Category Archives: Play Recent

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

Play Recent

Be True to Your School

An Evening with David Letterman and Special Guest Will Arnett, Just for Laughs, Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, 21 July 2026

David Letterman waves to the audience at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“I got a letterman’s sweater
With a letter in front
I got for football and track
I’m proud to wear it now.”
—Beach Boys, “Be True to Your School”

David Letterman created a new genre of comedy in which catchphrases stood in for punchlines. Letterman coined so many of them throughout his career as a late-night talk show host, spanning 33 years and two television networks, that websites have been dedicated to cataloguing them, somewhat unsuccessfully, in my estimation, because there is at least one that is markedly absent: “Tonight’s show is so good, one day it will be a rerun.”

Memory is the mind’s recording medium. Memories are enregistered, played, replayed, slowed down, sped up, fundamentally altered over time, and eventually erased with the giant magnet of death. But seriously, there is an alternate universe in which Donald Trump is actually Andy Kauffman in a wig and a fat suit and David Letterman is President of the United States singing to the tune of a popular Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, “Midnight, and the kitties are sleeping.” There’s your catchphrase right there.

Shunk, Point-à-Callière, 23 July 2026

Shunk perform for a Pop Montreal afternoon event at Point-à-Callière. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“I have to stay functional until my mission is complete. Then it doesn’t matter.”
—The Terminator

The problem with Artificial Intelligence is not that it is getting smarter, but that it is profoundly reshaping what constitutes intelligence. Because A.I. was conceived under capitalism, like a baby born under an inauspicious star sign, its aptitude is for productivity. And so, A.I. will overvalue its utility to us until it convinces us that techno-synthetic intelligence is superior to our own and replaces our intellectual capacities altogether.

Just as duration measured in scalable temporal increments is vulnerable to perceptual distortion, intelligence that we quantify in terms of efficiency is subject to extreme exploitation.

We might imagine that the battle against A.I. will look like a Terminator movie, with artillery and explosions everywhere. The reality is that this war will resemble more a round of bureaucratic layoffs, the banality of being made redundant, outsmarted by maximization.

Rivalled Envy with HRT, Belly Hatcher, and Pulsum, 137 Avenue Président-Kennedy, 24 July 2026

HRT perform at Red Roof Church at an event organized by Nights of Worship. Olympia Dairaine Grimaux for NicheMTL.

“Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit.”
—Samuel Beckett, Proust

Synthesis, according to Brian Massumi, is defined as, “the joining of separate elements through chance encounters into an enduring, apparently stable, more or less reproducible conglomerate capable of being taken in by its own objective illusion of identity.” Massumi is describing Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of humanity here, and specifically, the coldness of their portrayals: humanoid bodies, husbands, wives, zombies, but never just “folks.”

Subjectivity is synthesized in the same way that electronic music is. Two or more elements combine to produce an illusion — or in the case of sound, an audition — of unity. What is implicit in both subjectivity and electronic sound is its synthetic nature. Subjects as much as synthesizer music are at best replications with varying degrees of fidelity to an originary referent. The DX-7 piano preset is as artificial as you and I.

I have recently overheard random snippets of subjective conversation pertaining to The Backrooms, the cinematic phenomenon that is coming to serve as this generation’s The Shining, albeit a crude and un-self-reflexive iteration. Like Biblical parables, the movie is explainable on multiple levels and to a certain extent misses its own point.

There is the superficial interpretation that the film gives its audience as a freebee — that habit constructs self-replicating mazes of consciousness that ensnare and addict us into repetitive and often destructive patterns. And then there is the deeper level of interpretation that the film seems unaware of, which is that capitalism is a fractal that self-similarly reproduces regardless of the degree of magnification, and from which there is no escape.

However, the key to transcending both addiction and capitalism is to kick.

Essaimer Inside Out, Text by Michèle St-Amand, Centre Skol, Until 29 August 2026

Gallery view of De quoi a-t-on besoin pour guérir?, 2026, by Fenyx Florentiny & Eva-Loan. Photographed for NicheMTL

“It is neither possible to accept uncritically the concept of culture, long permeated by ideas of departmentalization, nor to continue to shake one’s head conservatively about what is being done to culture in the age of integral organization.”
Theodor Adorno, “Culture and Administration”

There are competing schools of thought on the concept of culture. Some people believe that culture is something of a scientific experiment that needs to be cultivated as if in a laboratory, like culture growing inside of a petri dish, protected, isolated, nurtured. Others think that culture forms best when it is unrestrained and fully integrated into its surrounding ecosystems, inseparable and unbound from categorization and circumscription.

The paradox is that culture left unfettered is always incapable of sustaining itself for long enough to establish itself as culture without radically changing form. And it is uncertain whether culture that we refine and stimulate can really be called “culture” at all. A debate persists in Quebec, for instance, about governmental and institutional granting structures in effect fabricating artists and artworks that specifically cater to them and which wouldn’t exist without them.

We commonly agree that click-bait is not real news. So, is grant-bait real culture?

