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NicheMTL’s signature column rounding up the city’s latest avant-garde.

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The Structure of Spirit

Angine de Poitrine with René Lussier and Robbie Kuster, and S.R.U.F, Club Soda, 18 April 2026

Silhouette of hands forming a heart shape in front of a spotlight during a live performance.
Angine de Poitrine perform at Club Soda 18 April 2026. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“The meaning and potential achievement of a group composed of two people cannot simply be transferred to a group entity consisting of an undetermined multitude of people.”
— Siegfried Kracauer, “The Group as Bearer of Ideas”

In every age, certain ideas ebb and flow, rising and falling in patterns which we might describe as “spirit.”

Individuals originate ideas that other individuals take up and share. Together, these individuals form groups that realize ideas to a lesser or greater extent in the material and virtual world. Individual ideas alternate in impact based upon group behaviour.

The Germans, of course, have a more specific word for this phenomenon — “zeitgeist” — combining the words for time and temperament, refining the precise meaning as the spirit of the moment.

We tend to believe that any given idea’s popularity is a marker of its value. That is why we are concerned with bestsellers lists for books, and musical top ten charts, and box office figures for films. The greater number of individuals that adopt and echo an idea, the more we revere that idea and find it fascinating and might want to participate in it. This is how ideas gain momentum and become the spirit of an age, the zeitgeist of a culture.

Nonetheless, whether an idea is good or not is independent of its popularity. Some terrible ideas historically garnered immense traction, and other great ideas missed their original moment entirely. Vincent van Gogh was overlooked during his lifetime, only to be subsequently reconsidered a genius. Yet, enough Germans supported Adolph Hitler to make his ideas among the 20th century’s defining zeitgeists.

Popularity, then, is not the metric upon which history should or does evaluate ideas.

The Torlonia Collection: Masterpieces of Roman Sculpture, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Until 19 July 2026

A marble statue of a youthful male figure holding a lyre, standing on a pedestal, with a historical landscape backdrop featuring classical architecture and additional figures.
Statue of Apollo, 2nd c., Collezione Torlonia, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“Politically, we are still stuck in the systems of thought of the Greek and Roman slave states, no matter how much we rant about ‘democracy.’”
—Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism

There are two extremes that form the polarities of an idea’s popularity: everyone is doing it, and only one individual is doing it. Somewhere along this continuum is where most ideas are located.

The notion, however, that individuals are free to take up certain ideas or not is illusory. There comes a moment in the lifespan of any extremely popular idea in which ignoring it is no longer an option. Disregarding a big idea can have consequences that adversely affect individuals and ostracize them. There is a stigma against not going with the crowd. And nobody wants to be the only one to have missed out on a good idea.

Social status is often linked to an individual’s enactment of popular or unpopular ideas. But there is just as often an inverse correlation between status and popularity. Coca-Cola, which everyone consumes, commands a lower rank than niche, artisanal beverage brands. Until the artisanal brand gains popularity, it is associated with a sense of discernment and taste.

The margins of society are always the testing grounds for mass culture. It is popular to hold unpopular opinions. Which unpopular opinions become integral to the zeitgeist, and how, is an alternative definition of democracy.

Paola Pivi: Come check it out Lies lies lies, Centre PHI, Until 13 September 2026

A collage of various images displayed on a grid surface, featuring people, nature scenes, animals, and urban environments.
Gallery view of Paola Pivi: Come check it out Lies lies lies at Centre PHI. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“Success is fatal.”
—David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd

Establishing an idea in absence of an alternative is the realist’s strategy to reinforce an idea’s popularity. Capitalism is the obvious example, the mode of economic organization proper to a monolithic spiritual culture.

However, capitalism exhibits another curious paradox: it functions on the everyone-is-doing-it extreme of the popularity spectrum, but it trades in the only-one-individual-can-do-it cachet that characterizes the egoist zeitgeist at the other end.

Capitalism masks its social construction beneath a veneer of atomized self-actualization. The second-order paradox that acts as capitalism’s failsafe is that the alternative to individual success must necessarily be collective failure.

Bizet’s Carmen, Opéra de Montréal, Salle Wilfrid Pelletier, 2-12 May 2026

A woman in a black shirt embraces a seated man in a suit, both engaged in an emotional moment during a rehearsal. The background features wooden crates and a simple stage setting.
Rihab Chaieb and Dante Mullin Santone perform at a dress rehearsal for Carmen at Place des arts. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“Without delirium and confidence, capital could not function.”
—Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism

Ideas can produce addiction as powerful as any drug. And like drugs, ideas can be synthesized and purified down to their most potent forms.

In fact, simplicity is the hallmark of many of the world’s most addictive ideas. High-concept narratives and three-chord pop songs tend to resonate most deeply in the subconscious, as infectious as nursery rhymes, encouraging repetition and positioning themselves perfectly for mass approval. As the center reinforces itself and self-organizes, the margins are cleaved away like corn husks, exposing the chaotic uniformity of the kernels.

Art Souterrain, Place Ville Marie, Until 10 May 2026

A man stands in a room filled with yellow decor, gesturing towards a table while another man in a virtual reality headset interacts with the environment.
Gilles Tarabiscuité demonstrates Réalité dés/augmentée 2.0 (2025) at Art Souterrain. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“I could leave you, say goodbye
Or I could love you, if I tried
And I could
And left to my own devices, I probably would.”
—Pet Shop Boys, “Left to My Own Devices”

Virality in our era is synonymous with zeitgeist. Memes today, more than any other medium, capture the spirit of the moment.

In January 2026, a clip from Werner Herzog’s 2007 documentary Encounters at the End of the World went improbably viral. The scene depicts what Herzog describes as a “deranged penguin” running away from the colony and apparently towards certain death. The clip became a meme and was shared on social media by the Trump administration in the context of the U.S. president’s threats to annex Greenland.

