A taste of what to expect from Mike Parr's mental asylum art installation. 'The Emetics [blue]' by Mike Parr (1977). Image courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery
Dark Mofo is back for another year of music, film, art, and early morning naked swimming. The program for Mona’s midwinter festival has just been announced and it’s dark and gloomy in all the right ways.Things are set to get off to an eerie start in the first week with Mike Parr’s Asylum, an installation that takes place in different rooms of an old mental institution. It includes a performance in which Parr will draw for 72 hours. It doesn’t cost money to visit, but attendees are required to leave a mirror of any kind in exchange for their admission.
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The goth levels are taken up an extra notch at Dark Park, a dedicated art space at Macquarie Point on Hobart’s docks. We’re promised immersive and interactive installations from artists including United Visual Artists (UK), Grupo EmpreZa (Brazil) Patrick Hall, Cameron Robbins and more.Nearby, the Black Box pop up performance space will play host to the dark ambient music of Lustmord and Japanese noise artist Ryoji Ikeda, as well as a sound and light spectacular performed by Tim Hecker and Marcel Weber.Other art highlights include the Australian premiere of a film work by Young British Artist Tacita Dean starring Stephen Dillane from Games of Thrones.We’ll also be looking forward to the bacchanalia of Blacklist, Dark Mofo’s late-night art party that takes place both weekends of the festival—artists to be announced.
Blacklist last year. Photo via Mona/Phil Kitt. Courtesy of Dark Mofo
The festival’s second week will begin with the opulent communal banquet that is the Dark Mofo Winter Feast, and continue on with an annual purging ritual where participants write their fears down on paper and sacrifice them to a giant fire demon. Really.Bring your best black skinny jeans along so you’ll be dressed appropriately for Hymns to the Dead, a compilation of black metal from Europe and Australia. California’s Chelsea Wolfe will be bring her own sense of haunting melancholy to the occasion, and the UK’s Savages will satisfying the noise-rock component.
Dark Mofo 2014 Nude Solstice Swim. Photo via Mona/Rosie Hastie
The longest night of the year in the southernmost city of Australia requires a special early morning ritual, and Dark Mofo offers one of the best: the sunrise Nude Solstice Swim on June 21. It’s the only appropriate way to cleanse yourself of the dark sins committed in the days prior, and the perfect end to eleven days of debauchery.
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