title
format
role
client
publication
contributors             
On the Art of Building New Language with Thando Hopa
Podcast
Host/Facilitator
Black Discourse
winter 2023
Thando Hopa


Thando Hopa has an intimate conversation with Zion Estrada about protecting optimism in a body that is socially demanded to be at odds with itself.

This episode explores the nuances of otherness in African Albinism, the importance of finding/defining our own center, and the critical call to archive our meaning.

If you want to learn to explore the intersections of linguistics, identity and hope, listen here. 
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