Dark Mofo’s finest art

EDITORIAL: The plan to bury an artist under Macquarie St for 72 hours has got Tasmania talking.

The container that will house artist Mike Parr underneath Macquarie St. Picture: DARK MOFO/REMI CHAUVIN

THERE are some seasonal certainties in Hobart this time of year as the autumn leaves turn from green to yellow and the days become shorter.

Our winters are cold and dark and as surely as puffer jackets and beanies make their annual return, Dark Mofo is going to get tongues wagging.

This city, and perhaps this nation, has never seen anything quite like it. Each year we are treated to a festival that amazes and inspires.

It attracts visitors from near and far and provides a welcome boost for our winter economy. And for the locals, it provides a welcome antidote to the winter blues.

Last year Hermann Nitsch’s dead bull was the talking point. For weeks the debate raged over whether the performance was art and what should be the boundaries of expression, with red-hot side debates on animal welfare and the like. It seemed a performance like that was going to be hard to top.

But this year, the organisers of Dark Mofo have come up with something that is possibly even more likely to prove puzzling and controversial — burying a 72-year-old man under the city’s busiest street.

Mike Parr’s Underneath the Bitumen the Artist is at the same time a massively public and intensely private performance.

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Although his entombment and resurrection will be a public event and the box in which he will live will be directly underneath the passing wheels of thousands of vehicles each day, he will dwell unseen underneath the road surface, and his 72-hour subterranean sojourn will be something we can only imagine.

Once he emerges, the steel box under the road outside Town Hall will be filled with concrete and entombed forever.

For some, this is not art. For some, this performance will not add anything to their lives beyond some traffic disruption and a general sense of bewilderment.

But for others — both here and abroad — this performance is something which will excite debate and imagination. It will form an intriguing interlude and be a talking point, or something to laugh about or be befuddled by.

For years those passing down Macquarie St will be reminded, by a visible patch on the road, that the journey is long between the extremes of human imagination, taste and expression, from the staid to the strange.

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There are practicalities. It needs to be safe. The disruption to traffic must be managed. And for pity’s sake, the road needs to be patched properly afterwards.

Over the last few years, David Walsh’s Mona has given us all an art lesson. Good art provokes a response.

Among the response to this work will include a lot of publicity for Hobart, a lot of visitors and a growing recognition that unlike some of our more staid counterparts interstate, Hobart is a city where — at least on some occasions — boundaries can be tested and limits explored with grand flourishes.

Just like Hermann Nitsch’s 150. Action, there will be many for whom Underneath the Bitumen the Artist lies beyond the bounds of art or good sense or good taste. It is unlikely we will all agree. There’s nothing wrong with that.