these layered forms, Kanwar constructs an evolving archive of testimonies, legal documents, and poetic reflections that foreground the lived realities of those defending their land and ecosystems. Central to the project is the idea of the forest not only as a site of ecological life but also as a witness and participant in political and legal struggles. By framing the forest as a potential legal subject, “The Sovereign Forest” challenges conventional understandings of sovereignty, justice, and environmental governance, suggesting alternative ways of recognizing the rights of land, nature, and the communities that depend on them. In RUANG// Journal, artist and researcher Wency Mendes offers Kanwar’s work as an example of a methodology that the author coined as Indigenous-Eco-Futurism. Read full article “Indigenous-Eco-Futurism: embodied ecologies and the making of futures” in RUANG// Journal Issue #1 via link in bio. Image credits: Amar Kanwar, installation of The Sovereign Forests, courtesy of Amar Kanwar, 2012.

WENCESLAUS MENDES Two-Thirds of Us, 2025 Digital exhibition prints, Instant Film Composites, Unbound book 2/3rds of Us unfolds as a living archive - to navigate water’s many forms and futures of our shared, fluid inheritance. 2/3rds of Us arises from this shared condition, tracing fluid entanglements between human and more-than-human worlds, shaped by histories of extraction, displacement, and erasure. This is an attempt to listen to the land, to the water, to the community, to those whose worlds are written over and silenced. It unfolds through archiving, mapping, memory, embodiment, and play - across multiple mediums, traditional and digital imagery, shape and form, assemblage, reconstructed glocal materials, soundscapes, performance and web interactivity. The labour and work rests at the intersection of imagination, technology, and resilience. It proposes an aesthetic and critical framework where theory converges with oral histories, traditional knowledge, ecofeminism, caste and race, and the sensibilities of Punk and Futurisms. Here, scientific, historical, and speculative fictions flow together, bridging our Third Worlds with the Global North. The hydroaqueous body is medium, metaphor and subjectile. ABOUT THE ARTIST Wenceslaus Mendes is a filmmaker, independent researcher, and artist working across video, performance technology, and installation art. Grounded in Indigenous Eco-Futurism, his practice engages indigenous and tribal communities, ecology, and traditional knowledge, examining race, caste, labour, and the Indian prison system through collaborative methodologies. Two-Thirds of Us | 2/3rds of Us, is made possible by the patronage and the support of the Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation Creative Arts Grant (@mrinalinimukherjee.foundation ), the VM Salgaocar Fellowship and the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia Co-Creation Grant. Makers and Materials: Goa Past and Present is in partnership with The University of Tennessee Knoxville, Fulbright India and Swiss Arts Council ProHelvetia. Open until 28 February 2026 | 10am–6pm Venue Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts, Panaji Call: +91 832 6750876 | Email: [email protected]

How do landscapes, memory and culture shape the art we create and the stories we carry? This conversation brings together voices deeply rooted in Goa’s ecology, heritage and evolving creative identity. About the panelists: Rajendra Kerkar – Environmentalist, author and researcher dedicated to protecting Goa’s natural and cultural heritage. Aaron Monteiro @aaron._monteiro – Visual artist, poet and analogue photographer documenting Goan heritage and visual narratives. Wency Mendes @wencymendes – Artist, filmmaker and independent researcher working across film, theatre and conceptual media. Maria de Lourdes Bravo da Costa Rodrigues – Writer and historian known for her extensive work on Goa’s history, culture and traditions. Join us for a thoughtful exchange on art as documentation, memory, storytelling and belonging — and how the places we come from shape who we become. 🔗 Link in bio to enroll.

WENCESLAUS MENDES Two-Thirds of Us, 2025 Digital exhibition prints, Instant Film Composites, Unbound book 2/3rds of Us unfolds as a living archive - to navigate water’s many forms and futures of our shared, fluid inheritance. 2/3rds of Us arises from this shared condition, tracing fluid entanglements between human and more-than-human worlds, shaped by histories of extraction, displacement, and erasure. This is an attempt to listen to the land, to the water, to the community, to those whose worlds are written over and silenced. It unfolds through archiving, mapping, memory, embodiment, and play - across multiple mediums, traditional and digital imagery, shape and form, assemblage, reconstructed glocal materials, soundscapes, performance and web interactivity. The labour and work rests at the intersection of imagination, technology, and resilience. It proposes an aesthetic and critical framework where theory converges with oral histories, traditional knowledge, ecofeminism, caste and race, and the sensibilities of Punk and Futurisms. Here, scientific, historical, and speculative fictions flow together, bridging our Third Worlds with the Global North. The hydroaqueous body is medium, metaphor and subjectile. ABOUT THE ARTIST Wenceslaus Mendes is a filmmaker, independent researcher, and artist working across video, performance technology, and installation art. Grounded in Indigenous Eco-Futurism, his practice engages indigenous and tribal communities, ecology, and traditional knowledge, examining race, caste, labour, and the Indian prison system through collaborative methodologies. Two-Thirds of Us | 2/3rds of Us, is made possible by the patronage and the support of the Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation Creative Arts Grant (@mrinalinimukherjee.foundation ), the VM Salgaocar Fellowship and the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia Co-Creation Grant. Makers and Materials: Goa Past and Present is in partnership with The University of Tennessee Knoxville, Fulbright India and Swiss Arts Council ProHelvetia. Open until 28 February 2026 | 10am–6pm Venue Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts, Panaji Call: +91 832 6750876 | Email: [email protected]

‘imagine-making’ of Stories This essay explores how ecology, knowledge, and geospatial “otherness” are shaped and can be reshaped through collective making. Drawing from workshops in Goa, Ahmedabad, Assam, Basel, and Brussels, it examines how power and knowledge circulate within institutions, languages, and academic systems, and asks how these hierarchies might be dismantled. By foregrounding process through text, diagrams, and shared documentation, the work treats making itself as critique, care, and solidarity. Knowledge is not an object to extract or archive, but a form of poiesis: a movement toward becoming, grounded in cooperation, embodied experience, and community labour. Situating Indigenous-eco-futurism as both method and imagination, the essay draws on practices from Goa and the Global South, alongside ecofeminism, caste and race studies, punk and futurisms, speculative fiction, and oral histories. It reclaims téchne as knowledge that emerges from lived worlds, proposing art and technology as acts of renewal—where ecology and creativity meet in reciprocity, friendship, and hope. 📖 Two-Thirds of Us | 2/3rds of Us 🙏🏽 With support from the Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation Creative Arts Grant, VM Salgaocar Fellowship, and Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia Co-Creation Grant @mrinalinimukherjee.foundation @sunaparanta_goa @prohelvetia_newdelhi @teeoui @akanssshaa @sarkar_pri @rheecycled @siddharth_r_malur @johnxaviers @naveenprinters @bhooma.p @es__reichert @anishaimhasly @adriannotz @annsteady3000 #SophieVögele #AnneliesKuypers #ImagineMaking #TwoThirdsOfUs #KnowledgeAsPractice IndigenousEcoFuturism DecolonialMaking ArtAndEcology