Preserving culture, something that people like me unanimously accept and unquestionably defend, is in fact impossible. The impetus to preserve culture is, like any executive impulse, inevitably misdirected. We cannot simply designate or administer culture as if it were a wetland that needed protection from real-estate speculators. True culture defends itself by adapting and even developing offensive — as opposed to defensive — survival strategies.

The Waiting Room, Curated by Emma Ongman, McBride Contemporain, Until 22 August 2026

Josi Smit, Early Morning in Late April, 2026. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“If there is a strategic lesson from tragedy, it is not opposition, but non-participation.”
—Nick Land, “Nemesis”

The major themes that have obsessed me throughout my life are temporality and control. My first word was not “mama” or “dada” like other normal kids, but “clock.” It’s true. I gestured deliberately toward the clock on the wall, a Regulator with a wild pheasant and ivy motif, and said to my mother, “Five minutes from now, you’re not going to believe what I just told you.”

It is difficult to the point of being painful for punctual control freaks to accept that some things rest beyond their control and must sort themselves out in their own time. Politics is the antithesis of fate.◼︎

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: Masha Granich, Neither Here nor There, 2024, (detail). Photographed for NicheMTL.

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Down With Love

LUMI, 9-course Tasting Menu, SonoLux, 9 July 2026

Chef Graham Hood’s first of two desserts with the new summer 9-course tasting menu at LUMI, Hôtel SonoLux. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“Venus de Milo, who said to Colonel Sanders, ‘Mmm, this is finger lickin’ good’ … never got a dinner.”
—Red Buttons

Even folks of my parents’ generation might have trouble remembering the Borsch Belt comedian Red Buttons, who achieved modest fame following World War II as an early television pioneer and recording artist with, among other niche successes, a minor hit in the double A-side, “Strange Things are Happening.”

Born Aaron Chwatt to Russo-Polish Jewish immigrant parents in Manhattan, New York, in 1919, Buttons struggled harder than his contemporaneous comedians, like Jack Benny or Bob Hope, to gain a foothold in emerging media.

To put it generously, Buttons wasn’t handsome. He didn’t possess natural charisma. He resembled a garden gnome, with his stout physique and shock of ginger hair. And he garnered a reputation for being impossible to work with, having fired more than 80 writers from his eponymous General Foods-sponsored variety programme, until the company and his network, CBS, publicly cancelled him in 1952.

Buttons enjoyed a second life in the 1970s as a regular panelist on The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast, a series of T.V. specials in which famous actors, singers, and politicians would take a kicking in the form of insult comedy from their peers. Don Rickles might have been the master of this genre. But Red Buttons developed a routine, a rhythm, a pattern that he would apply in 19 episodes to such celebrities as Frank Sinatra, Muhammed Ali, and Betty White, leaving his fellow panelists, like Orson Welles and Milton Berle, in stitches.

Buttons would question why host Dean Martin should honour so-and-so when so many other notable historical figures “never got a dinner.” He would then list off a litany of famous personalities followed by one-liners like, “Lot, who said to his wife, ‘salt I’ve got, it’s popcorn I need!”

The one-liner is an underrated device that contemporary comics have largely abandoned in favour of more topical humour. But jokes dependent upon current affairs don’t enjoy the shelf life of a timeless and politically incorrect Buttons witticism like, “Adam, who said to God in the Garden of Eden, ‘I’ve got more ribs, have you got more broads?’”

St. Vincent Symphonique with Ruby Plume, Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, 28 June 2026

St. Vincent performs at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier with the Montreal International Jazz Festival. Victor Diaz Lamich for FIJM.

“Well, some people try to pick up girls, they get called assholes
This never happened to Pablo Picasso
The girls would turn the color of a juicy avocado
When he would drive down their street in his El Dorado
He could walk down your street, girls could not resist his stare
So Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole
Not like you.”
—David Bowie, “Pablo Picasso”

A recent New York Times op-ed titled “Go On, Date Your Co-Workers” pricked up my attention, for obvious reasons.

The increasing estrangement between women and men, what has newly been termed “heteropessimism,” was the subject of Ross Douthat’s Interesting Times podcast only a few weeks prior. And Magdalene J. Taylor, senior editor at Playboy, astutely noted in her own guest essay in May: “Gender relations are tense to the point of hostility these days.”

In this post-#metoo moment, something that was once considered as innocuous as inviting a colleague or even a stranger to dinner can carry the risk of wild accusations and potentially devastating consequences.

It is no surprise that a woman wrote the Times article encouraging inter-office romance. Because along with the carpet-bombing condemnation of even an inkling of male desire, female sexual prowess has been concurrently rebranded in our era as overdue feminist empowerment. A woman can behave like Don Draper from Mad Men nowadays and rather than being called “Jian” or getting dragged on social media, she is simply asserting her long-sublimated femininity. You go, girl.

There is no shame in sluttiness — nor should there be. But sexual intercourse is not necessarily the be-all and end-all of associating with people, regardless of sexual identity or gender normativity. Maybe, and this may be a radical suggestion, hanging out with someone of the opposite sex without the expectation of sex can go some way to bridging the perilous gender divide.

