title
format
role
publication
client

Sacrosanct
tryptich
director, archivist, co-producer, editor
fall 2022
Commissioned for Archipelago



Sacrosanct, created by oral tradition studio BLACK DISCOURSE, is a three-channel pop-up film installation sanctifying the brilliance of Black heresy in the act of moving under the continued pressures of colonial imperialist violence.

The three channels named BORDER - BODY - DANCE, layer found footage of Black migrants crossing European borders and cross continental African dance styles juxtaposed with original footage of performing artist, Dru Ultra, twerking with the Pacific Ocean. Set to a hypnotic drum and bass repetition, BLACK DISCOURSE weaves the quotes of Harsha Walia, Ama Ata Aidoo, Rebecca Walker, Stuart Hall, Dr. Anthony Bogus and Arthur Jafa as a sonic collage and accompaniment.

Sacrosanct, presents the sacredness of the Black diasporic commitment to move as fluid and as fierce as the ocean moved us while still experiencing the precarious state of being in and of the African Diaspora.

Sacrosanct was imagined as a sonic and visual installation for the launch of ARCHIPELAGO: A party – An art installation – A sonic portal conceived by Intelligent Mischief. This experiential installation is intended to honor, explain, and activate the ethos of diasporic community building through our shared cultural heritage of music, oral tradition transmission, and dance. The project traces the lines of the past, present and future in which our present day connection and ancestral codes can emerge as key tools for building a post border pan-African century.

Film Credits

Director: Zion Estrada

Co-Director: Koumbah Semega-Janneh

DP: Zion Estrada

Stylist: Sparkle Juarez

Cast: Drew Ultra

Editor: Zion Estrada

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Sonic Collage

Directors: Zion Estrada & Koumbah Semega-Janneh

Sound Design: Maintain
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