title
format
role
client
publication
contributors
Archipelago
Sonic Collage
co-director
Intelligent Mischief
Fall 2022
DJ collective Body Werk


Listen here.

Presented by Intelligent Mischief and BLACK DISCOURSE, and produced by Ten Out ot Ten LLC, this three-day immersive experience at TONE Gallery began with an opening night dance party and global sound clash featuring Memphis DJ collective Body Werk live mixing with four international DJs sets [Sippin’ T - Jamaica, Peroli - Brazil, Aimée - Ghana, JANE - Australia].

The opening party and international DJs curated by BLACK DISCOURSE streamed online, incorporating an online channel streaming audio & visual media, transmitting sonic and visual archives from the Memphis experience and the global African Diaspora.

A manifesto was written by a cohort of futurist and recorded and edited by the BLACK DISCOURSE team. We pulled quotes and sent the stems to foud Djs around the round to sonically open the portal of shared sonic connectedness.

The experience traces the spiral of past, present, and future through the music of the diaspora- transmitting waves of connection and ancestral codes for building radically different future/s. Focusing on the emerging future sounds of the diaspora and its influences, ARCHIPELAGO: AN IMMERSIVE SONIC EXPERIENCE, activates the ethos of Afro-diasporic community building through our shared cultural heritage of music, oral tradition transmission, and dance - and is grounded in shared visions of Global Black Futures based on unity, connection, interdependence, belonging and abundance. 



Credits:
co-production/direction by Koumbah Semega-Janneh
Editing by V Robitalle
Zion Estrada (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist researcher living on Gabrielleno/Tongva/Chumash Land. Her work flows between archival assemblage filmmaking, sonic collage production and experiential design centering human and more-than-human (re)connection.

Zion’s  experimental collage language in film and sonic works often use layering of field recordings, found sounds and carefully curated sound clips that score a line of discourse that complicate temporality, history and meaning making. Her practice is informed by the palimpsest and Pauline Olivero’s Deep Listening. 

She is most interested in the non-verbal and more-than-human qualities of storytelling from the African diaspora (specifically the Caribbean) and how sounds hold the spirits of the past and the alchemic power to magnetize communities, movement, moods, and healing. She draws from the traditions of Black Trans abolitionists care making, sex worker solidarity,  doula presence practices and movement architects love of release.

Zion is currently is practicing in emergent transformative justice work with Abolition Dream lab practicing in radical learning communities how to prepare, account, release and re-story the harms we have caused, the roots the harms have in culture and systemic violence  while centering care, healing and rest.

Zion is the Creative Director of Black Discourse, co-founder of Wild Grass Design + Research Lab and owner of BZE Consultant LLC.  She holds a M.A. Ed focused in participatory research and linquistics.

PREVIOUSLY
Director of Programs at BLD PWR; holds 10yrs as educator and curriculum developer.

CURRENTLY
Board member at Citizens of Culture
Exhibitor at the Ghetto Biennale in Jacmel, Haiti 2024
Participant in MIT Worlding Project Community 2023