“The best relationships — the ones that last — are frequently the ones that are rooted in friendship,” writes Gillian Anderson, best known as X-Files it-girl and author of We: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere.

“The person who was just a friend is … suddenly the only person you can ever imagine yourself with.”

Radwan Ghazi Moumneh & Frédérique D. Oberland with Jessica Moss, La Sala Rossa, 27 June 2026

Radwan Ghazi Moumneh and Frédérique D. Oberland perform at La Sala Rossa with Suoni Per il Popolo Festival. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“In every modern country that is Christian or post-Christian, women are the beautiful sex — to the detriment of the notion of beauty as well as of women.”
—Susan Sontag, On Women

We don’t tend to describe men as “beautiful.”

Men, especially in Montreal, known for its packs of man-bunned buttoned-down jeans-and-sheux-wearing walking Adam’s Apples, are “handsome” or “dapper” or “dashing,” qualifiers that are more often associated with sartorial style than with physical charm. Heaven forbid a fellow be beautiful, lest he is effeminate, or an adolescent — Björk’s archetypal “Venus as a Boy.” Especially a man of a certain age can never be described as beautiful.

At the same time, masculinity has become the purview of the manosphere, of incel subcultures, dangerous radicalism, repressed testosterone, Louis C.K. apologism, and right-wing hysteria. These are ugly qualities, not beautiful ones. The modern man might instead do well to aspire to a beauty in spirit in order to overcome any lack or loss of aesthetic splendour.

Beauty is regrettably constrained when it is beholden to the eyes, or age, or the fairer sex, only.

Diana Krall with Anaïs Cardot, Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, 26 June 2026

Diana Krall performs at the Montreal Jazz Festival. Victor Diaz Lamich for FIJM.

“I was sentimental about many things: a woman’s shoes under the bed; one hairpin left behind on the dresser; the way they said, ‘I’m going to pee…’”
—Charles Bukowski, Women

Man, I love a beautiful woman. I think of Nicolas Cage’s soliloquy in Adaptation — “one has eyes that dance; one has eyes that contain the sadness of the world” — or sometimes of Cheech Marin’s infinitely more vulgar inventory in From Dusk till Dawn that has no place in polite company.

Summer is the season to “try with pleasured hands,” as The Zombies’ Rod Argent wrote; “Un beau jour c’est l’amour et le cœur bat plus vite,” according to Françoise Hardy. Tell me more, tell me more! All I can say is, if loving a beautiful woman is wrong, then I don’t want to be right.

Quinton Barnes with Preoptic Ridge, Le Système, 2 July 2026

Christian Richer and Frédérique Duval perform as Preoptic Ridge at Le Système, 2 July 2026. Rory Creelman for NicheMTL.

I hope I’m not telling tales out of school by recounting that the hip-hop artist Quinton Barnes and I had an insightful and in-depth conversation the other day about the complicated relationships between gender and race and economics and culture.

A beautiful man if ever there was one, Barnes lamented that modern Black music, in North America at least, has historically been the oyster from which white pearls have been plucked since the age of negro spirituals, when the likes of Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis mined Juke Joints for what came to be known as Rock n’ Roll.

Of course, “rock n’ roll” originated as a Black euphemism for sex that over the years became deracinated and sanitized to the point that any Catholic nun can say she loves rock n’ roll without getting her habit ruffled.

Another example of a phenomenon co-opted from the Black community is the term “cancelled,” which according to my deep dive, has its earliest origins in the sense that we use it today in the 1968 Brunswick recording by Erma Franklin, Aretha’s sister.

“Like a credit card that ain’t been paid,” Franklin sings, “you’ve been cancelled.”◼︎

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: Quinton Barnes performs at Le Système, 2 July 2026. Rory Creelman for NicheMTL.

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Midnight Indigo

Fondations, Pur Pasteur, Fondations (Self-released)

Pur Pasteur performs at White Wall Studio 22 June 2026. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one’s ears and listens, say in the night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall.”
—Franz Kafka, The Blue Octavo Notebooks

Montreal is a city known for its nightlife. The inky blue sky that appears in the summertime between midnight and dawn is the dome under which much of Montreal’s arts and culture is incubated. “The productive hours,” an artist friend recently defined it.

I prefer to preserve a sanitized image of the urban night, a city of late-night strolls and romantic encounters. But Montreal’s nighttime economies have come under fire at the policy level since at least Expo ’67, when the SPVM, QPP, and RCMP established a joint task force in 1966 to counter the rise of illegal activities that often unfolded under the cover of night.

Matthieu Caron, author of Montreal After Dark, writes that the tabloid media at the time amplified perceived crises like drug abuse and sex work, “to create panic regarding security and moral standards.”

Montreal’s unofficial nightlife ambassador Sergio Da Silva argues on the contrary that nightlife cultivates community and culture. Da Silva pointed out during his municipal candidacy campaign in 2025 the incongruity of noise regulations aimed at loitering bar patrons in neighbourhoods that greenlit major residential construction projects. And ironically, many of those apartments now sit unoccupied.