The impetus to defy acceptable behaviour exemplified by this meme is portrayed as simultaneously admirable and suicidal. And yet, the nature of mimesis is a kind of mob mentality, the fuel of smouldering populist movements that are perennially in danger of igniting into fascism.

What would happen if everyone went in their own direction, like so many deranged penguins, heading toward an uncertain future, but certain that the popularly prescribed future is untenable? Some adherence to the crowd ensures our collective survival. Too much can doom us en masse. But not enough could doom us individually.

Perhaps a clue emerges in the maturity of ideas. In addition to their popularity, we are inclined to give more symbolic weight to progressive ideas over traditional ones. Novelty and contemporaneity are prized as innocent and original and uncorrupted by time.

A “progressive” polity, writes Richard Sennet in The Culture of the New Capitalism, “is one in which all citizens believe they are bound together in a common project.” Sennet elaborates: “The new institutional order eschews responsibility, labelling its own indifference as freedom for individuals or groups on the periphery.”

The truth is, there are no peripheral groups or individuals. There are only black polka dots or white stripes.◼︎

Thank you for inviting NicheMTL to your thing. Please get in touch at the about page.

NicheMTL is Montreal’s independent not-for-profit source for this city’s most niche arts and culture. If you love what you’re reading, please consider buying a yearbook and subscribing.

Cover image: Angine de Poitrine perform at Club Soda 18 April 2026. Photographed for NicheMTL.

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Desire

Lèche-vitrine, Art Dressé, Espace Transmission, 8-18 April 2026

Catherine Machado performs The Maintenance Worker at Espace Transmission, 8 April 2026. Photographed for NicheMTL

The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him, but the desire of the righteous shall be granted.
—Proverbs 10:24

The British slang “window-licker” is a derogatory term for a person with diminished mental capacities. It is akin in meaning to the “R” word and considerably more offensive. It indicates the propensity of mentally handicapped people to do foolish things, like, for instance, lick windows.

Since the release of the 1999 Aphex Twin single “Windowlicker,” however, the expression has taken on another connotation: unconsummated desire. The song’s video, which has not aged well, especially presents overt themes of longing which suggest a covert toxicity that accompanies objects of desire. There is an implication as well that desire itself is mindless, that wanting is a form of weakness, ripe for control.

“Window licking” in the 21st century has come to signify still another type of desire — the desire for the representation of an object. “Windows,” after the Microsoft operating system, are what we commonly refer to in the act of looking-through onscreen. Window shopping and window dressing are no longer practices reserved for meatspace. And what appears within the digital window can be infinitely adjusted, altered, augmented, or may in reality not even exist.

The digital world, among other dubious consequences, has exponentially multiplied and convoluted “window licking,” not only in meaning. Nonetheless, the variation of sense in the circuits and wires and distributed networks of interconnected machines always has real-world consequences.

Artificial Intelligence: The Ultimate Disrupter, McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, Mount Royal Center, 10 April 2026

Panel discussion titled 'Artificial Intelligence: The Ultimate Disrupter' at Centre Mont-Royal, featuring four speakers seated on stage with a large screen displaying event details.
From left: Cory Doctorow, Astra Taylor, Yoshua Bengio, and Nahlah Ayed. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“I don’t need anything. I want.”
—Mr. C., Twin Peaks: The Return

At a recent conference on A.I., Director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada Daniel Béland identified two categories of power: power over and power to.

Power over, Béland loosely defined in the negative as the power of one person or group or nation to subjugate and control another. Power to, he described in the positive as the power to assist or overcome or empower another subject.

Judging by the standing-room only crowd, the potentials and perils of A.I. are of immediate interest and acute concern to a broad swath of luminaries across the disciplinary spectrum. I was seated between a retired McGill Engineering professor and the head of a public relations team from a Montreal-based startup, and each of these individuals listened with discernable alarm, as if there were some secret code to be cracked in the participants’ responses.

Artificial Intelligence, like any technology, has the potential to demonstrate, and the capacity to exert, both types of power. In the hands of some users, A.I. could be a force for capital ‘C’ Control in the Burroughsian or Deleuzian sense — protocological, algorithmic, inhuman domination that subjugates us through a series of automated if-then propositions. In other hands, A.I. possesses the power to ease the burden of impossibly tedious or time-consuming labour, to liberate us from work that has always posed an obstacle to progress and growth.

The problem is that human beings designed and implemented A.I. in our own image, so to speak, and as such it aims to satiate our wants more than our needs. A.I. has its own essential desire. It desires to satisfy our desires — if you like this, then you’ll love that — and inoculate us in doing so against the virus of dissatisfaction.

The Intense Leningrad Symphony by Shostakovich, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Maison Symphonique, 15 April 2026

A full orchestra performing on stage, featuring musicians playing violins, cellos, and other instruments, with sheet music on stands and a conductor directing the performance.
Rafael Payare conducts the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal at Maison Symphonique, 15 April 2026. Antoine Saito for the OSM.

Over the counter, with a shotgun,
Pretty soon, everybody’s got one.
—U2, “Desire”

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government made headlines this week by being the first in Canadian history to secure a majority outside of a general election. Through a series of floor-crossings and byelections, the Liberals now occupy 174 out of a possible 343 seats and can operate until October 2029 without facing the threat of a no confidence vote.

Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre described the Liberal mandate as undemocratic, accusing the party of coordinating “dirty backroom deals.” According to Poilievre, Carney orchestrated his majority by force, using vaguely anti-revolutionary coded rhetoric: “Mark Carney is saying to Canadians: ‘Your vote does not count,’” Poilievre declared on 9 April in Richmond, B.C.

The Liberals’ byelection sweep recalls the famous anecdote about the conversation between Lenin and Trotsky on the eve of the October Revolution in November 1917. According to legend, Lenin, in a fit of uncertainty, asked Trotsky, “What will happen to us if we fail?” To which Trotsky was said to reply, “What will happen to us if we succeed?”

