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ALTO Art Residency, in Alto Paraíso de Goiás, as well as visits to São Paulo, Salvador, and Rio de Janeiro | Brazil
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Lithic Alliance is a more-than-human collective predominantly working with the lithological realm and the energies and vibrations that emerge in this mineralised entanglement. In 2025, they spent three months on an artistic residency in various parts of Brazil, experiencing the contrast between the urban jungle of São Paulo and the vastness of the Chapada dos Veadeiros savannah in Alto Paraíso de Goiás, home to ALTO Art Residency, a platform for self-directed artists who wish to work in dialogue with nature and sustainability projects.
Healing Extraction ©Lithic Alliance
Your residency took place in more than one region in Brazil. Did you encounter any challenges and surprises during this period?
To be able to communicate means a lot to me and is essential to engage and learn. Since I arrived without speaking Portuguese, it was sometimes challenging to accept that this language barrier is an obstacle to being fully involved and understanding. Still, this was significant motivation to learn the language as quickly as possible. For the moments where the exact understanding was important, like longer interviews, I organised local translators. To face the extensive deforestation and the direct impact this has on all life, witnessing the force of wildfires, it was all emotionally challenging knowing how much is lost with this. The residency was full of surprises and discoveries which were fortunately all of a more positive nature.
During your project, you proposed to distance yourself from western ontologies and open space for new understandings and connections. How did you set out to open yourself up to this other context, different from yours?
It is within my practice but also very much the understanding of existing always within-more-than-human relations which set the interest and openness for this residency. Being able to spend time and learn from a new place where the constellation moves to different kinds of rhythms is an offer to become porous and infused with other ways of doing and being. The process of learning new things is also a process of unlearning methods that have been shaped by dominant Western thought. To understand the roots of belief systems, how they merged through colonial forces and how they are present now is truly insightful. The knowledge of these multifold connections of earthly existence and their appreciation is so precious, especially in the force of profit driven destruction.
Healing Extraction ©Lithic Alliance
How was your interaction with the local context and environment and how important was this experience for your research and practice?
During most of the residency, I stayed in a natural reserve on the border of the Chapada dos Veadeiros national park. These grounds hold the largest quartz deposits in the Americas, and mining scarred the land and shaped the livelihood there. Now with the protection of the park, the area attracts visitors due to its crystal energy and is charged with spiritual tourism. The impacts of these mineral on this place led to the research project. The interest in the healing properties of crystals and how they affect the land made me one of many that arrived there for this purpose, which made it a welcoming experience. Finding the stories that lie beneath the polished surface required digging a little deeper, connecting with locals and building trust. Getting to know the context needs time and patience, and awareness of what it means to be visiting this land. Learning from that place, from its temporality and earthly bonds, certainly influenced my methodology and the direction Lithic Alliance’s work will develop.