The latest “blatant agenda to bring hell to earth” in sleepy old Hobart has just kicked off, and true to form, it’s timed the pressing of the outrage button to perfection.
Dark Mofo, Tasmania’s annual two-week festival of “large-scale public art, food, music, fire, light and noise” began on Thursday, with opponents warning the event “welcomes evil”.
Signage on the big screen at Hobart’s airport baggage claim stating WELCOME TO HELL caused the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) to fire up the press release computer last week.
“For too long Tasmanians have been sold the lie that Dark Mofo is harmless fun, but no longer,” ACL director Christopher Brohier warned in a statement.
“The ACL calls on all Tasmanians to take a stand against Dark Mofo and their blatant agenda to bring hell to earth and for the Tasmanian government to act swiftly to reverse the growing reputation of Tasmania as the Australian state that welcomes evil.”
In 2020, coronavirus did what the ACL couldn’t, forcing Dark Mofo to cancel.
It returned in 2021 and this year is celebrating a decade of “darkness”, with Hobart opening its arms to the thousands of tourists who arrive at the coldest time of the year to wander around a town lit up with red spotlights.
As well as charming the crowds from the first event in 2013, Dark Mofo has also – by accident or design – annoyed and antagonised people.
Here are some of the most noteworthy examples from Dark Mofo through the years.
Nude solstice swim
From the get-go, this was an attention grabber.
Initially planned, according to Dark Mofo’s Leigh Carmichael, as “15, maybe 20, people” stripping off and running into the water at a Hobart beach at dawn on the winter solstice, entrants swelled to more than 200, a “beach full of bums”.
Tasmania Police took a dim view and the swim was cancelled, then it was back on again, after being moved from Nutgrove Beach to the presumably less problematic Long Beach about 600m away.
There it’s stayed, becoming one of the most popular events on the Dark Mofo calendar.
Inverted crosses
Placing large, illuminated upside down crosses around Hobart’s popular waterfront precinct did exactly what it was supposed to do – prompt much frothing from the clergy.
Going against the flow was University of Tasmania Fellowship of Christians campus director Mike Lynch who urged people to calm the farm.
“Hanging a cross upside down is like a Grade 12 art installation, so just chill out.”
Bull carcass
Before 2017’s Dark Mofo had even started, the show – 150.Action by Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch – had the bells ringing.
Word had got out that the three-hour event would involve the “slaughter” of a bull and was being promoted as a “bloody sacrificial ritual”, prompting outrage from animal rights groups.
Mr Carmichael asked that “those members of the public who believe that this is no more than shock art, or a publicity stunt, we urge you to look deeper”, adding “if we cancel this event, not one bull will be saved”.
The event went on, resulting in responses ranging from “boredom” to “exhilaration“.
In conversation with a jihadist
2018’s program included an appearance by a former jihadist who was said to have “dedicated 15 years to recruitment, radicalisation, fundraising and fighting in Afghanistan, Kashmir and Burma”.
The appearance went ahead but via video link, after Muhammad Manwar Ali was refused a visa to enter Australia.
The same year, crowds poured into the CBD to watch as a man climbed into a custom-dug hole under the road, emerging 72 hours later as part of a performance titled Under the Bitumen.
The artist Mike Parr explained the work as being “conceived to memorialise the victims of 20th century totalitarian violence in all of its ideological forms, including the shadow cast by the genocidal violence of 19th century British colonialism in Australia”.
The then lord mayor Ron Christie was not a fan.
“I voted against it, not for art’s sake, but for heaven’s sake,” he said at the time.
“During peak hour on this arterial road of ours, we have something like 2000 to 3000 vehicles going through. We have enough traffic problems in Hobart now without any more occurring.”
The blood flag
In 2021, the outrage came from within, with Dark Mofo staff and some management joining others in loudly condemning the invitation for Aboriginal people to donate blood for it to be used to soak a Union Jack flag.
Intended, according to the Spanish artist, as “acknowledgement of the pain and destruction colonialism has caused First Nations peoples, devastating entire cultures and civilisations”, the Union Flag event was abandoned following intense criticism.
Mr Carmichael and David Walsh, owner of Dark Mofo’s parent MONA, apologised, with an undertaking in future the festival would listen and consult.
As for the artist Santiago Sierra, it was clear whatever he was planning would prompt a big reaction.
His previous works included tattooing a line across the backs of heroin-addicted sex workers and pumping carbon monoxide into a former synagogue in Germany and inviting people to walk through it with a gas mask on.
(Dis)honourable mentions
The yearly Mofo roster of black metal bands doing their thing has no doubt added to the concerns of a portal to the underworld opening up in the Hobart CBD, with this year’s Hymns to the Dead show the latest instalment.
While much has been made of the provocative events on Dark Mofo’s list over the years, there are also the weird thought-provoking installations that are the festival’s bread and butter.
This year, patrons have paid $249 to turn up and snooze through SLEEP, a performance by a composer which is “BYO pyjamas (bedding is supplied)”. The event is sold out.
Also featuring is GIANT TEDDY, where a large plush bear “watches over you while you dance” with footage “captured and transmitted to a separate location”. That one is free.
With other Mofo shows over the years including an installation at a former asylum featuring buckets of the artist’s urine (courtesy of hole-in-the-street guy Mike Parr), inflatable genitalia, epilepsy-triggering lightshows and an event in which speakers mounted on city buildings broadcast a “siren song” twice a day in coordination with a helicopter flying around using its mounted tsunami warning system to ‘sing’ back, the list of events that challenge the perception of art is long.
With the ACL calling on Tasmanians “of good will to boycott Dark Mofo” for yet another year, organisers and the state government – which has $7.5 million invested – will be hoping the festival delivers Hobart from the evils of a boring winter.
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Dark Mofo. Seems a lot of rubbish to me. and what does the achronym MOFO stand for, and it is allied to MONA, whateveer that stands for. Please4 explain, somebody