“An act proper is not just a strategic intervention into a situation, bound by its conditions,” writes Slavoj Žižek in Living in the End Times, “it retroactively creates its conditions.” Carney is in the process of performing a similar soft socialist revolution in Canada and, given the populist surges underway in Alberta and Quebec, I for one reluctantly have to admit that I don’t hate it.

Quatuor Molinari : Musique à voir, Fondation Molinari, 29 March 2026

A string quartet performs in front of an audience in an art gallery, with red abstract paintings in the background.
Quatuor Molinari performs at Fondation Molinari, 29 March 2026. Tomas Dessureault for NicheMTL.

“The Buddhist will tell you: ‘All life is pain.’ Pain comes from always wanting things.”
—‘Sally’ Moltisanti, The Many Saints of Newark

We are under the impression, mistaken in my opinion, that if we were only to consume the correct media, desire the proper commodities, collect the right art, listen to the authority-approved music, watch the acceptable films, belong to the prestigious clubs, trust the most reliable experts, keep the most important company, and engage in the most sophisticated sexual escapades, our wanting would be absolved and our suffering effaced. Because if we only want the righteous things, we shall receive them.

Still, it’s not the things that we desire that make us righteous or not; it’s the wanting.

Plural : Foire d’art contemporain à Montréal, Grand Quai du Port de Montréal, 10-12 April 2026

A woman stands beside a large mural depicting a blue depanneur storefront covered in graffiti, with rain falling down.
Gallery view, Jasmin Bilodeau, Dépanneur 2025, photograph printed on polypropylene. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“Happy are those who have what they need and no more.”
—Saul Ha-Levi Morteira

The old “wheelbarrow” joke, which I have told many times, hits different in the age of ICE and bears repeating.

A man crosses the border every day carrying a wheelbarrow full of sand. And every day, the crossing guard at his checkpoint dutifully sifts through every grain of that sand and finds nothing.

Day after day, month after month, year after year, the same man transports his wheelbarrow full of sand over the border, in the face of the same increasingly confounded crossing guard, sifting to no avail, evermore certain that he is being deceived by some ingenious smuggling scheme.

Finally, the crossing guard reaches his last day on the job and implores the man with the wheelbarrow: “Please, I’m retiring tomorrow. You must tell me what it is that you have been smuggling through my checkpoint!”

To which the man replies, “I thought it was obvious. I’ve been smuggling wheelbarrows.”◼︎

Thank you for inviting NicheMTL to your thing. Please get in touch at the about page.

NicheMTL is Montreal’s independent not-for-profit source for this city’s most niche arts and culture. If you love what you’re reading, please consider buying a yearbook and subscribing.

Cover image: Fatine-Violette Sabiri, Portrait d’une chambre orientale, 2022, Édition 2/3 + 1AP, inkjet printing on archival paper, 24 x 36,” Galerie Eli Kerr, acquired by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Photographed for NicheMTL.

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Graceland

Feu St-Antoine with Solitary Dancer and Tony Price, Le Système, 26 March 2026

A DJ setup featuring various electronic music equipment in a dimly lit venue with red lighting and a crowd dancing in the background.
Tony Price performs at Le Système. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“For reasons I cannot explain
There’s some part of me wants to see
Graceland.”
—Paul Simon, “Graceland”

We don’t much imagine today that people come back to life after death. But in Biblical times it happened with alarming regularity. Everyone knows the story about Jesus. Then, Lazarus is probably a close second in terms of resurrection notoriety.

Lazarus was laying lifeless for four days when Jesus commanded him to rise from the tomb. His family even warned Jesus that he was starting to stink. Coming back from the dead was a miracle. It was God’s will. But God doesn’t seem to will it lately.

If it were God’s will, who should be resurrected today? All politicians must be disqualified out of hand. All religious leaders have had their day. It should be people who had a lot of life yet left to live, people who died well before their time.

I would bring back Ian Curtis and Amy Winehouse, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Sylvia Plath, Nina Simone and Prince, Sharon Tate and John Lennon. Give them all a hot shower and then throw a dinner party. Ask them what the other side was really like.

Wayfinders: au gré des sens, Montréal, arts interculturels, 2 April – 16 May 2026

Colorful wall projection of a person's neck and mouth in various hues, showcasing different angles and expressions.
Marelke Yee-Yin Lee & Marc Sabat, HANDS to MOUTHS (2018), Montréal, arts interculturels. Photographed for NicheMTL.

And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?
And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.
—Revelation 6:10-11

On 11 April 2020, shortly after the Coronavirus crisis had shut down nearly every aspect of public life around the world, the Montreal Gazette reported that 31 people had died in Dorval at a long-term care home known as Résidence Herron. Staff fled the facility in droves at the onset of the pandemic and Quebec’s premier, François Legault, vowed that a criminal investigation should take place and sent in the military to clear the dead.

Legault prohibited all Easter-related celebrations the following day and proclaimed that Quebec would experience a “rebirth.” At that time, Legault, Quebec’s Minister of Health Danielle McCann, and public health director Dr. Horacio Arruda took to television for a daily news conference informing the public of the death toll and ever-evolving restrictions that Le Droit called “La messe Legault.”

On Easter Monday 2023, Legault again found himself amidst scandal when he retweeted a column penned by Journal de Montréal opinion writer Mathieu Bock-Cote suggesting that Catholicism to a large extent defines Quebec’s distinct “heritage.” Those critical of Legault maintained that the tweet was hypocritical in the context of Bill 21, the CAQ’s signature secularism legislation.  

On 2 April 2026, Bill 9, titled “An Act respecting the reinforcement of laicity in Quebec,” passed with the Parti Québécois’s support at the National Assembly. That same day, Legault delivered his final official address as Premier, wishing optimism for the next generation, saying: “We must hope that Quebec remains Quebec.”

