FOWARDED: Introducing Two-Thirds of Us | 2/3rds of Us
Frederick Noronha
2/3rds of Us is an unbound book comprising eight chapters, each presented as an individual photo book from Goa. Together, they explore hydro-ecologies, ethno-technologies and folktales. These chapters sit at the intersection of contactivity –between the more-than-human and the human. From this point of emergence arise our narratives, our histories, and our possible futures.
The eight chapters are:
The Breaking and Making of Worlds traces the deep-time and lived histories of Goa and India’s western coast, where geology, water, climate, and culture have remained inseparably entwined. It reads the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea as cosmological frontiers – zones where tectonic sutures, monsoon circulations, and human migrations converge.
Memory of Water follows three women – Sudha, Amata, and Oshun – across different lands and times, each bound by water of the ‘great flood’ and the transformations it brings. In their worlds, survival depends on listening to rivers, rains, and tides, yet their knowledge is continually silenced by structures of power that deny its worth.
The Elephant, the Crocodile, and a Goddess is a folk story of forgotten gods and ancient guardians from Goa. This narrative interweaves myth and ecology to tell the story of Nanda Lake, a Ramsar site in Goa, as a living covenant between the elephant, the crocodile, and a goddess.
a Song for Mogrem explores the intersections of ecology, gender, and musical tradition along Goa’s coast. This text examines how women enact daily crossings between sea, river, and market. Their labour sustains households and food cultures through fishing, curing, vending, and caregiving, even as industrialisation, climate change, and coastal degradation erode their livelihoods.
Technologies of Future-Past examines Goa’s khazan lands as living hydro-agro-aqua systems that embody over four millennia of ecological knowledge and community engineering. Drawing on fieldwork, archival research, and ecological analysis, the chapter situates khazans within deep-time histories of water management, tracing continuities with Mesopotamian canals and Harappan maritime systems.
Gin-Jinn / Jinn-Gin explores the intertwined worlds of water, culture, and commerce in Goa, weaving ecological analysis, political critique, and mythic storytelling. Structured in parts, the chapter first examines Goa’s hydrological and socio-environmental systems alongside the rise of its contemporary gin industry; the second reimagines these dynamics through a folktale of springs, spirits, and stewardship.
The Village Estranged moves between Leukerbad (site of James Baldwin’s Stranger in the Village) in Switzerland and Moira in Goa to examine how histories of colonialism, race, caste and belonging persist within contemporary landscapes of art and capital. The essay interrogates how art and intellectual practice operate within systems of extraction – of land, knowledge, and identity.
‘imagine-making' of Stories explores the relationship between ecology, knowledge-making, and geospatial otherness through deconstruction and practice. Drawing on workshops in Goa, Ahmedabad, Assam, Basel, and Brussels, the essay examines how power-knowledge systems are produced, circulated, and sustained within institutional, academic, and linguistic structures. It proposes alternative modes of sharing and exchange (Indigenous-eco-futurism) that dismantle hierarchies and enable collaborative, non-extractive processes of learning and creation.
Two-Thirds of Us | 2/3rds of Us is on display at Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts, Altinho, Panaji, as part of the curatorial exhibition Makers and Materials – Goa: Past and Present, on view from 6 December 2025 to 28 February 2026. When you visit Goa, please do come see the work. I look forward to conversations that may enrich our ways of knowing and the possibilities of more inclusive futures.Two-Thirds of Us | 2/3rds of Us, is made possible by the patronage and the generous support of the Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation Creative Arts Grant, the VM Salgaocar Fellowship and Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia Co-Creation Grant
Warm regards,
Wency Mendes