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Wild Grass Sonic Feild Notes - Posture, Transmission, Land
Sound Installation + Performance
Sound Archivist + Sonic artifact producer + performer
Palm Heights + Limbo Accra 
summer 2024
Chris Emile


Listen to the sonic meditation of the Taino Duho here.
Read the Something Curated review here.
On the occasion of Cayman Carnival in July 2024, Zion Estrada co-founder of Wild Grass Research Practice presented an immersive sonic installation within The Duho Pavilion, exploring the role of sound in preserving lost, undocumented, and future memories. The studio applied its sonic work within the Duho as a fermentation process, layering the frequencies of the Neotropic landscape to capture the tempo created by the natural and built environments, living and more-than-living elements, archival sounds, and elements of the Caymans. The sound installation transformed The Duho Pavilion into a place of worship and reflection, allowing listeners to connect with the spirit of the island.

The installation featured a layered immersive sound mangrove, archiving field recordings from the island's public and private life—its animals, vegetation, coastlines, vistas, public spaces, memories, and dreams. The work reflected the visible and invisible interconnected ecosystems of the Caymans, shaped by both historical and natural forces. It honored Taino deities, endangered endemic plant life, and the unrecorded stories of historical and future passersby. The sonic opening was marked by an intimate ceremonial movement performed by Chris Emile, paying tribute to the ruptures of culture, natural environment, and history within the Cayman landscape.

Conceptually, the sonic work arranged multiple standing speakers tucked between the natural landscape to create a choral effect. Visitors were invited to move between the speakers to listen to specific sounds or to be enveloped by the entire ensemble. The speaker setup paid homage to the sounds as gods in the space. The installation was temporarily housed within The Duho and explored relocation within the Palm Heights property and residency archive.

The Sonic Artifact was produced by Zion Estrada, co-founder of @wild.grass.practice
Performance by Chris Emile, founder of @no_one.arthouse
Landscape installation by Dominique Petit-Frère, Emil Grip, and Malthe Mørck Clausen of @limboaccra.

The Duho Pavilion project was commissioned for Palm Heights, Open Palm Arts residency program.
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