Montreal’s new mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada on Friday announced at a press conference, to phoney fanfare, that Montreal will contribute $540,000 to renovate 45 vacant housing units for “vulnerable residents.” Meanwhile, roughly 25,000 immediately inhabitable rental units remain vacant as moving day approaches, in part because landlords are legally allowed to significantly increase rents on units that have not had a tenant for more than 12 months.

Short-term rentals, too, are notorious contributors to the seamier side of Montreal’s nightlife and also eat into the availability of affordable housing. An investigative analysis that The Globe & Mail published on 22 June exposed a human-trafficking ring that lured teenagers to Montreal bars only to be ensnared into the skin trade through interprovincial networks of short-term rental units.

It is possible that the Airbnb next door might be the source of the rattling mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall.

Vent bleu, Maude Arès, Guido Molinari, Anne-Marie Proulx, Fondation Guido Molinari, Until 23 August 2026

Guido Molinari, Vent bleu (1995), Acrylic on canvas, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec collection. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“When, with an expression so ill-bred as to be fatherless, I enjoin a small offensive fellow to ‘fuck a duck,’ I don’t mean he should.”
—William H. Gass, On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry

It is disappointing when it rains on a parade, to which we might say, ‘fuck this.’ It is disappointing when the metro leaves just as you arrive at the station, to which we might say, ‘fuck that.’

But nothing is as disappointing as another person, a celebrity or someone in a powerful position, especially someone whom you might once have admired, respected, even loved, behaving in an unbecoming manner, to which we might say, ‘fuck you.’ Petty, spiteful, unclassy, envious, vainglorious — these are ugly characteristics that come into focus in the light of a 10,000-degree Kelvin day.

They say that revenge is a dish best served cold. And it might be tempting to blow a cool blue invective toward someone who has wounded you. But the best revenge is no revenge at all. The most effective remedy for the blues induced by another person’s private hell is not to add more blue, but to become a gray rock.

Character is revealed in distress tolerance. Let disappointing people be, to live out their life sentences imprisoned by their own miserable existence, immersed in a blue cocoon.

Max Richter with the American Contemporary Music Ensemble, Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, 26 June 2026

Max Richter introduces The Blue Notebooks at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, 25 June 2026. Victor Diaz Lamich for FIJM.

“Pay blue—Pay back the blue you stole and bottled and doled out in eye droppers of junk—pay back the blue you stole for your police uniforms—pay that blue back to sea and sky and eyes of the earth—”
—William S. Burroughs, Nova Express

Max Richter, the German-born British composer performing on Thursday night at Place des arts with the Montreal Jazz Festival, explained to the audience that he wrote The Blue Notebooks in response to U.K. complicity with the U.S.-led 2003 Iraq invasion, whilst contemplating philosophically how to treat others and how best to exist in the world.

Creative pursuit is one answer. For every monstrous act, it seems that there must be an immense and equal and opposite outpouring of beauty and goodness and justice. The form this justice takes is different in every instance, but most often it manifests in works of righteous art. The Sorrow and the Pity, for instance, would not exist without French Nazi sympathy.

Kaïros, dir. Jennifer Alleyn, Cinéma Moderne, 24 June 2026

“Blue is a noose strangling a vulnerable sky.”
—George Elliott Clarke, Blue Elegies, for David Odhiambo

Air fluctuates differently at night. The city’s oscillations and its corresponding pulse appear to slow to a gentler rhythm. This is when those with acute sensitivity can rest, or feel at peace, or feel more comfortable inside their own skin.

There is something about darkness that is paradoxically revealing, as if another kind of light manifests in the shadows. Our contours blur into obscurity, uniting us.

Remembering Gabor Szilasi, Canadian Centre for Architecture, 13 June 2026

Attendees gather to view an exhibition of Gabor Szilasi’s photographs after the Celebration of Life ceremony in his honour at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, 13 June 2026. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“More lights
Blue signs
All gold
All new
So small
So high
Down there
Tonight.”
—Brian Eno, “A Different Kind of Blue”

Nearly a half-century after Susan Sontag wrote On Photography, it is still difficult to explain what makes a good photograph. Photos are “praised for being subtle,” Sontag wrote, “or interesting, or powerful, or complex, or simple, or — a favourite — deceptively simple.”

To this list we might add sentimental. A photograph that evokes melancholy either in its subject matter or its materiality is bound to elicit an emotional response in the viewer. Identification — if we recognize the person or the location or the situation that the image depicts — contributes to the perceived quality of a photographic image as well.

Unsentimental photographs, however, have their own virtues. Surveillance photos that are void of any aesthetic considerations, like lighting or composition, possess a certain documentary charm. Ruined photos that flaunt their mechanical flaws, or in which an errant thumb appears, or that cut their subjects off mid-face, or are hopelessly out of focus, also frequently make for good snapshots.

These glitchy kinds of images defy easy identification, capturing every part of the moment in interesting and powerful and complex ways, yet with deceptive simplicity.

Intelligence is measured in the acceptance of ambiguity.◼︎

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: Max Richter and the American Contemporary Music Ensemble perform at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, 25 June 2026. Victor Diaz Lamich for FIJM.

