In his foreword to this year’s Dark Mofo festival, Chris Twite (Artistic Director) asks visitors to embrace the darkness of the winter solstice and sit in the quiet, liminal spaces on offer in the face of an increasingly tumultuous world.
Can art, music and food delivered in the darkest corners of Tasmanian winter save us from the cacophony? It’s clear that once again, it can.
Dark Mofo has always been one of my favourite festivals in Australia. Its combination of edgy art, alternative music programming, headline-grabbing food offerings at the hedonist Winter Feast, and the all-out, balls-out, throbbing party of Night Mass feels as unique in the current Australian festival circuit as it does challenging. But this year, its purposeful, palpable quiet was a moment of reflection for all of us looking into the future with uncertainty.
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
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There were still moments of classic Dark Mofo subversion though. Whether you were taking a shot of alcohol from rubber dicks by bartenders waving them toward you at eye level as they walked the bartops at Night Mass; whisked away in a dark car alone to view a trippy film you’re not allowed to talk about, that has been seen by less than 500 people worldwide; or watching Lolo & Sosaku wielding Makita angle grinders as instruments to accompany their experimental electronic music aided by a robot tongue playing the drum line; there were plenty of 2026 memories that fit perfectly into Dark Mofo lore.
But there was also a stillness I haven’t before witnessed at the festival – a restraint that asked you to sit down, to take a moment to consider this exact place, this exact time you are living in. A cavernous warehouse holding only a tangle of belts swinging back and forth silently across the room, save for the occasional thwack of a buckle. A church hall bathed in a singular, warm light as ashes fall from the ceiling. A quiet hall with a spotlight trained on 34 suited men assembled in a pyramid of tables, holding each other up, impossibly, with only their teeth. (My father-in-law, a doctor in physics, was perplexed by the illusion – if indeed it was one – after calculating the potential load on one’s mouth…)
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Even the music offering seemed reflective compared to last year’s. Purity Ring embraced us in the arms of their ethereal electro pop, the beats pulsing through a surprisingly sombre room. A laid-back set from South London’s Dry Cleaning was followed by a low energy 20th Anniversary appearance from The Black Angels. Only Danny Brown’s raucous set livened up an initially tentative crowd – who, after his relentless energy had riled them up sufficiently, descended into a mosh pit, which descended into a circle pit, which was broken up promptly by a group of concerned security guards.
And as I committed my fears to paper and stuffed them into the belly of this year’s Oogh Oogh – a sculptural sacrifice that is paraded down the city streets and burned on the last night to ‘purge’ our deepest anxieties – I wondered why, when the world is on fire, our biggest fears always seem so personal and so small.
Dark Mofo runs until 22 June. Find out more here.
