title
format
location
archive

Birds Talk Shit Too
Feild Recording
Johannesburg, South Africa
The Only Return Is Sonic Archive


Listen here.

Deeply listening with allows for self reflection. I clearly was projecting and in a state of self criticism as my entire stay I felt like this specific bird was challenging me to present my self. To say something back.

And I never did.
Zion Estrada (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist researcher. 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 researching traditional forms of care and pod practices  and repair as they relate to mangrove and wild grass systems.

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

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