Battements, Emmanuel Lacopo with Alexandre Amat and Geneviève Ackerman, Chapelle Saint-Louis – Le Saint-Jean-Baptiste, 23 March 2026

A performer singing passionately in front of an ornate altar with a guitarist seated nearby, surrounded by dim lighting and decorative architecture.
Geneviève Ackerman performs at Chapelle Saint-Louis. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“The myth of international solidarity is dead. God is a ghost!”
Carsten Regild & Rolf Börjlind, Occupy the Brain!

Arrythmia characterizes our current age.

In politics, this manifests in incompatible international governments vying for superiority, oscillating wildly between extremes of diplomacy and violence. In culture, arrythmia manifests in off-kilter rhythms and microtonal harmonies. From Jonny Greenwood’s Bodysong to Black MIDI to Angine de Poitrine, we can trace the recent lineage of asynchronous life in new patterns of chaos.

Mediaeval, Simon S. Belleau, Galerie Eli Kerr, 26 March – 16 May 2026

A person with wavy hair is viewing a small mirror mounted on a wooden wall, wearing a red jacket.
Gallery view of Mediaeval by Simon S. Belleau at Galerie Eli Kerr. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“The project is to theorize a kind of geoaffect or material vitality, a theory born of a methodological commitment to avoid anthropocentrism and biocentrism.”
—Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: a political ecology of things

One way to think about reincarnation that does not necessitate irrational leaps of faith or imaginings of being born again as a cat is through vital materialism. This hybrid philosophy also allows for the agentic potential of non-human actants exerting force upon the ecosystem. Indeed, the first law of thermodynamics could be described as the second coming for energy.

When living matter dies, its energy does not. It only changes into different forms of matter and energy — decomposing, becoming food, becoming fertilizer. The Christian concept of transubstantiation — bread becoming flesh; wine becoming blood — is rooted in a fundamental understanding that matter is always bristling with life and potential for new lines of flight.

St. John Passion, BWV 245, J.S. Bach, Chœur A&P with Ensemble Caprice, The Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul, 3 April 2026

A choir in red robes performs in an ornate church with a high vaulted ceiling and stained glass windows, while the audience faces the stage, some clapping.
Patrons applaud the choir of The Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul. Photographed for NicheMTL.

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions,
Won’t be nothing, nothing you can measure anymore.
—Leonard Cohen, “The Future”

In September 1752, Britain transitioned from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar and lost 11 days in the process. The Julian calendar miscalculated the solar year by 11 minutes and therefore slid off by one full day every 128 years. This affected Easter celebrations which eventually moved further away from the beginning of astronomical spring.

Western churches commemorate Easter on the first Sunday after the first full moon nearest the March equinox. The Eastern Orthodox Church, however, continues to follow the Julian calendar. So, Catholic and Orthodox Easter celebrations often fall on different dates, with the Orthodox iteration occurring this year on 12 April.

Passover generally falls on the first full moon after the vernal equinox. But due to the Metonic cycle, about 6939 days, it will arrive on the second full moon three times every 19 years.

If time wobbles rather than ticking by predictably as current re-evaluations of quantum spacetime suggest, there may be no faithful chronological measurement. The technics of civilization are breaking down. We might have more time than we thought.◼︎

Thank you for inviting NicheMTL to your thing. Please get in touch at the about page.

NicheMTL is Montreal’s independent not-for-profit source for this city’s most niche arts and culture. If you love what you’re reading, please consider buying a yearbook and subscribing.

Cover image: The disco ball at Le Système. Photographed for NicheMTL.

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The Problem of Pain

Viktor, dir. Olivier Sarbil, Cinémathèque Québécoise, 17 March 2026

The Wall Street Journal on 7 March reported that Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence had threatened social media users with harsh penalties under the country’s anti-espionage laws for making and sharing images or video documenting U.S. and Israeli strikes and their aftermath in the Republic. The Ministry characterized such prospective posters as a “fifth column,” or the enemy within. War photography, once universally understood as a reliable method of unshrouding the true faces and victims of conflict, has become suspect in its ubiquity, its susceptibility to disinformation, and its vulnerability to A.I. and deep-fake manipulation.

Images have the power to produce consensus and encourage something resembling collective memory. Especially single images that proliferate widely shape our impressions and recollection of events, particularly when we did not witness them ourselves. Think of the depiction of Phan Thi Kim Phuc fleeing a napalm attack in South Vietnam, or more recently, Thomas E. Franklin’s photograph “Firemen Raising the Flag at Ground Zero.” Like a tuning fork, seeing the second plane strike the World Trade Center’s South Tower on live television resonated with everyone in unison. These images immediately implant a sense of recognition in viewers.

“There is no such thing as collective memory,” writes Susan Sontag in her 2003 book, Regarding the Pain of Others. “But there is collective instruction.”

Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore with Myriam Gendron, Le Gesù, 18 March 2026

There are generally two types of pain: physical and emotional. It is impossible to feel another person’s pain, and so we are condemned to describe our pains using the best communication tools in our toolkits. We might tell the dentist that our toothache is a throbbing or a stabbing pain. Or we could draw lightning bolts shooting into aching shoulders on a diagram of the human body in advance of a massage.

Images might be the proper medium for conveying physical pain. Everyone visually recognizes an injury, a wound, or a scar, and empathizes using their own familiarities to conjure the memories of past distress. Sound, though, and music, specifically, is arguably the vehicle best suited to communicate emotional pain — the pain of mourning, of love lost, of failure, of separation from self and from God.

A singing voice invokes the universal truth of emotional pain and exorcises it.

Jean Cocteau, dir. Lisa Immordino Vreeland, Cinéma du Musée, 15 March 2026

“Hunger and force can never be conditions of productive activity. On the contrary, freedom, economic security, and an organization of society in which work can be the meaningful expression of man’s faculties are the factors conducive to the expression of man’s natural tendency to make productive use of his powers.”
—Erich Fromm, Man for Himself

Pain is a productive energy.

