We’ve just had a quick peek at this year’s Dark Mofo offerings, and they’ve managed to jam in as much if not more as past festivals.
The program includes free and ticketed events, including the ever popular Winter Feast as well as the Nude Solstice Swim at dawn on June 21st. Other free events include Ogoh-ogoh, Dark Park, Basilica and the Winter Feast after 9pm. While most of the events happen in Hobart, Launceston is also hosting events with Methyl Ethyl and Thelma Plum and Ulverstone is presenting XYZZY, a psychedelic mural in the Planetarium.
Dark Mofo runs between 5 and 15th June as well as the Solstice Swim on the 21st. Music at Mona during the day, morphing into Basilica and Dark Park at 4pm before evening events at Odeon, Playhouse Theatre, Altar Bar and more. Night Mass: God Complex is a shrine to excess at a undisclosed location at 10pm through to 4am.
Acts playing include the extreme metal and absurdist mayhem of Clown Core from the USA, UK’s Forest Swords and The Horrors and Aussie faves The Peep Tempel. Most of the venues are clustered in central Hobart, all within convenient walking distance. Festival exclusive Machine Girl from the USA is furious digital hardcore for the collapse of civilisation.
Ambient lovers will lock in Borderlands with Lisa Gerrard + Cye Wood + William Barton from Australia teamed up with Felicia Atkinson from France and Hand to Earth from Australia.
Trawlwoolway artist Nathan Maynard is presenting a legacy of cultural theft and erasure laid bare on basement shelves in Coogan’s Building entitled “We Threw Them Down the Rocks Where They Had Thrown the Sheep”. This free event runs throughout the festival. Get lost in a house of mirrors at Mona by artists Christian Wagstaff and Keith Courtney.
Ogoh-ogoh: The Purging happens at Dark Park on the weekends, where you can commit your fears to a giant Maugean skate, a species only found in Tasmania’s Macquarie Harbour. Balinese artists have crafted a totem-like sculpture derived from a Balinese Hindu purification ritual.
Also in Dark Park, Swiss artist Claudia Comte will be presenting “La Danse Macabre” whereby two pianists perform Saint-Saëns’ Symphonic meditation on death, while a wooden sculpture is consumed by flame and a motocross rider jumps through the inferno.
Check HERE for more information on this exciting and bold festival.
Tickets go on sale on April 9th, but you can subscribe HERE to receive updates and access to festival tickets.
