Dark Mofo 2023: Ultimate guide to 10th anniversary program
After 10 stellar years at the helm, this year’s Mofo will be the last for artistic director Leigh Carmichael. Huge international acts, the return of Dark Park – see what wicked treats he has in store.
Tasmania
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This year’s tenth anniversary edition of Dark Mofo will see the return of art hub Dark Park, five nights of Night Mass and a BYO pyjamas performance by composer Max Richter, who will unveil an eight-and-a-half hour composition as attendees drift into sleep.
The program for Dark Mofo 2023, the last for inaugural creative director Leigh Carmichael, a man who has spent the past decade provoking and mesmerising in equal measure, is jam-packed.
Carmichael said it was “overwhelming” to be able to announce a full two-week program filled with headline acts, new art commissions and exclusives.
“We’re excited to announce our tenth Dark Mofo line-up. The last few years have been challenging, and heavily impacted by Covid,” he said.
Carmichael said this year’s edition, to be held across more than 17 of Hobart’s best venues from June 8–22, will include the return of Dark Park, a large-scale art program, eight nights of Winter Feast and a massive music program.
Night Mass would also be expanded to five nights and be the festival’s “wildest party in our 10-year history”.
“While visitors can expect old favourites, we also have a few new surprises to unfurl,” Carmichael said.
“This year’s festival will be a reflection of the past decade, and while much has changed, our desire to celebrate the longest nights and embrace winter in Tasmania hasn’t wavered. We can’t wait to light the fires again this June.”
WEEK 1 PROGRAM
MUSIC
– Dark Mofo’s opening night celebration The Gathering will take over the In The Hanging Garden’s Cathedral and Odeon Theatre, featuring First Nations artists BARKAA, Tasman Keith, dameeeela, DENNI, MARLON X RULLA, Uncle Dougie Mansell, Katarnya Maynard, Rob Braslin, and many more artists. A presentation of artwork and performance developed in collaboration with YIRRAMBOI + Dark Mofo, ‘kin’ highlights the cross-cultural connections and kinship between Victoria’s Koorie and Tasmania’s Palawa peoples in developing works, building relationships and exchanging knowledge.
– Visionary composer Max Richter (DEU) brings us two double-billed performances of VOICES — a composition in dozens of languages reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, along with Recomposed — his complete reinterpretation of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
– Bass-playing extraordinaire Thundercat (USA) drives his virtuosic astral acid jazz into a psychedelic funk fusion. Witch (USA) invite us to surrender to a cascading haze of fuzzy riffs from the heavy stoner doom, with Dinosaur Jr’s J Mascis on the drums.
– Touring Australia for the first time, Ethel Cain (USA) will haunt us with her gothic pop and Deep South sound. Having quickly sold out multiple shows at Vivid and Rising festivals, this performance is a hot ticket.
– Punk-rock icons Black Flag (USA) will perform a one-off exclusive Australian show – their first time here since 2013. Drab Majesty’s (USA) exclusive performance will mix darkwave synth with dreams, supported by Bitumen’s (AUS) edgy industrial sounds.
– Eartheater (USA), a multi-instrumentalist producer whose experimental digital production and three-octave vocal range melds classical composition with avant-electronica.
– Pioneering English electronic artists Squarepusher (GBR) and Plaid (GBR) join on a double-header bill of twisty synth electronica.
– Sleaford Mods (GBR) will deliver their immaculately enraged punk-hop and ferociously poetic convulsions.
– Deafheaven (USA) will perform their post-metal album Sunbather exclusively for Dark Mofo, in conjunction with its 10th anniversary, while Zheani (AUS) will dish up a spicy performance of furious fairy trap, screamo, and electronica alongside Mahne Frame’s icy rave beats.
– Fulu Miziki (COD) are hosting an experimental workshop on crafting musical instruments from garbage. They’ll also be bringing their Congolese Afro-futurist collective to the stage, using their salvaged trash musical instruments and costumes.
– Zindzi & The Zillionaires (AUS) is fronted by ABC’s Play School host Zindzi Okenyo, who will present family-friendly daytime shows for junior darklings.
– Singer-songwriter Keeley Forsyth’s (GBR) emotionally raw and magnetic vocals tell stories of hard-won triumphs and the darker corners of domestic life.
– Tasman Keith (AUS) is Aussie hip hop’s new vanguard, whose music melds syrupy 90s synth with neo-funk, joined by GLVES (AUS).
