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.
BLACK CINE-BODY SONICS – racializing the soundtrack by Philip Brophy. Published by Courtisane / KASK School of Arts in June 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.
Black Cine-Body Sonics: Racializing the Soundtrack surveys how Black audiovisuality developed and thrives in films and television through importing and materializing the sonics of Black musical representation — from ‘Blaxploitation’ classics (Shaft and Truck Turner) to cine-auteurs (Melvin Van Peebles, Spike Lee and Jordan Peele) to music video performers (Michael Jackson, Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar) to video artists (Arthur Jafa and Isaac Julien) to contemporary multi-genre explorations of race (Sinners, Lovecraft Country, Atlanta and Swarm). The book views Jazz, Soul, Funk, Disco, Hip Hop, Techno and House not as ‘source music’ but as genetic origins in the transformation of movies and shows, resulting in new cinematic and televisual formations — all of which foreground the body, performance and musicality
— Philip Brophy
Publication soon available via Courtisane bookshop