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The Reclamation Project 
Sound Work
co-director, co-producer
Black Discourse & Limbo Accra
winter 2021


Listen here.

The Reclamation Project is a site based archival sound work and installation that investigate preservation and design at the intersection of inheritance and stewardship- on the grounds of the 1960s constructed tropical modern Scott House. This installation will show exclusivel at the Scott House for Architecture Is A Party and then live as an audio assemblage NFT where all participants from the party and main interviewees will hold the legacy of this
conversation on the block chain.

The audio archive plays a continual loop of four voices: Sydney Quartey (grandson of Mada Scott), Dominique Petit Frère (Scott House Project Lead), Mr. David (18 yr Gardener) and Maxwell (2 year Security Guard) as they share personal narratives of their relationship with the
architectural masterpiece.

The wood paneling, slatted wings and multi-crossed ventilation of the Scott House take a modernist design approach that appreciates, preserves and adapts to the tropical climate of Accra. Intentionally designed methods of cooling, shade and escapism have offered a refuge
to the multi generational Scott family since ‘61. A replica of the home was built on the grounds years later expanding the capacity of the design to house more people, hold more dinners, and offer more space.

Like the home, the Scott Family has adapted to its environment, holding and preserving the natural changes that come with familyhood. From the hands of Kenneth Scott, to the maintenance of Madam Scott and now to the responsibility of the younger descendant; wha has been inherited expects preservation of the old in a rapidly changing Accra environment.

The Scott house has inadvertently created three archetypes: The Stewards, The Futurists and The Madam. This archival installation weaves together these complicating narratives and relationships to the house, prompting questions about lineage, change and legacy.

Created with Black Discourse Archivist Team
Koumbah Semega-Janneh 

Materials
Audio loop recording
Printed material
Commissioned local wood bench
Scott House Garden cuttings

Many Thanks to
Kenneth Scott
Madam Scott
Dominique Petit- Frère
Syndey Quartey
Mr. David
Maxwell
The Scott Family


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