City ready to come alive as Dark Mofo festival kicks off
IT has been simmering away for the past week, but Dark Mofo will really start cooking on tonight, with an estimated 15,000 people on the Hobart waterfront and city streets. SEE THE GALLERY | WATCH THE VIDEO | CHECK OUT OUR GUIDE
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IT has been simmering away for the past week, but Dark Mofo will really start cooking on Friday night, with an estimated 15,000 people on the Hobart waterfront and city streets.
With big-ticket attractions including the Winter Feast, Dark Park and Night Mass all opening their doors for the first time, it is certain to be one of the city’s biggest and busiest nights of the year.
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“I think this has the potential to be the best festival yet – I’m reluctant to jinx it, but that’s how it feels,” Dark Mofo creative director Leigh Carmichael said.
“It’s certainly the biggest, deepest and widest program we’ve put together.”
Along with musical performances by the likes of St Vincent, Blixa Bargled and Archie Roach and Tiddas, Friday night will feature many highly anticipated openings.
WINTER FEAST
The Princes Wharf 1 area will host the Winter Feast for the sixth year, with about 80 stallholders offering a range of quality, ethically-sourced Tasmanian produce.
Six visiting chefs will pair up with local chefs to create their own unique ‘locavore’ menus. And, as usual, there’ll be plenty of fire, including a custom-made barbecue for roasting whole Scottish Highland cows.
DARK PARK
Dark Mofo’s after-dark industrial-scale art park will bring Macquarie Point to life from 5pm, with an array of installations, lasers, fire, puppet shows, music and more.
Highlights include US artist Matthew Schreiber’s interactive laser installation Leviathan, which uses hundreds of red laser beams to create stunning geometrical sculptures.
United Visual Artists’ light and sound installation Musical Universalis will also be popular, as a series of illuminated orbs light up a darkened warehouse.
NIGHT MASS
The festival’s new noctural neighbourhood Night Mass will activate five venues and two outdoor spaces in the Murray and Liverpool streets precinct, offering “contemporary dance, avant electronic, rock’n’roll, blood sports, misty archways and car bars, Cambodian drag, sonic ping-pong, erotic dance to sad songs, DJs spinning classical music, and some surprises”.
Musical highlights over the two weekends will include Melbourne punk band High Tension, Chilean band Föllakzoid, Arnhem Land rapper Baker Boy, Los Angeles synth-pop artist Geneva Jacuzzi, David Lynch collaborator Rebekah Del Rio, and Brooklyn rapper, Ms. Boogie.
Night Mass opens at 10pm on Friday and Saturday, and again next Friday and Saturday. Tickets are $65 at the door, subject to capacity.
INVISIBLE HOUSE
Described as “a frenzied celebration of arcane knowledge, magic, science and the occult”, Invisible House opened at the Salamanca Art Centre on Thursday night.
It features the work of maverick filmmakers, installation artists and visionary photographers, including the unveiling of 30 previously unseen photographs by “the Anti-Christ of American photography”, William Mortensen.
Invisible House curator Brendan Walls became the first to receive a ritual Sak Yant “magic tattoo” from Thai monk Ajarn Ohr. About 70 other people are booked in for new ink over the next 10 days.
kane.young@news.com.au
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