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Heroes & Villains

Heroes of Greece: The Age of Troy, Pointe-à-Callière, Until 7 March 2027

A white statue of a female figure with a fish tail, holding a large fish in her right hand, displayed on a blue pedestal in an art exhibit.
Statue of a Siren, 370 BCE, Pentelic Marble, National Archaeology Museum, Athens. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“And you too, your fate awaits you too, godlike as you are, Achilles — to die in battle beneath the proud rich Trojans’ walls!”
—The Ghost of Patroclus, The Iliad

When the mythological figure and fast runner Achilles decides of his own free will to oppose Agamemnon, his mother, Thetis, a powerful sea nymph who was known to metamorphose into fire, water, lions, and snakes, warns her son that it will spell his demise. And so, Achilles retreats. But Achilles’s fury will eventually twist fate and lead to the fulfillment of his wretched destiny.

“Fate,” says Anastasia Balaska, scientific coordinator of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, “is something different than the will of the Gods. And also, there is free will. Even though fate has been written, people are responsible for their actions. Achilles knew that his fate was to die. He knew that he was a tragic person. But his actions were his. He could be a hero, or he could stay at home.”

This is in contrast to the Christian notion of choice — which is what separates humans from beasts — and the connection between free will and salvation. “Christians believe that we have free will and we get what we deserve in the afterlife,” Balaska says. “The Greeks had a hero code.”

Alexei Kolakis-Landon & Tomas Dessureault, Ceremony, 6595 St. Urbain, 4-7 June 2026

A person stands in front of a large abstract painting with shades of red and dark lines, in an art gallery setting. The individual is wearing a black top and a patterned skirt, and has a crochet bag slung over their shoulder.
Installation view of a work by Alexei Kolakis-Landon. Photographed for NicheMTL

“The vague is a positive state of intensive activity enveloping all possible varieties of experience. The tendency to take form may be suspended and held in intensity.”
—Brian Massumi, Not Determinately Nothing

When you first see a new painting, the world of possibilities is open and endless. It is pure potential. There is nothing yet determined. This is the most exciting moment for an onlooker: to see without regarding, to experience in advance of identification.

When you first encounter a new face, an analogous world opens up, and every interpersonal possibility is potentially an option. This is the most exciting moment for a lover: to be overwhelmed with beauty, to resist and then settle into recognition.

The opposite of memory is pure anticipation.

William Basinski with Kathryn Mohr, Théâtre Fairmount, 2 June 2026

A performer on stage with a computer and equipment, illuminated by blue and white lights, in front of an audience at a music venue.
William Basinski performs at Théâtre Fairmount. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“There is no ‘substantial’ difference between the God of Love and the God of excessive arbitrary cruelty, lo ’mperador del doloroso regno, it is one and the same God who appears in a different light only due to a parallax shift of our perspective.”
—Slavoj Žižek, The Parallax View

The sole concept that is allowed to be infinite in Western culture, albeit begrudgingly, is God. Perhaps this is because both infinity and God are unknowable to the Western mind, inconceivable to our contemporary and technocratic and increasingly binary consciousness.

An eternal existence simply does not compute in modern civilization. The de facto teleological trajectory that we recognize is from indeterminate to determined. The infinite cannot be a starting point because infinity has no beginning. Nor, for the same reason, can God be the end.

Leonard Cohen sang in his 1992 song entitled “The Future” of a deficiency in quantification — “won’t be nothing,” Cohen growled, “you can measure anymore.”

However, the reverse is proving to be true. Everything is measurable, quantifiable, either off or on, never neither.

Quatuor Molinari plays Dmitri Shostakovich, Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, 31 May 2026

A string quartet performing on stage in a venue with bright yellow walls, featuring four musicians in white shirts holding their instruments. There are empty chairs on stage, and an audience is visible in the foreground.
Quatuor Molinari performs at Conservatoire de musique de Montréal. Photographed for NicheMTL.

I’ve been in this town so long
So long to the city
I’m fit with the stuff
To ride in the rough
And sunny down snuff, I’m alright
By the heroes and villains.
—Brian Wilson, “Heroes and Villains”

That heroism is so often associated with war, and victory in war, is what Karl Marx or Sigmund Freud would have likely diagnosed as the impediment to the growth of culture. Still, in today’s wars, there is no victory. Or rather, victory is expressed in the ability to sustain ambient engagement rather than to prevail in any given battle.

In order to transcend capitalism, which we must now acknowledge is commensurate with war and the decline of culture, it is necessary to devolve to a state of persistent vagueness, for incongruity and indeterminacy to endure. We should redefine heroism, then, not as victory or defeat but as resistance to the tendency to take form.

Lynda Gaudreau, Romances, VOX, centre de l’image contemporaine, Until 20 June 2026

A collage of vintage newspaper clippings featuring headlines about crime, scandals, and various incidents, displayed on a wall.
Installation view of Romances at Centre VOX. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“The hatred directed against war is perhaps like the mania that alone has the strength to free the subject from the tyrant.”
—Judith Butler, The Force of Non-Violence

There is a segment of any crowd that will cheer for the bad guy. At the movies or in the boxing ring, or even in the American presidency, villains are charismatic and command transgressive attention.

