Category: Echoes of Dissent

أحمد [Ahmed] – Writing

أحمد [Ahmed] is the quartet of Pat Thomas (piano), Joel Grip (double bass), Antonin Gerbal (drums) and Seymour Wright (alto saxophone). Since 2014, أحمد [Ahmed] have excavated and re-imagined the music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik, in an ever ongoing search for future music.

حمد [Ahmed] – Writing (EXV01) gathers together the [Ahmed] ‘paper’ texts from the last decade: liner-notes; covers of the releases; and writing by the band members – Antonin and Joel have written two fresh ones for this book, Seymour’s have appeared alongside the records, and some of Pat’s come from a time (long) before [Ahmed]. “Together, the ideas-energy in these things gives a sense of what we have done, do, think together (and apart) in living music, how our different ways come together, and how, together, we learn through be-doing [Ahmed]… These texts are woven together (the etymology of text is from weave) through (and into) a rich fabric of enquiry. A collaborative weaving together of difference(s) to make a whole (thing).” (Seymour Wright)

Contributions by Pat Thomas, Seymour Wright, Antonin Gerbal, Joel Grip, Robert Levin, James G. Spady, John Chantler, Edward George, Fred Moten

Edited by [Ahmed]
Series Editors: Stoffel Debuysere, Jef Lambrechts, Will Holder
Initiated by Stoffel Debuysere
Produced and designed by Will Holder [lps’ original design: Maja Larsson]

Published by KASK & Conservatorium (hogent – Howest) and In vitro

Releases on 9 May 2026 with an accompanying live presentation by the quartet at Caf& Oto, London




Slip-Syncs, Collapse, and Strange unrealities In the films of Sogo/gakuryu ishii

The interrogation of the relationship between cinema and politics is predominantly associated with the visual domain, where the politics of the audio-visual is all too often reduced to the politics of the image. The publication series Echoes of Dissent aims to parry the hegemony of the eye, and subsequent disregard for the ear, by examining the relationship cinema–politics from a sonic perspective.

Echoes of Dissent #3: Slip-Syncs, Collapse, and Strange unrealities In the films of Sogo/gakuryu ishii by Jennifer Lucy Allan. Published by Courtisane in March 2026.

The publication series is initiated and edited by Stoffel Debuysere, in the context of the research project with the same title at KASK & Conservatory / School of Arts Ghent.

Publication available via Courtisane bookshop

To launch the publication Ecstatic Dislocation: Slip-Syncs, Collapse, and Strange Unrealities in the films of Sogo/Gakuryu Ishii,, author Jennifer Lucy Allan will introduce Ishii’s Crazy Family (1984) at the Cinematek on 23 April 2026.

Echoes of Dissent (Vol. 8) // أحمد [Ahmed]

14 February 2026, STUK Leuven, in the context of Artefact. In collaboration with STUK, Sound In Motion & In vitro.

DUE TO UNFORTUNATE CIRCUMSTANCES THIS EVENT WAS CANCELED

Preceding the concert of أحمد [Ahmed] and on the occasion of the publication of a book compiling writings by and about أحمد [Ahmed], STUK is hosting an extensive conversation with the band members. We will discuss improvisation as investigation and making music as a medium of thought; the music and ideas of Ahmed Abdul-Malik and the Arabic and Muslim roots of Jazz and improvised music; the importance of probing in and into ‘jazz’ and the possibilities of new jazz nutation; أحمد [Ahmed] as an accommodating and radical vision of synthesis and open structure(s) and a shared space of (re-)imagination and (re-)interpretation.

19:45: doors
20:00: 1984 (Kobe Van Cauwenberghe, Mariam Rezaei & Sakina Abdou)
21:30: أحمد [ahmed]
22:30: end

+ 16:30 → 18:00: Echoes of Dissent (Vol. 8): Conversation with أحمد [Ahmed] (STEK Workspace)

In the context of the research project Echoes of Dissent (KASK & Conservatory / School of Arts Gent), in collaboration with In vitro.

The أحمد [Ahmed] publication is published by In vitro and KASK School of Arts

Edited by أحمد [ahmed]. Series editors: Stoffel Debuysere, Jef Lambrechts, Will Holder.

Stegi. radio Takeover documentation

Echoes of Dissent: A Lesson in Sonic Radicalism in Cinema
Listening session @ Stegi.Radio Takeover, Athens. 24 January 2025.

“Stegi Radio Takeover presents a listening session on the radical use of sound in cinema. In the session, researcher and curator Stoffel Debuysere will discuss with Yannis-Orestis Papadimitriou on various clips from experimental films that exemplify a different understanding of the aural components in cinema, coming from creators that used the audible to subvert and transcend established limits and rules in the cinematic medium. From underground film collectives to the visionary new languages articulated by cinema’s pioneers, the session will show how sound and music has been used as a tool that allowed filmmakers, whether coming from the periphery or oppressed minorities, to express their outsider perspective against the hierarchies of the medium — often as an explicit political statement.”

Pics by Erkin Gargili