HRT with Zom Zom Illegal and Kay-Fayb, Distorsion Festival, Mario Park, 28 August 2026

“Very logically, and inexorably, the increase in the power of power heightens the will to destroy it. But there is more: somewhere, it was party to its own destruction.”
—Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism

The approaching silver anniversary of the September 11^th attacks, which the destruction of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in New York City signifies most visibly, offers the occasion to reevaluate just what was under attack that day, and why.

If it is true that Osama bin Laden and a faction of terrorists called al-Qaeda perpetrated those events, then we might conclude that Western power, symbolized by American economic and sociopolitical dominance, was the target. And the reason for attacking the Twin Towers was essentially envy that the global West possessed this dominance and the global East did not.

But if we allow that there was a suicidal gesture implicit in the felling of the Twin Towers, which their own vertical descent represented, as if incapable of enduring the affront, then we might concede that global economic interdependence was the target, and rather, the West had declared war on itself because a Western-led integrated world economy was nearing perfection.

If it was not “America” and all it stood for that was under attack that day, but instead a much less abstract enemy — world trade — then it is easier to thread together the events of September 11^th, 2001, with those acts of self-harm that the current American administration is inflicting in its deliberate yet desperate assaults on America’s international trade partners.

Hraïr Hratchian with Sarah Pagé and Kaitlyn Clark, ÉCHOS XIV, Ateliers Belleville, 21 August 2026

“Remember, in the immediate wake of 9/11, all those po-faced Adornoite proclamations that there would be ‘no more triviality’ in American popular culture after the Twin Towers fell?”
—Mark Fisher, “Choose Your Weapons”

Of the pop music albums released on September 11^th, 2001, three particularly stand out in my memory: Nickelback’s Silver Side Up; Is This It? by The Strokes; and Bob Dylan’s Love and Theft.

Reading popular culture as a harbinger of catastrophe is a tempting but tenuous proposition, like dream interpretation: there is no way to prove or disprove any available theory. Not to mention, American dreams are nearly too nightmarish to attempt to decode. Still, it is impossible to resist an analysis of concurrent events, for there is no such thing as a meaningless coincidence.

The opening song on Bob Dylan’s album is entitled “Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum” and begins with the lyrics:

Tweedle-dee Dum and Tweedle-dee Dee
They’re throwing knives into the tree
Two big bags of dead man’s bones
Got their noses to the grindstones

Dylan’s titular characters are most famously associated with the dramatis personae of Lewis Caroll’s 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, a story in which Alice enters a mirror world where, among other fantastical incongruities, logic is reversed. The Twin Towers were more than mere reverse images of one another; they embodied replication, reiteration, and automatonlike accumulation — the core logics of late capitalism.

In the traditional English nursery rhyme, Tweedledum and Tweedledee appear as identical yet opposing characters who clash over a broken rattle. Unexpectedly, the childish pair is attacked from above by a “monstrous crow” that frightens and distracts them from their original quarrel.

Was the monstrous crow actually a hijacked jetliner? Are the Twin Towers Tweedledum and Tweedledee, or a nation divided against itself? Did Bob Dylan, America’s honorary poet laureate, somehow portent that the Towers would ultimately befit “two big bags of dead man’s bones?”

Kali Malone with Kara-Lis Coverdale, X/Visions 1, MUTEK Festival, Maison Symphonique, 27 August 2026

“Sameness is not mastered, only approached.”
—K Hole, Youth Mode

Within similarity, subtle forms of variation emerge. Those who cannot remember history, as the adage goes, are condemned to repeat it. But no repetition is an exact duplicate. Duration always introduces surplus deviations.

As well, the commemoration of history continually revises it. Therefore, history’s routine remembrance, rather than guarding against its reprisal, ensures its reiteration. Time is the struggle that churns cream into butter.

Paracetamol Overclock, Diego Behncke, EISODE, 21 August – 1 October 2026

Significant differences in agency arise from the involutions and distributions of relations in code.”
—Adrian Mackenzie, Cutting Code

More than a dozen young people in the spring of 2021 in Calgary, Alberta, suffered from what came to be known colloquially as “TikTok tics” — dramatic and seemingly involuntary physical spasms like swinging arms or head twitches, often accompanied by vocal whoops and chirps.

Over the following 12 months, with which the second year of the Coronavirus pandemic coincided, thousands of teenagers — mostly girls or nonbinary adolescents, though nobody knows why — were treated worldwide for experiencing this strain of sudden physiological explosions. Of these individuals, the overwhelming majority began suffering from functional tic-like behaviours after watching TikTok videos of other teenagers claiming to have Tourette’s syndrome.

The meme is the form of utterance proper to contemporary digital culture. Each digital utterance is enfolded into code and circulates according to binary protocols. Recipients of utterances, however, are not the same as recipients of code. The language of memes, which humans interpret, is conveyed through the language of code, which computers interpret.

It may be through this non-human step of language translation, from binary to nonbinary, that twitches manifest in human beings as glitches manifest in autonomous technologies.

Ida Toninato with Pick a Piper and Barket, Expérience 1, MUTEK Festival, Esplanade Tranquile, 25 August 2026

“Man always dies before he is fully born.”
—Erich Fromm, Man for Himself

The notion of living up to one’s potential is an inherently capitalistic idea, although one that is usually coupled with idealism rather than nihilism. The Protestant work ethic which defined American exceptionalism encouraged social subjects to continually strive for improvement. A distortion arose when the object of desire became degradation rather than perfection.

The American ethic in the 21^st century is still locked into striving for some measure of improvement. Although what it is improving now is its own demise. The proof of an America in decline is that American exceptionalism extends to a perverse pride in perfecting disgrace. Imagine a conversation between two co-conspirators in a race to the bottom.

“Are we the worst that we can possibly be?” asks one.

“No,” replies the other, “I think we can still be better at being worse.”◼︎

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: Plush twin teddy bears on display at Sky Fleurs, Palais des congrès de Montréal. Photographed for NicheMTL.}