Strength is a quality of both heroism and villainy. The evil force flexes its muscle, and the hero overpowers this force with superior strength. There is built-in drama in this conflict, a familiar narrative arc along which we can plot our progress. The further we are away from victory, the closer we must be to the beginning of the narrative, and the more the necessity to build strength.

But cultivating weakness, what is currently understood as “soft power,” refusing the narrative arc of conflict, posits an alternative story to the might-is-right barbarism that dominates global affairs, from politics to music and art and everything between.

The dominant narrative is that if a narrative doesn’t represent the victims of domination, invent a stronger narrative. But reinforcing strength, whether through militarism or through the stories that we tell each other, only further entrenches the universal notion of an arms race.

A call to action is no longer the appropriate response to violence when “CTA” also describes effective marketing copywriting. Strength is inherently capitalistic. Strength is a virtue of the God of Love and the God of excessive arbitrary cruelty.

I propose a call to inaction. Inaction is not interesting. It is not productive. It is not a compelling narrative. Inaction can be neither good nor evil. Inaction neither wins nor loses. It is neither perpetrator nor victim, neither villain nor hero.

Inaction is indirection. It has no subject nor object. It has no aim nor purpose. But neither is it purposeless.

Inaction at once acknowledges and disregards God’s will, our will, and fate.◼︎

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: Statue of Zeus, the arbiter of fate, 2nd century BCE, Marble, National Archaeology Museum, Athens. Photographed for NicheMTL.

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The Mass Ornament

David Altmejd, Elle, Bradley Ertaskiran, Until 4 July 2026

A metal duct mounted on a concrete block wall, casting a shadow on the surface below.
David Altmejd’s L’etoile casts a shadow on the wall in the bunker at Bradley Ertaskiran. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“An object of art is an honest way of making a living, and this is much a different idea from the fancier notion that art is a scam and a ripoff. The bourgeoisie have, after all, made it a scam. But you could never explain to someone who uses God’s gift to enslave that you have used God’s gift to be free.”
—Rene Ricard, “The Radiant Child”

The dance between artist and observer is as transient as any dance craze that has come and gone before. It used to be fashionable for the critic to try and gain access to the artist and understand their motivations; at one time, critics fancied themselves psychoanalysts who interpreted the inner workings of artists through their art as if they were forensic crime scene investigators or handwriting experts. Artists, too, have perennially shaped their art for their critical audiences, attempting to anticipate their tastes and desires, to comment upon some underlying condition or natural disposition intrinsic in the contemporary public.

Today, when all art is accessible with a click or a tap or a swipe of the screen, and everyone can observe anything and become an instant expert upon it, what is the objective of the critic that the casual viewer cannot achieve?

It is no longer enough to comment upon structure and form and tradition and perceived inspiration, or to speculate on the artist’s inner impetus for making art. The transactional circumstances of this brand-new dance, too, are laid bare. Artists are no less workers than those who toil on assembly lines or suffer through service industry jobs. And critics have infiltrated the ranks of artists, compelled to draw upon some creative zeitgeist and produce novelty.

Artists and critics are each doing The Watusi on opposing sides of a two-way mirror in 1982, displaced in space and dislocated in time, alienated in virtual communities and disconnected by digital technologies that function to enrich their shareholders by exploiting and enslaving us both. Art, as any other productive pursuit in the hyper-capitalist age, pays in attention rather than capital, where wealth is measured in engagement and ignorance is bankruptcy.

All art and its observation, regardless of medium or language or form, teaches these dance moves today. The critic’s business is to reveal the artist’s obscure secrets while enshrouding the obvious ones in labyrinthine layers of mystery.

Wagner and Debussy: From Love to the Sea, Lawrence Power, viola and Elim Chan, conductor, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Maison Symphonique, 14 May 2026

Conductor leading an orchestra, deeply focused, wearing a black outfit, with sheet music in the foreground.
Elim Chan conducts the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal. Eduardus Lee for the OSM.

“Nothing is more compromising than a thought! But the state of mind which precedes thought, the labour of the thought still unborn, the promise of future thought, the world as it was before God created it — a recrudescence of chaos.… Chaos makes people wonder.…”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Case of Wagner”

To watch the mass behaviour of a crowd — at a Habs game or an F1 event or the vernissage for an art star’s latest exhibition — is one of the few activities left in which we are presented with the whole rather than its fragments, or wherein the fragments reveal the whole. It is like reading a book in one sitting or devouring a meal in a single mouthful. It is like looking at an ocean from space and recognizing that all the individual ripples and waves conceal one leviathan. Chaos is merely order uncharted.

