Tag Archives: MAI

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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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Catching the Big Fish

Traceable, Nubian Néné, MAI, 15 January 2025

Great art makes space for ideas.

It might be interesting to learn about an artist’s personal life, or to consider the cultural context within which their artwork was conceived. But what is actually important about any work, whatever medium or form it takes, is whether it cultivates deliberation.

After the affective impact is experienced, what is left are trace elements of contemplation.

Mahler’s Sixth Symphony with Payare, Maison Symphonique, 16 January 2025

Maestro Payare conducts the OSM’s performance of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony at Maison Symphonique. Gabriel Fournier for the OSM.

Comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin. There is always a drop, like the yin and the yang, of one inside the other. It is impossible not to recognize the sadness behind a frantic laugh, or to find calamity a bit hilarious.

An apocryphal story that circulated about Twin Peaks concerns the pilot episode’s premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in 1989. At the most devastating moment, when Sarah Palmer learns of her daughter Laura’s death, the audience apparently erupted in laughter.

The tendency toward cascading misfortune is a source of particular humour. Whenever a situation deteriorates from bad to worse, we cannot help but be amused. It’s a specific kind of schadenfreude, the discovery of a perverse sense of pleasure in regarding the pain of others.

Yolk, Two Readers and Music IV with Ashley Mayne, Gloriah Amondi, and James Player, 9 January 2025

Guitarist James Player performs at Yolk’s Two Readers and Music IV. Photographed for NicheMTL.

So-called “smart” technologies often aren’t.

Why would you want the door to your washing machine to automatically lock as a childproofing feature? What if your child was locked inside the machine?

As I write this article, Microsoft Word has restarted of its own volition and automatically enabled something called “Copilot.”

Copilot, ostensibly, is Microsoft’s Artificial Intelligence integration that can answer questions and summarize sentences and compose calls to action, as if every piece of writing should be some listicle about 13 restaurants you need to try whilst visiting Montreal. Or whatever.

The worst part about Copilot is that I can’t seem to figure out how to disable it. Every time I start writing a new paragraph, there it is, a little icon blinking at me, like Clippy on cocaine, prompting me to click on it, and by clicking on it, to train it to think like I do.

Get this through your artificially intelligent simulation of a head, Microsoft: the only copilot I need is God.

Janis Rafa, Landscape Depressions, Centre Vox, 17 January — 1 March 2025

Still image from The Space Between Your Tongue and Teeth, 2003, Janis Rafa, Centre Vox. Photographed for NicheMTL.

It may come to pass that animal intelligence will soon surpass human intelligence in the form of instinct.

We have begun to rely so heavily upon machines to do our thinking for us that inherent flaws are compounding and multiplying in our own faulty faculties. We are failing to recognize that within the systems of machinic control with which we have surrounded and propped up ourselves, there is an unseen disciplining apparatus at work that imprisons our physical and even our mental gestures.

The only escape may be to lean on intuition, relaxing our fingers on the Ouija board gadget and allowing the machine to exorcise its own ghost.

Alexandra Streliski, Salle Wilfrid Pelletier, 17 January 2025

Alexandra Streliski onstage at Salle Wilfrid Pelletier. Photographed for NicheMTL.

The standard piano has twelve notes across seven and one quarter octaves on only 88 keys.

That’s a surprisingly small number of sounds for an instrument that sits at the centre of Western musical composition. But limitation is paradoxically liberating, permitting virtually infinite combinations.

There are no wrong notes on the piano. It just depends on what song you’re trying to play.

David Lynch (20 January 1946—15 January 2025)

“Experience the joy of doing. And you’ll glow in this peaceful way.” —David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish

David Lynch, aside from being one of the most compelling filmmakers in the brief history of cinema, was also a painter, a photographer, a musician, a furniture maker, and a proto internet pioneer.

Before there was such a thing as social media, Lynch sold monthly subscriptions to his website, davidlynch.com, whereupon he would post what we now call “content” — absurd short videos of Japanese girls talking about bananas, and people in domestic environments wearing enormous rabbit masks, and Lynch himself delivering daily weather reports from his home in Los Angeles. He also sporadically responded to questions that his subscribers would email in.

To say that I was a David Lynch fan in the early 2000s is an understatement. I was determined to become an artistic Renaissance man just like him. I had sought out and seen all of his films. I had watched every documentary and read every book about him that I could find. I even paid for a subscription to his website. And thinking that he might hold some sort of secret to becoming a brilliant artist, or at least a key to how to get into film school, I decided to send him a question.

A few subscriptions cycles later, Lynch thoughtfully answered it. I was thrilled to hear my hero acknowledge my existence, much less offer me some sage advice.

David Lynch in 2003 offering advice.

Soon afterward, I went out and made a film, moved from Edmonton to Montreal, attended and graduated from film school, continued on to complete a master’s degree and Ph.D., pivoted from filmmaking to writing, and launched a niche publication that combines cultural criticism with narrative nonfiction in hopefully novel and creative ways.

None of these things made me rich or famous. But they fulfilled me nonetheless and continue to do so in large part because I never strayed from the core of Lynch’s guidance, which was simply to learn by doing — and to be the best me that I can be.

My opinion of David Lynch’s movies has shifted in 25 years, since good drama is always about change. But my gratitude to Lynch as an artist has only grown.

Because in addition to being the kind of artist who more than anything inspired ideas to flourish, Lynch’s greatest artform may have been to encourage other artists to keep making their art.

That, I believe, is Lynch’s eternal legacy.◼︎

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: Nubian Néné performs at MAI, 15 January 2025. Photographed for NicheMTL.

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