– Borderlands is a program of experimental electronica with four events across two weekends, with the first presenting David Lynch collaborator Dean Hurley (USA), as well as Laurel Halo (USA), with more shows in the second week.
– Night Mass: Exstasia is the festival’s epic late-night event, this year bigger than ever, taking over three city blocks where artworks, performances, cocktail lounges, punk theatre, cinema cabarets, clubs and junkyard raves will create a sprawling metropolis.
ART AND PERFORMANCES
– A new commission from Dark Mofo faves United Visual Artists (UK) is Silent Symphony, a large-scale art installation of kinetic light and sound instruments mimicking planetary orbit.
– Two new commissions come from Martu artist Curtis Taylor (AUS), with video work Ngarnda (pain) referencing blood rituals, cultural rites and lived experience, and Boong, a multimedia installation exposing racial violence.
– Western Flag by John Gerrard (IRL) is a 10mx10m digital screen simulating a flagpole rapidly expelling an endless stream of black smoke, referencing Spindletop, Texas – the site of the world’s first major oil find in 1901.
– Without Us You Would Have Never Learnt About Love by Jason Phu (AUS) is an installation featuring hundreds of jailbroken musical toys forming a tragic opera about consumption and materialism.
– Giant Teddy is a new commission from EJ Son (AUS) – a giant Korean pop culture-inspired teddy bear with lasers for eyes and a camera feeding live surveillance to a separate space in Hobart.
– Dark Mofo’s deliriously hedonistic masquerade ball returns, this year called The Blue Rose Ball, so start planning your costume. When the ball has concluded, its mystery venue will transform into the Blue Velvet Lounge featuring live music, performance, and a place to purge your fears, as the home to this year’s Ogoh-Ogoh.
– Dark Mofo art partners around Hobart will be presenting an ambitious array of exhibitions, with the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery opening TWIST, a major exhibition exploring Dickensian themes that are relevant to Tasmania’s history. The exhibition will be accompanied by The Salon, ticketed evening openings on select nights, plus DJ sets and bar.
– Contemporary Art Tasmania will be opening Greed, Rakus, Gierig, an exhibition and participatory performance by Indonesian artist Tinsa Sanjaya (IDN), incorporating ceremony, ritual, movement, and dialogue, to rethink the nature of greed.
– Constance ARI will open Walls of Skin, a group exhibition contemplating the body with a focus on the uncomfortable and uncanny, while Good Grief Studios will open Histories – a group exhibition of diverse artists responding to notions of the past, or what has come before, including Australia’s Venice Biennale 2024 representative, Archie Moore.
– Plimsoll Gallery at UTAS will open Interfacial Intimacies, presenting a series of portraits and anti-portraits confronting the tensions of our networked personalities — our shadows, our masks, our shame.
– Hobart Library will present Stories After Dark, unearthing the mysteries of the past in the library after dark, where hidden collections, records and artefacts are illuminated for a night of storytelling and performance.
RITUALS
– The City of Hobart Dark Mofo Winter Feast continues into the festival’s second week, warming and brightening our darkest nights. The Feast takes over Princess Wharf Shed 1, Castray Esplanade, and Salamanca Lawns, across both weeks. READ MORE about stallholders.
– The annual Ogoh-Ogoh ritual returns, with The Purging at Mac Point, in which people can write down their fears on paper, and banish them into the belly of our massive sacrificial sculptural totem. This year, the Ogoh comes in the form of a duck-billed platypus.
– Dark Mofo’s public art hub Dark Park returns to Macquarie Point, with art installations and a cosy lounge bar with intimate performances; a home base to enjoy throughout the festival period.
WEEK 2 PROGRAM
MUSIC
– Visionary composer Max Richter (DEU) presents SLEEP – an eight-and-a-half hour composition based on the neuroscience of sleep. We’ll provide the bed, BYO pyjamas.
– Trentemøller (DNK), the indie electronic music composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist/soundtrack extraordinaire will deliver a theatrical electronic performance.
– King Woman (USA) bring their ethereal doom rock to Australia for the first time, delivering weighty songwriting with wistful, brooding and hypnotic beats.
– Hymns to the Dead returns with a brutal multi-band metal line-up, featuring Dødheimsgard (NOR), Uada (USA), Zuriaake (CHN), and Haunter (USA).