Physical pain prompts the body to identify its source and repair it. Emotional pain spurs action, too, to ameliorate the conditions which initiated the anguish. Analgesics can effectively blunt physical pain, but numbness is antithetical to the productivity that emotional pain potentially stimulates. Rather, it is necessary to feel emotional pain in its entirety — not to induce it, but neither to detach oneself from it — in order to make it useful.

The greatest artists didn’t thrive under conditions in which their basic needs went unmet. The notion of the “starving artist” is unproductive and anti-romantic. Art is unavoidably work and workers work best when they are fed and clothed, sheltered and rested. But a claim can be made for microdosing emotional pain in pursuit of creative productivity. Enduring emotional pain produces faith, and humanity cannot survive without faith.

Not an irrational faith in ideology, or technology, or capital, but a radical faith in the prevalence of goodness, beauty, and truth.

Champs de fracture, Bradley Ertaskiran, 19 March 2026

An industrial wall with a textured surface features four rectangular panels that resemble light-colored stone, arranged horizontally. Above them is a large blank area framed by the wall.
Gallery view, Dawit L. Petros, Bradley Ertaskiran. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“Is the absence of a meaningful Self traumatic only when we expect its presence?”
—Slavoj Žižek, Living in the End Times

“…there is a destructive force that is in love or attaches itself to love—one that moves human creatures toward destruction and self-destruction, including the destruction of that which they most love.”
—Judith Butler, The Force of Non-Violence

Among life’s inexplicable paradoxes is that love is a source of pain. That emotion which should provide the utmost pleasure, that virtue which Jesus commanded of his disciples, contains within it the seed for immense suffering.

This is why love is a commandment and not just a suggestion — because none of us would do it willingly. And this is why true love is selfless — because the persistence of love’s subjective experience discourages it.

The Designer is Dead, dir. Gonzalo Hergueta, Cinémathèque Québécoise, 19 March 2026

“Human will becomes truly creative and truly our own when it is wholly God’s, and this is one of the many senses in which he that loses his soul shall find it.”
—C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

One of the defining characteristics that sets us apart from beasts is the human search for meaning. We comfort ourselves with sayings like “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,” and “everything happens for a reason.” And yet, reason in terms of rational thought cannot possibly justify or defend violence. Reasons are not inherently morally sound. The reasons for international wars, or for interpersonal conflict, are most frequently amoral and unethical — ego, greed, avarice, hatred, ignorance, shame.

Some things are fundamentally meaningless, and it is a fool’s errand to search for meaning in them. Moral deformity cannot be explained spiritually or scientifically. There is no lesson in birth, life, and death. These things exist independent of our inclinations to interpret them. Man’s search for meaning is entirely contextual and relative and contingent.

We have all experienced a child’s game of repeatedly asking “why?” Eventually, every adult on the receiving end of this perpetual question arrives at the ultimate answer: “just because.”

The painful truth is that there is no meaning; there is only understanding. Most of life passes us by misunderstood. Understanding this is the first step towards a state of grace.◼︎

Thank you for inviting NicheMTL to your thing. Please get in touch at the about page.

NicheMTL is Montreal’s independent not-for-profit source for this city’s most niche arts and culture. If you love what you’re reading, please consider buying a yearbook and subscribing.

Cover image: Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore perform at Le Gesù 18 March 2026. Photographed for NicheMTL.

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The Goddamn Weight of Dreams

Walter Scott “Heavily Greebled” and Megane Voghell “Jets de sauvegarde,” Fonderie Darling, 5 March – 10 May 2026

A large, abstract sculpture featuring organic shapes and vibrant colors, displayed in a contemporary gallery setting with textured floors and an industrial backdrop.
Gallery view of Megane Voghell’s “Jets de sauvegarde,” Fonderie Darling. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud! That is precisely what it is: there is nothing either amusing or witty about it, it is simply cruel and stupid.”
—Leo Tolstoy, A Confession and Other Religious Writings

Among the most reliable strategies for coping with the seemingly relentless and interminable meaninglessness of contemporary life — the never-ending cycles of plague, war, famine, and death and the reiteration of these through ubiquitous media — is excess.

Drunkenness is a method of extending dreams into consciousness, or rather, of blurring the boundaries between dreams and waking life, the subconscious and the conscious.

One reason could be that dreams collapse time. In a 1975 study published in the journal Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, researchers found that dreamers of especially bizarre or emotionally charged dreams experienced time at up to 1/100 of the duration of absolute time, meaning that a dreamer could feasibly live 100 dreamtime minutes in the span of one waking minute.

“Living the dream” is commonly held as a desirable goal. We chase after dreams and try to turn them into realities. Cinema emulates the dream state by projecting images and restructuring time and meaning onto a screen.

Cinema, therefore, is the most intoxicating form of media in which viewers become dreamers experiencing collective reciprocal hypnotism.

Quantificateur sonique vol. 4: Charmaine Lee + Maxime Corbeil-Perron, Fondation Guido Molinari, 28 February 2026

Installation views of Maxime Corbeil-Perron’s Nuit Blanche performance at Fondation Guido Molinari. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“A human being who should dream his life instead of living it would no doubt thus keep before his eyes at each moment the infinite multitude of the details of his past history.”
—Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory

In Carl Jung’s The Undiscovered Self, he recounts a child’s dream that she writes down in the form of a fairy tale in 12 stages and gives to her father, Jung’s colleague, as a Christmas present. Stage Six reads: “[Once upon a time, there was] … a bad boy with a clod of earth. He throws bits of it at the passers-by, and they all become bad too.”

This dream is atypical of an innocent little child’s reveries, vaulting into the archetypal realm. Jung recalls that the young dreamer died prematurely one year later and interpreted that her dreams were an adumbration or anticipatory shadow of death cast over her waking life. But Stage Six of the doomed girl’s dream foreshadows more than her own death. It clearly signifies the viral contagion of pure evil that warmongering represents.