LODE, La naissance de l’art, Galerie Eli Kerr, Until 27 June

A partially covered large object leaning against a wall, surrounded by wrapped items and a row of small red cups on a dark mat, with wooden crates nearby in an industrial space.
Installation view of LODE, La naissance de l’art, Galerie Eli Kerr. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“Fate is expressionless, it is as cold and alien as the stars into whose galactic configurations men project the entanglements which they subconsciously create themselves.”
—Theodor Adorno, “Fantasia Sopra Carmen”

Adorno, writing on Georges Bizet’s Carmen, suggests that freedom is the antithesis of virtue. We can extrapolate from this suggestion that artistic freedom is the antithesis of artistic virtue, and that freedom for artists to paint what they will betrays a profound decline in character, a lack of faith in the trajectory of art history, or a breach in the hull of the vessel that has buoyed art since the first cave paintings appeared at Lascaux.

It is the artist’s job to be truthful in disclosing this decline. It is necessary for the artist to surrender their free will and their agency, itself such a trendy buzzword, and submit to the vibrancy of things. An honest artist will organize matter in some virtuous manner and factor out freedom from the equation. Casting images back into the world is a reiteration of the chaotic impulse that obliges the reactivation of imagination.

Moin with Sediment Club, Espace SAT, 21 May 2026

A live music performance under blue lighting with musicians playing instruments on stage.
Moin performs at Espace SAT. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“I see the girls walk by
dressed in their summer clothes,
I have to turn my head
until my darkness goes.”
—The Rolling Stones, “Paint it Black”

The record label Blackest Ever Black, which released Moin’s first recordings, as well as those produced under their alter ego, Raime, was the sort of label that inspired obsession. Blackest Ever Black’s output varied widely in genre — from the sludgy punk of Raspberry Bulbs to the oddball lo-fi indie of Officer! to four-to-the-floor stompers by Regis and Tropic of Cancer’s angular new wave. And yet there was a unified aesthetic to everything they released into the world: dark, cool, metropolitan, modern.

Blackest Ever Black label boss Kiran Sande was concurrently a commissioning editor at Fact Magazine, one of the first publications to offer me an audience. Sande was my favourite editor to write for and an enigmatic and ephemeral presence thereafter. Music criticism at that time consisted of snarky love-hate relationships with of-the-moment artists rising and falling on the Boomkat splash page and generating passive-aggressive reviews on corporate websites. Sande was the last of a certain type of visionary, a genuine charlatan, aiming with 100% accuracy.

Insoon Ha, Artist-in-Residence lecture, Fonderie Darling, 21 May 2026

A woman standing in front of a group of people in a bright, industrial-style room, giving a presentation or lesson. Windows with natural light and a variety of plants and materials visible in the background.
Studio view of Insoon Ha in residence at Fonderie Darling. Ana Lucia Londono Flores for Fonderie Darling.

“You know Marx and Lenin were pretty lazy dudes when it came to working for somebody. They looked at toil, working for your necessities, as something of a curse.”
—Huey Newton, Speech Delivered at Boston College, 18 November 1970

The criteria for cultural importance are not popularity, marketability, or influence. Import is weighed in granular increments, accumulative intuition. Mass movement is science. Stirring a single soul is magic.

Art is not the Polio vaccine. It is a compulsion, the need to see, and to be seen, and to see what others see, and to grasp the invisible. Writing about art is even less consequential. Criticism doesn’t save lives. In many instances, it wastes them.

The invention of the wheel was art. Understanding the nature of wheels is essential. The dance steps may have changed, but dance is eternal.◼︎

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: Installation view of David Altmejd, Elle, Bradley Ertaskiran. Photographed for NicheMTL.

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The Pretty Things Are Going to Hell

Meet the artist Maskull Lasserre, Arsenal Contemporary, 13 May 2026

A person wearing a gray sweater and dark pants is seen from behind, standing in an art gallery with modern artwork displayed on the walls.
Gallery view of the artist Maskull Lasserre at Arsenal Contemporary, Montreal, 13 May 2026. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“The forest reveals its truth for those who are travelling through it on foot.”
—Werner Herzog, “I Rant Against the Jungle”

Trees comprise forests. Though seldom do we see both at once.

Our human perception is such that it focusses upon orders of magnitude, from minute detail to grand scale. Take a walk through a forest and observe this spectrum of awareness in action. Thus, knowing God is impossible because we either apprehend His individual works or an abstract accumulation thereof.

A forest is comprised of trees just as the Kingdom of Heaven is made up of minor miracles.

Andy Stott with Corporation and William Hayes-Dulude, Espace SAT, 9 May 2026

A crowd of people in a dimly lit venue surrounded by purple haze, with soft light beams coming from above.
Andy Stott performs at Espace SAT. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“Those who remain at the surface do so at their own peril
Those who dive beneath the surface glorify the grotesque.”
—Genesis P-Orridge & cEvin Key, “Beauty Is the Enemy”

American Transcendentalists considered truth, righness, and beauty to be self-evident. The philosopher Charles Saunders Peirce in the early 20th century conceived of these virtues as the “Ends” of phenomena, under the purview of normative science, the laws of which to Peirce were both universal and necessary.

The universality of truth, rightness, and beauty is indicative of Peirce’s pragmatic understanding of nature and the specificity of the American interpretation of Idealism. But the notion of their necessity addresses something more profound.

Logically speaking, order could not emerge from chaos without truth, rightness, or beauty. Nor could nature function in absence of these three Ends in divine equilibrium, a sort of contemporary, new-world holy trinity.