– Belarusian viral TikTok stars Molchat Doma (BLR) bring their post-punk and dark synthwave to Australia for the first time. HEALTH (USA) blends new wave, metal, and heavy industrial electronic sounds with violent trap.
– Drowning Horse (AUS), Extortion (AUS), Ironhawk (AUS) fill a stacked heavy line-up with sludge metal, blackened doom, hardcore, and raw punk rock.
– Behold The Wonder (AUS) is a winter solstice night performance to be performed by the Adelaide Chamber Singers – inspired by Hildegard of Bingen, 11th century Benedictine abbess and composer.
– Borderlands returns for week two, with three nights of electronic exploration featuring Carl Stone (USA/JPN), Rama Parwata (AUS/IDN), Lydian Dunbar (AUS), Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth) + Leah Singer (Contre Jour) (USA), Julia Reidy (AUS/DEU), Tujiko Noriko (FRA), Hiro Kone (USA), KMRU (KEN), and Hüma Utku (TUR).
– Berlin Atonal: Laterne returns with its international rave cave line-up, this year featuring Caterina Barbieri presents Spirit Exit (ITA), Blackhaine (GBR), Amnesia Scanner & Freeka Tet: kaaos.ooo (DEU), Rainy Miller (GBR).
– Loraine James (GBR) is a British electronic composer whose experimental approach is struck through with vulnerability and hope. Also on the line-up is CORIN (AUS), a Filipina-Australian electronic producer delivering eerie and grimy ambient trance club beats.
– Egyptian-Australian DJ and producer Moktar presents Qarae; a curated night of techno and IDM through the lens of Arabic percussion and instrumentation, joined by Nooriyah and Kid Pharaoh.
– Bo Ningen (GBR) bring their brooding and fierce headbanging rock with hardcore support from Smug Anime Face (AUS). Naarm/Melbourne post-punks RVG will be joined in catharsis by ENOLA.
– Night Mass: Exstasia continues with another weekend of nocturnal revelry, sprawling across three city blocks.
ART AND PERFORMANCE
– Florentina Holzinger (AUT) presents the Australian exclusive performance of A Divine Comedy, a large-scale theatrical performance consisting of a cast of 17 female performers, over 2 hours. Motocross, woodchopping, nudity and bodily fluids will feature strongly at this performance, taking over MyState Bank Arena. Content warning: Nudity, live sex scenes, hazing and strobing effects, adult content.
– Hello Dankness is a 70 minute film by sample-based experimental film duo Soda Jerk (AUS) bearing witness to the psychotropic spectacle of American politics from 2016 to 2021.
– Text of Light features Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth (USA), Alan Licht (USA), and Ulrich Krieger (DEU) join forces for an improvised live soundtrack to accompany Stan Brakhage’s 1974 experimental time-lapse film.
– Collaborative drone choir NYX (GBR) will perform noise, music and song, as well as creating an immersive live soundscape for NYX x DO.OMYOGA: Nada Sound Ceremony led by DO.OMYOGA’s Kamellia Sara. Yoga mats will be provided.
– Continuing from Week One, art and performances will include Western Flag by John Gerrard (IRL), Without Us You Would Have Never Learnt About Love by Jason Phu (AUS), Silent Symphony by United Visual Artists (GBR), Giant Teddy by EJ Son (AUS), and Ngarnda and Boong by Curtis Taylor (AUS), as well as festival art partner exhibitions at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Contemporary Art Tasmania, Constance ARI, Good Grief Studios, and Plimsoll Gallery.
RITUALS
– The City of Hobart Dark Mofo Winter Feast continues into the festival’s second week, warming and brightening our darkest nights. The Feast takes over Princess Wharf Shed 1, Castray Esplanade, and Salamanca Lawns, across both weeks. Stallholders, and more to be announced in May.
– Dark Mofo’s public art hub Dark Park continues at Macquarie Point, with art installations and a cosy lounge bar with intimate performances; a home base to enjoy throughout the festival period.
– The annual Ogoh-Ogoh will be transported in a procession across the waterfront to The Burning at Mac Point, a public ritual releasing our fears by fire on the final night.
– The Nude Solstice Swim returns at sunrise on June 22, welcoming back the sun after the longest night, offering renewal and resurrection to the 2000 or so courageous participants.
For tickets and more information on all these events and more, CLICK HERE.
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Originally published as Dark Mofo 2023: Ultimate guide to 10th anniversary program
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