There are two assumptions that this archetypal dream suggests but does not make explicit. First is that the boy is bad independent of his implicitly bad actions, i.e. throwing bits of earth. And second is that passers-by who are hit with bits of earth also begin throwing bits of earth.

Les Vespérales with Annie Bloch, Église du Sacré-Cœur-de-Jésus, 7 March 2025

A beautifully lit space featuring a white musical instrument with tall pipes, illuminated in red light, accompanied by two small stools and a chair, set against a backdrop of ornate sculptures and dark surroundings.
The LIMINARE at Église du Sacré-Cœur-de-Jésus. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“The cigarette is the symbol of a machine age in which the ultimate cogs and wheels and levers are human nerves.”
—“Going Up in Smoke” The New York Times, 24 September 1925

Cigarettes are suspiciously emblematic for our accelerationist, disposable, and self-destructive society. We burn through objects and ideas nowadays at such a heated pace that we rarely even remember what happened yesterday.

We chain-smoke people as well, using and discarding them like so many butts flicked into the gutter. “The rapider pace of civilization,” the 101-year-old Times editorial declares, “accounts for the extraordinary growth of the cigarette habit.”

Addiction is a condition that few people like to address. Addicts attempt to avoid it, preferring to believe that their habits are personal choices. And non-users or former addicts tend to sidestep the topic for fear of sounding sanctimonious or self-righteous.

But perhaps the best argument against smoking for the Bohemian radical is that to smoke cigarettes is to be subordinate to hyper-capitalism in its most toxic form. Cigarettes are counterrevolutionary.

In the marketplace of addiction, smokers are the commodities, not cigarettes. Human beings are infinitely renewable and insignificant to mercenary machinic exploitation. One is too many and a thousand is never enough.

Animals of Distinction, Jump Cut, Cinema Moderne, 10 March 2026

“What a thrill —
My thumb instead of an onion.”
—Sylvia Plath, “Cut”

In her article entitled “Traumas of Code,” published in the autumn 2006 issue of Critical Inquiry, the American scholar N. Katherine Hayles suggests: “as the unconscious is to the conscious, so computer code is to language.” Thus, just as the smooth interface of consciousness is only revealed when it is ruptured by unconscious traumas, computer glitches expose the seams in the fabric of our increasingly digital reality.

The film scholar Laura U. Marks in her 1997 essay “Loving a Disappearing Image” writes about the melancholia of glitchy moving images — diminished, faded, ageing, and decaying visual media that “flaunt their tenuous connection to the realty they index” — arguing that they “all appeal to a look of love and loss.”

What is startling about glitch aesthetics is their durability. At a time when fads and fashions in film and art more broadly turn over with aggregate haste, digital decomposition is perennially hip, a loss that paradoxically lingers. Perhaps this is because accelerated innovation spells accelerated obsolescence.

There is scarcely a city block nowadays upon which one does not encounter a flickering fluorescent light bulb or burnt-out LCD display or some form of seizure-inducing electronic glitch. In the malfunctioning cityscape, subconscious mourning is constant when technological breakdown is ever-present.

A bug in the system means that there must be a line of code missing somewhere.

Mon amour, c’est pour le restant de mes jours, dir. André-Line Beauparlant, Monument-National, 12 March 2026

Two people posing together on a red carpet with a colorful backdrop featuring the words 'LE FiFA 44'. The man is wearing a denim shirt and the woman is dressed in a red suit, smiling at the camera.
Robert Morin and André-Line Beauparlant at the premiere of Mon amour, c’est pour le restant de mes jours, Monument National, 12 March 2026. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“Selten habt Ihr mich verstanden,
Selten auch verstand ich Euch,
Nur wenn wir im Koth uns fanden,
So verstanden wir uns gleich.”
—Heinrich Heine, Buch der Lieder

In Ernest Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea, a seasoned fisherman risks life and limb to reel in the biggest fish in the ocean. But the fish is so mammoth that the fisherman has to tie it to the side of his boat to bring it ashore, and once he arrives, the fish is just a skeleton, sharks having picked it to the bone.

This tale contains competing morals and compelling insights. One is that avaricious forces will inevitably whittle down to nothing everything that is truly great. Another is that one should never let one’s proverbial pies cool on the windowsill because they will invariably attract unwelcome trespassers. Another is that there is only one fisherman and one fish, but practically infinite axiomatic sharks.

Still another is that fish are ancillary to fishing.◼︎

Thank you for inviting NicheMTL to your thing. Please get in touch at the about page.

NicheMTL is Montreal’s independent not-for-profit source for this city’s most niche arts and culture. If you love what you’re reading, please consider buying a yearbook and subscribing.

Cover image: Gallery views of Walter Scott, “Heavily Greebled,” Fonderie Darling.

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The Audience is Listening

Hush, Phasing (Simone Records), 4 March 2026

I was terrified the first time I heard the THX ident as a kid in a movie theatre. The discordant phasing effect of assorted synthesized tones and timbres coming through Surround speakers at increasingly high sound pressure levels was unsettling until I realized it was just a trailer and not an air raid siren.

Known as the “Deep Note,” there weren’t any other sounds like it at the time, so shockingly outlandish and alien. Those were the days of the MGM lion, Universal’s jingle, and 20th Century Fox’s iconic fanfare that dated back to the beginning of talking pictures.

The term “schizophonia,” which R. Murray Schafer coined, describes the split between audio and its source — that is, not immediately being able to discern the origin or authenticity of a sound. 1980s movie audiences easily recognized brass and timpani and had seen lions roaring before and knew what kinds of sounds to anticipate. THX’s Deep Note was truly schizophonic because it was impossible to conceive of and visualize what might naturally produce such a sound. It was neither orchestral nor acoustic, but rather, electric and decidedly digital.

