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 & KASK School of Arts 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.
You can talk about Ishii and music and you can talk about Ishii and sound. I want to talk about both. I want to talk about him as a node in a network of musicians and bands, that starts with punk but spider webs out to ensnare post-punk, industrial and ambient music, with a brief free jazz cameo. I also want to talk about the way he uses sound, rhythm and silence.
This is not just about soundtrack. A soundtrack tends towards telling you something about what’s happening. Soundtracks tell you what to feel, whether there is dread, or romance, or sadness in a scene. Not so for Ishii. For Ishii a soundtrack stands alone, is a bed and is a moment, but it doesn’t tell you how to feel. It is, in Ishii’s hands, dislocation, silencing, or distortion of the cause-effect connection; between the punch thrown and the punch landing; between moving image and the sound that constructs the conceits of the cinema. “He attempted to find a visual equivalent to punk music,” wrote critic Tom Mes. “A way to express the same philosophy and spirit with a camera instead of a guitar.”
— Jennifer Lucy Allan
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.