‘Bloodied and exhausted’ Dark Mofo chief ponders his future with Tasmanian festival

Leigh Carmichael is reconsidering his future with the Dark Mofo festival, saying the fallout from last year’s Union Flag controversy has left him humbled and exhausted.

Dark Mofo creative director Leigh Carmichael has spoken exclusively to The Weekend Australian’s Review liftout. Picture: Supplied

Leigh Carmichael is reconsidering his future as creative director at Tasmania’s Dark Mofo festival, saying the fallout from last year’s Union Flag controversy – a proposed artwork that called for donations of Indigenous blood – has left him humbled and exhausted.

Carmichael, who also said he felt isolated from the arts community during the crisis last year, told The Weekend Australian he would take some time to think about whether the 2023 iteration of the Hobart midwinter arts jamboree would be his last.

“Ten festivals in 10 years is a nice number,” said Carmichael, whose ninth festival wraps up on Wednesday. “Plus I’m exhausted.”

The creative director, who is a member of the Australia Council board, has spent a year in damage control following the festival’s commissioning in 2021 of a work about colonisation by Spanish artist Santiago Sierra.

The piece invited samples of blood from Indigenous Tasmanians which was to be pooled and used to ceremonially douse a Union Flag. The public response was swift, and brutal. Carmichael received death threats. The festival subsequently apologised and cancelled the work, but not before the entire festival almost suffered the same fate.

Carmichael said Dark Mofo had worked closely with the Indigenous community during the past year to “heal”; part of that process included the announcement in April 2021 of $60,000 in seed funding for Indigenous work and the employment of cultural officers at the event.

But he admitted in a long-­ranging interview, published in Review, that the experience had led to a “safer” program this year.

For an event that has variously buried 74-year-old performance artist Mike Parr beneath Hobart’s Main Street and staged the late Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch’s six-hour blood soaked 150.Action, featuring “disciples” crucified on a freshly slain bull carcass, the “safe word” is a significant shift in philosophy.

Hermann Nitsch’s 150.Action. Picture: Dark Mofo/Lusy Productions

So what does that mean for the future of the festival, jointly funded by the Tasmanian government and David Walsh, founder of the Museum of Old and New Art, of which Dark Mofo and its summer equivalent, Mona Foma, are offshoots?

“It is a challenge because we’ve really prided ourselves on being courageous and taking on some of the artists and projects that the major institutions just can’t or won’t,” he said.

While Carmichael takes full ­responsibility for the Union Flag situation last year, he said he felt abandoned by the arts community during that time. He suggested the experience was symptomatic of a broader lack of critical engagement with difficult art.

“I was surprised to see so much opposition from the cultural space,” he said.

“Perhaps there’s room for other folks at some of the major institutions to take on some difficult work. I think it’s important.

“I just think it’s disappointing for the cultural scene in Australia if we start to self-censor and that we’re afraid.

“It would be a shame if other arts programmers decided they are not up for taking on difficult topics in case they are cancelled.”