Following the THX model, it became commonplace for corporations to commission such synthetic sounds as brand identities. Think of Intel and Apple, Windows and Nokia. These were not traditional jingles. They were effectively synthetic logos rendered sonically and turned into immediate targets for spoof and satire.

The scholar and composer Paul Théberge in his book Any Sound You Can Imagine describes the process by which sound itself has become commodified. “The subjection of the entire natural world to the order of production,” Théberge writes, finds “its expression in modernist music.” Yet, more than Edgard Varèse or Karlheinz Stockhausen, it was a little-known computer engineer called James A. Moorer who underwrote the wholesale industrialization of sound design.

NicheMTL Soirée with Roger Tellier-Craig, SonoLux, 24 February 2026

A person wearing a striped shirt stands behind a wooden DJ booth, surrounded by vinyl records arranged on shelves in a dimly lit room. The backdrop features orange lighting, creating a vibrant atmosphere.
Roger Tellier-Craig DJs at Subterra Lounge 24 February 2026. Photographed for NicheMTL.

When people go out, they generally like to hear music. This is why many bars and nightclubs hire bands and DJs or at least have a Spotify subscription (or if they’re very, very cool, a six-disc CD changer.) But people also like to talk and hear each other talking. To be able to do both is a big ask. The architects of SonoLux, a new boutique hotel in Old Montreal, have figured it out. The trick is to have an amazing sound system, sound-absorbing furnishing materials, and a visible decibel meter.

The basement lounge at SonoLux, called Subterra, brings together incredible hi-fi audio gear installed by Jojo Flores of Café Gotsoul and acoustic-minded design to create the perfect lounge, plush and inviting, in which patrons can listen to music and hear themselves, too. So, NicheMTL held our first party of the year there. Thanks to everyone who came, and thanks especially to Roger Tellier-Craig who brought his impeccable musical taste to share with all in attendance. A rare treat on a Tuesday night.

Mozart and the Elegance of Angela Hewitt, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Maison Symphonique, 26 February 2026

A female pianist in a bright red dress smiles confidently while performing at a grand piano in front of an orchestral ensemble.
The Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt performs with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal at Maison Symphonique, 26 February 2026. Antoine Saito for the OSM.

The author and piano tuner Anita T. Sullivan in her poetic book entitled The Seventh Dragon argues that the invention of the piano around 1700 introduced “keyboardness” as an essential feature of Western musical intonation. In my book Mad Skills, I refined Sullivan’s idea, coining the term “Claviocentrism” to define the cultural logic of equal temperament, or what we now understand as the standard 12-tone musical scale.

Since 1997 (and the immense popularity of Cher’s hit “Believe”) we have effectively erased any trace of microtonality in popular music. But in the 1790s, dissonance was a desirable characteristic of claviocentric composition.

Were Mozart to time-travel to 2026 and hear Angela Hewitt perform one of his piano sonatas, he might cover his ears not only from the deafening volume of the instrument but more so at the mathematically near-perfect balance of the modern piano’s frequencies and harmonies.

Contrechamps & McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble, Defining Space / Semaine du Neuf, Multimedia Room, Schulich School of Music, 27 February 2026

A group of musicians standing on stage after a performance, with audience members applauding in front. The musicians are dressed in black and include string and brass instruments, set against a modern concert hall backdrop with purple lighting.
The McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble performs at the Schulich School of Music, 27 February 2026. Photographed for NicheMTL.

When analogous notes are played simultaneously, listeners can observe the space between them as a phenomenon called “beats.” These kinds of beats are not made with drums — or Dr. Dre’s headphones — although they do demonstrate a rhythmic character. These kinds of beats are illustrated by regularly occurring modulations in amplitude at various frequency ranges.

For most of us accustomed to frequencies sounding “in tune,” beats can be annoying. The closer two notes are to each other, the more annoying the beats seem to be. But beats have their own distinctive qualities that we might consider interesting or even pleasing.

When samplers were gaining popularity and electronic dance music was concurrently emerging, a phenomenon occurred that began as a mistake and became an aesthetic. If a drum sample was accidentally triggered twice, it produced a characteristic phasing effect. Most electronic musicians learned to avoid the phasing beats phenomenon by ensuring that drum samples were triggered only once. But others, like Aphex Twin, turned the mistake into a style, as evidenced in the song Phlange Phace. Listen to how diverse occurrences of the rhythm either attenuate or accentuate certain frequency ranges.

The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir Celebrates Arvo Pärt, Maison Symphonique, 15 February 2026

A choir in formal attire performing on stage, with a conductor and audience applauding in a modern concert hall.
Conductor Tõnu Kaljuste leads the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir at Maison Symphonique, 15 February 2026. Photographed for NicheMTL.

The idiom “preaching to the choir” means to try to convince a group of people who already agree with you and is commonly used in the pejorative as equivalent to “wasted effort.” But beginning from a place of agreement is where significant changes can sometimes occur, even to the most recalcitrant of beliefs. Common ground is the point of origin, not the destination.

Religious choirs are interesting because they obscure the signifiers they intend to elucidate, sometimes to the point of unintelligibility. “Indeed, singing is bad communication,” the scholar Mladen Dolar writes in his book, A Voice and Nothing More. Still, singing redoubles the signifier, multiplying its symbolic weight, ensuring that each chorus member is “on the same page.”◼︎

Thank you for inviting NicheMTL to your thing. Please get in touch at the about page.

NicheMTL is Montreal’s independent not-for-profit source for this city’s most niche arts and culture. If you love what you’re reading, please consider buying a yearbook and subscribing.

Cover image: Leonard Slatkin conducts Angela Hewitt and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, 26 February 2026. Antoine Saito for the OSM.

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About Face

Orchestre Classique de Montréal with Marie-Josée Lord and conductor Kalena Bovell, Salle Pierre-Mercure, 5 February 2026

Marie-Josée Lord and Kalena Bovell with the OCM at Salle Pierre-Mercure. Photographed for NicheMTL.

