Open Call | Entangled Ecosystems Grant II

What does it mean to share a landscape—with a bird, a banyan tree, a macaque, or a stray dog? Across cities, forests, and farmlands, humans and nonhuman beings are constantly learning to live alongside one another. They adapt their behaviours mutually, establish routines either to coincide with or avoid each other, respond to one another's actions, and reshape the places they co-inhabit. What can these everyday acts of adjustment reveal about coexistence, and about the many ways living beings make sense of the world around them?

Science Gallery Bengaluru and Shared Ecologies—a programme supported by Shyama Foundation—invite artists or collectives of Indian nationality to apply for the second iteration of the Entangled Ecosystems Grant. This is an opportunity to create a new exhibit that explores coexistence through the intersection of art, science, and field research.

The selected artist or collective will collaborate closely with cognitive ethologist and coexistence studies scholar,  Dr Anindya “Rana” Sinha, whose current research examines the lifeworlds of nonhuman beings, how they and human beings share spaces and resources, often willingly adapt to one another, and shape the hybrid lifeworlds they co-construct and co-inhabit.

Through this collaboration, artists will engage with a rich body of research, gathered over decades of fieldwork. These materials—largely based on long-term, participatory and non-participatory, behavioural observations—encompass ranging, foraging and movement patterns; social networks and individual relationships; multimodal communication systems; nonhuman cognition and consciousness; and multibeing coexistence, involving humans, bonnet macaques, Asian elephants, or marsh crocodiles, and spanning short-term encounters and long-term relationships across diverse ecosystems.

The collaboration will draw on research, developed with field researchers and with local and Indigenous collaborators from across a range of field sites, including urban and peri-urban environments, protected forests, shared forest landscapes, and other ecologically diverse settings, where human and nonhuman beings encounter and adapt to one another in everyday life.

Artists are encouraged to consider not only what these materials reveal, but also how they might be interpreted, translated, or reimagined through their own practice. We welcome proposals that bring these materials into conversation with diverse artistic methods and interdisciplinary approaches.

We seek proposals that are driven by curiosity, research, and experimentation—projects that engage deeply with scientific inquiry while opening up new ways of thinking about nonhumans and our coexistence. Rather than illustrating research findings, we encourage applicants to develop approaches that question, interpret, translate, or build upon these materials and their understandings.

The final work will take the form of an exhibit, though the medium is open to your interpretation. We encourage you to choose the formats that best support your inquiry and bring your research into conversation with diverse audiences.

The commissioned exhibit will be developed between September 2026 and February 2027, and will be unveiled in May 2027.

Timeline

Applications open: 27 June 2026–6 August 2026 [11:30 PM IST]

Results by: September 2026

Exhibit production: September 2026–April 2027

Showcase: May 2027–July 2027 

What makes a strong open call proposal?

We prioritise works that help our audiences critically explore the processes of producing knowledge relevant to the topic of the current Open Call. The proposal should critically engage with themes of ecology, environment, and the climate.

We welcome applications from both emerging and established artists, collectives, and practitioners. While applicants need not have prior experience working with scientists, proposals that demonstrate an interest in or experience of interdisciplinary collaboration will be viewed favourably. We are particularly interested in practitioners who are excited by research processes and open to engaging with forms of knowledge, methods, and perspectives beyond their primary discipline.

We strongly encourage you to take a moment to explore our archive of previous exhibitions to familiarise yourself with the Science Gallery Bengaluru ethos before committing your valuable time and energy to the application.

We invite proposals that may be completely physical, or are physical with a digital or online component.

What types of projects are accepted?

Our approach is transdisciplinary, and we accept projects from highly diverse disciplines that could include artworks, video, performance, poetry, craft, sound, web-based work, socially engaged work, live experimentation, and design. Essentially, we are not format-prescriptive.

Applicants are encouraged to propose the format that best supports their inquiry. The final output will be developed in consultation with Science Gallery Bengaluru, Shared Ecologies, and the collaborating researcher.

What type of data will I work with? 

Research materials and accounts from across the Indian subcontinent, documenting long-term qualitative and quantitative observations of nonhuman behaviour and cognition, and of localised human–nonhuman interactions and relationships within their hybrid lifeworlds. These could range from formal field notes, data sheets, and conclusive research articles to more personal, occasional records of traditional ecological and ethological knowledge and narratives of nonhuman behaviour and minds, expressed verbally or through the arts.

When will I get an answer? 

Science Gallery Bengaluru and Shared Ecologies will notify applicants if their submission has been successful by September 2026. The Gallery will be considering submissions during August 2026, and so, if questions about your project are identified, we might contact you for clarification during this period.

What is the next stage? 

If we think your work is exciting and relevant, we will start a conversation about your proposal, with a view to establishing feasibility in August 2026. 

About SGB 

Science Gallery Bengaluru (SGB) is India's only and Asia's first Science Gallery, a not-for-profit public institution at Sanjaynagar, Bengaluru. SGB was established with the founding support of the Government of Karnataka and academic partners Indian Institute of Science (IISc), and National Centre for Biological Studies (NCBS). Our work for research-based engagement works at the intersection of science, art, and society to engage young adults through Live Exhibitions, Public Engagement Programmes, Mentorship Initiative, and a pioneering Public Lab Complex

About Shared Ecologies 

Shared Ecologies is a programme by the Shyama Foundation, supporting initiatives at the intersection of art and ecology – through critical, creative, aesthetic approaches, and collaborations with various disciplines and knowledge systems. Through grants, programmes, and conversations, we aim to facilitate a regional and international ecology of individuals, practitioners and institutions, who share overlapping concerns, philosophies, and methodologies.

About the Expert: Anindya “Rana” Sinha

Currently Honorary Visiting Professor of Animal Behaviour and Cognition at the National Institute of Advanced Studies and Professor of Coexistence Studies at the University of Trans-Disciplinary Health Sciences and Technology, both in Bangalore, India, Anindya “Rana” Sinha’s early research concerned the molecular biochemistry of yeast, social biology of wasps, population genetics of elephants, and the classical genetics of human disease. His principal interests, over more than three decades, have, however, been in the behavioural ecology, cognitive ethology, population and behavioural genetics, evolutionary biology, ethnobiology, and conservation studies of nonhuman primates and of other species. He is also deeply interested in biological and cognitive philosophies, art and performance studies, and in the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of India, especially concerning human–nonhuman relations. Rana’s current obsession, however, is to understand cognitive and conscious decision-making by individual nonhuman beings and engage with their unique, lived experiences, explore the traditional ethological knowledge and natural philosophies of indigenous and tribal communities, and reflect on the opportunities that ethnographic, rather than purely ethological, explorations offer for our understanding of more-than-human lifeworlds.

Know more about Rana's work:

For any queries regarding the open call, please drop us an email at programmes@bengaluru.sciencegallery.com

SUBMIT HERE
Ruchita Sud