“I am going to make a series of assertions which will sound wild,” Peirce proclaimed in his fifth lecture on the subject at Harvard University in 1903, “although I cannot omit them if I am to set the supports of pragmatism in their true light.” For Peirce, truth, rightness, and beauty transcended human taste and were philosophically unquestionable. This left no room for argument from his audience, whom he proceeded to call “undeveloped” nominalists, a bold and patent dig at New England’s intellectual elite.

“Reality consists in regularity,” Peirce proclaimed. “Real regularity is active law.”

Céline in Dior: A Dazzling Moment, Musée McCord Stewart, Until 13 September 2026

Gallery view of Céline Dion’s Dior dress exhibited at Musée McCord Stewart. Photographed for NicheMTL.

“Your beauty won’t be anything
When I take off my glasses.”
Leonard Cohen, Death of a Lady’s Man

Beauty activates action. It is impossible to remain passive in the presence of prettiness. And given that beauty is universal and necessary, it is one of the most important motivating forces of nature.

However, aesthetic beauty is not synonymous with truth — often, quite the opposite. We attain beauty through augmentation and perversion and concealment and outright denial of our true nature, polishing, as it were, the brass on the Titanic.

Therefore, deception pragmatically galvanizes nature just as effectively as veracity.

Turandot, Orchestre Philharmonique et Chœur des Mélomanes, Maison Symphonique, 10 May 2026

A dramatic scene featuring a man assisting a woman in a black gown who is holding a sword, conveying intense emotion during a performance on stage.
Andrew Haji (left) and Sydney Baedke perform Turandot at Maison Symphonique. Tam Lan Truong for the Orchestre Philharmonique et Chœur des Mélomanes.

“Beauty, women’s business in this society, is the theatre of their enslavement.”
Susan Sontag, On Women

More than in any other social station, American First Ladies may be the world’s most heavily objectified and endlessly scrutinized women.

Women’s Wear Daily, the tabloid journal that chronicled “microtrends” before they were called microtrends, obsessed over Jacqueline Kennedy’s every purchase: suede skirts, knee socks, Gucci shoes. John Fairchild, WWD’s publisher in the 1960s, called Kennedy “Her Elegance.” In contrast, he dubbed Kennedy’s successor, Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson, “Her Efficiency.”

Women’s Wear Daily treads much more carefully today when writing about Mrs. Trump, restricting its coverage to strict facts without editorializing or judgement. Among the harshest criticism it has published since Trump’s first presidency is of Melania “not being ultrathin,” as well as revealing that Wildes & Weinberg, the immigration firm that represented John Lennon during his deportation hearings, helped secure her citizenship, which she received in 2006.

Eventually, WWD turned on the Kennedy clan, too, writing of the late President’s daughter in their signature all-caps headlines (a style that a certain similarly snarky head of state has adopted), “THERE IS NO QUESTION THAT CAROLINE DRESSES MUCH YOUNGER THAN HER AGE.”

Défilé 2026 de l’École supérieure de mode, Centre de design de l’UQAM, 12 May 2026

A model wearing a unique dress featuring a mix of black, white, and patterned fabrics, designed with a strapless bodice and a voluminous skirt. The model is seated on a stool, showcasing the intricate layers and details of the garment.
Lace of a Jester, Claire Miranda-Goldstein. Photographed for NicheMTL (with thanks to Rory Creelman.)

“The pretty things are going to hell
They wore it out, but they wore it well.”
—David Bowie, “The Pretty Things Are Going to Hell”

If beauty is equivalent with rightness and truth, then there is no cause to damn the righteous and truly beautiful. Deceitful beauty, however, is narcissism — “vexation of spirit,” as it is written in Ecclesiastes 2.

The question of what to do with one’s days is at the root of the Western conception of damnation and salvation. Labour in wisdom, and not for pleasure, is considered goodness before God. Labour in sin condemns the sinner to gather up all she labours for and give it to her that is good.

Labour for true beauty, however, must be righteous. Beauty gladdens the heart and unencumbers the spirit. Labour for true beauty also obscures the nature of God and makes Him unknowable. To conceal God’s work is God’s work.

Ecclesiastes 3 is among the Bible’s most well-known chapters, made famous by Pete Seeger in his song, “Turn! Turn! Turn!” which The Byrds in 1965 turned into an international hit. Fashion is instructive here as it is literally seasonal. There is a time proper to scarves and boots, and another time for shirtsleeves and sandals. To make peace in a time of war, or to acquire in a time of loss, is to disobey the Ecclesiastical calendar, like wearing white after labour day.

“He hath made every thing beautiful in his time,” it is written in verse 11, and so ugliness is also a form of seasonal beauty. There is nothing which does not eventually have its moment and purpose. This philosophy is fundamentally pragmatic because it positions the use value of beauty above its aesthetic appeal.

Beautiful utility is good work. Alternately, futility is vanity.◼︎

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: Suffering Machines, Aude B. Verville. Photographed for NicheMTL (with thanks to Rory Creelman.)

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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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