What began anecdotally as suspicion about facial bias on social media was confirmed in 2021 when Bogdan Kulynych, a Ukrainian graduate student studying at EFPL University in Switzerland, proved a preference for lighter skinned faces in (the company formerly known as) Twitter’s cropping algorithm. Twitter’s photo-sharing system also seemed to like younger, slimmer faces more than older and wider ones, with those faces left out more regularly from image-based tweets. Women’s faces, too, enjoyed preferential treatment, appearing more frequently in Twitter’s new recommendation-based feeds.

Kulynych noted that these facial biases were not accidental but rather designed to maximize engagement and thus profit for the company. Twitter paid Kulynych a $3,500 reward for discovering the bias and apologized in a statement, claiming, “…we’ve got more analysis to do.” On 25 April 2022, before they could undertake that analysis, Twitter’s Board unanimously accepted Elon Musk’s hostile takeover bid for $44 billion.

Less than four years later, Musk has changed the name of the company to X — no relation whatsoever to the rating — and developed a subscription-based A.I. service that when prompted to do so creates sexualized deepfake images of real people without their consent.

Bibi Club with Fionavair, Pub Pit Caribou, 13 February 2026

Bibi Club perform at Pub Pit Caribou for Taverne Tour, 13 February 2026. Photographed for NicheMTL.

Faces are the most instantly recognizable physical features humans have. A number of studies demonstrate that infants show a visual preference for their mother’s faces within hours after birth, effectively making babies the first and most reliable facial recognition software.

The subtlest facial movements can indicate avalanches of emotion, and we intuitively recognize, interpret, and act upon these behavioural cues. More than any other nonverbal signs, we build bonds and trust people based upon their faces and what they communicate to us.

During the coronavirus pandemic, witnesses were asked to testify in court trials wearing face masks, and criminologists questioned whether these masks would affect the credibility of their testimony. A group of American and Canadian researchers, including Vincent Denault from the Université de Montréal and host of the podcast Beyond Lie Cues, published an experiment designed to isolate masks as a specific variable affecting the believability of a witness’s testimony. To their surprise, they found that the difference was negligible.

As important as faces are for identification, it is not imperative to see a face to believe a story. Masks appear to conceal neither lies nor the truth.

No Hay Banda with Karen Ng and Ida Toninato & Jennifer Thiessen, La Sala Rossa, 9 February 2026

Jennifer Thiessen and Ida Toninato perform for No Hay Banda at La Sala Rossa, 9 February 2026. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“Guitar face” is the phenomenon of involuntary and often hilarious facial expressions that guitarists pull when performing on their instruments. But it can also be applied to other musicians, too, and even extended to non-musical pursuits. We’ve all seen someone sticking out their tongue or biting their lower lip when they’re involved in a complex task.

“Laptop face” is the increasingly common occurrence of a laptop musician expressing facial acrobatics whilst manipulating a trackpad or keyboard. Of course, there is also “saxophone face,” the extreme inflation of the cheeks which saxophonists cannot avoid. Among the rarer instrument faces is “viola d’amore” face, another level of spontaneous expression akin to a plate spinner adding heroic complexity to an already demanding feat.

Nights in Fairyland by Will Straw, Milieux Resource Room, 13 February 2026

Will Straw holds a copy of his book, Nights in Fairyland, 13 February 2026. Photographed for NicheMTL.

When we become attracted to another person, we are usually attracted first and foremost to their face. There can be other physical attributes that one considers striking, many of which are well-known and need not be relisted here. But the face is the interface beneath which the operating system functions, so to speak, giving an indication to its innerworkings and alternately concealing and revealing our true character.

“Gaydar” is the term generally applied to a person’s visual ability to accurately discern sexual orientation in women and men. Nicholas O. Rule and Ravin Alaei in the Department of Psychology at University of Toronto published a study in 2016 that suggests that the general population is able to predict sexual orientation at a rate better than chance, indicating that there are certain facial features more frequently attributed to gay people.

Urban Dictionary entries are instructive and reflect how real people variously define and use language. At the time of writing, there are several more or less sensational definitions of the term “gayface.”

One definition indicates that gayface is an almost obligatory “look that gay men have that enables other gay men to quickly identify them as ‘family.’” This definition suggests that gay people have better gaydar than straight folks. Another less anticipated entry defines gayface as a variant of blackface, in which a person problematically dons a particular genre of facial expression for derogatory effect. Still, another entry simply states: “Anyone that goes by the name of Joseph.”

Richard Avedon: Immortal: Portraits of Aging, 1951-2004, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 10 February – 9 August 2026

Jacob Israel Avedon (detail), Richard Avedon at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Photographed for NicheMTL.

The notion that time is art fascinates me. Age changes all things, and the ways in which age manifests materially could be considered instinctive creativity, nature as artist. This is why antiques are more valuable with their patina preserved.

Art restoration is its own artform and needs to be practiced sparingly and only when necessary to not lose the work of art to history in its entirety. A subset of art restoration is film preservation, for which students can study to earn a degree, most notably at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, or Toronto Metropolitan University in Canada.

Film, though, is a different medium than digital image reproduction and indicates an age even if it is entirely contemporaneous. 35-millimeter photographs taken today somehow convey a deeper sense of history than iPhone photos do.

Perhaps that is because they fix moments specifically in time, whereas digital images are infinitely manipulable. One can endlessly Photoshop a jpeg. But prints begin to show their age the second they’re struck, forever decaying.◼︎

Thank you for inviting NicheMTL to your thing. Please get in touch at the about page.

NicheMTL is Montreal’s independent not-for-profit source for this city’s most niche arts and culture. If you love what you’re reading, please consider buying a yearbook and subscribing.

Cover image: William S. Burroughs by Richard Avedon at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Photographed for NicheMTL

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