title
format
location
archive

River Fire
Feild Recording
Akosombo, Ghana
The Only Return Is Sonic Archive


Listen here.

This is what is sound like to float down the Okosombo river with the entire south side of the river on fire.

I was sitting in a small plastic raft with a bottle of wine in the center of the vein and could feel the heat.


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 practicing pod building and repair pracitces as inspired by Mia Mingus, Question Culture and the Abolition Dream lab.

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