Revel in winter reveries
The great southern island breathes deepest in the darkness of the winter solstice.
Discover new dreams during the deep, long nights of Tasmania’s winter and snuggle through its days of sensory overload. The great southern island breathes deepest in the darkness of the winter solstice and Dark Mofo (June 8-21) is its pulsating heart - a cauldron of ideas, experiences and wonders. Tasmania’s creative energies burn brightest during this celebration like no other, when light and sound envelop Hobart, with braziers, food and fraternity warming bodies. Test your senses, question what you know and begin to dream again in this special winter state of mind. Your nostrils will flare, your pupils dilate and your eardrums will dance to Dark Mofo’s delights and frights.
The crazy geniuses at Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) know Tasmania’s unique sensory sensations deserve special accompaniments. They’ve programmed events that are not only simpatico with the state’s special assets; they bring rare international wonders exclusively to the southern state. Some of them will not - and cannot - be repeated, there or anywhere. For a taste of the extraordinary breadth of sensory experiences, head to Mona’s new international exhibit The Museum of Everything, a cornucopia of astonishing, unclassifiable art works spanning three centuries.
Dark Mofo is for all people, all tastes, all senses. Look up each night and find Hobart and its surrounds enveloped by Chris Levine’s and Marco Perry’s dazzling iy_project 136.1 Hz, featuring laser light projections that reach upwards for 10km to touch the heavens and announce the city as a beacon where art meets science.
Macquarie Point on Hobart’s docks will host the free large-scale public art playground Dark Park, where you can test your ideas among immersive, vibrant art works from around the world. Participate in The Purging, where everyone is invited to write their own terrors upon the Ogoh-ogoh, a demon-like wolf sculpture common to Balinese Hinduism. At festival end, those terrors will be extinguished after a parade and a lot of noise with the burning of the Ogoh-ogoh during one of Dark Mofo’s many celebrations of light, fire and noise.
Siren Song, a festival centrepiece delivering female incantations each sunrise and sunset via 550 loudspeakers placed around the banks of the Derwent, will signal the rise and fall of each day’s light and the beginning of each night’s artistic and culinary delights.
The 200km Crossing is another mass sound event. Travelling from Launceston over six days, it will pop into six churches to deliver sound, light and video performances, including pipe organ and Theremin recitals.
The festival’s range of art and performances will set all eyes and hearts racing. The Austrian founder of the Viennese art movement Actionism, Hermann Nitsch, will enthral the strong-willed with his controversial major work, 150.Action. It raises probing questions about modern life through the ceremonial sacrifice of a beast, with orchestra and “disciples” heightening the drama.
Australian performance artist Mike Parr returns with his new work Empty Ocean, and The Victorian Opera and Tasmanian Symphony Opera will present the classic fairy tale Sleeping Beauty, with the aid of a chorus of massive gothic puppets.