Speaker 1: From The Australian. This is the weekend edition of The Front.
Speaker 1: I'm Claire Harvey. Contemporary art is all about pushing boundaries.
Speaker 2: Someone's going to love it, everything about it is so wonderful.
Speaker 2: Someone's going to think it's garbage. I don't think I'll
Speaker 2: be got.
Speaker 1: And then the conversation the publicity can become bigger than
Speaker 1: the art itself.
Speaker 2: Dark Mofo is.
Speaker 1: The brainchild of David Walsh, the founder of Hobart's Museum
Speaker 1: of Old and New Art, and his mates Lee Carmichael
Speaker 1: and Brian Ritchie. They seem to understand this principle better
Speaker 1: than anyone. Their annual Tasmanian Festival, a celebration of darkness,
Speaker 1: has gone from edgy to all grown up.
Speaker 2: So does it still have the power to shock?
Speaker 1: And why does everyone love getting nude at Dark Mofo.
Speaker 1: David Walsh, a professional gambler turned art magnate, has transformed
Speaker 1: tourism in Tasmania.
Speaker 3: Dark Mofo is back some fantastic news for our tourism
Speaker 3: and hospitality industry by.
Speaker 1: Luring huge crowds to his subversive adult disneyland, a gallery
Speaker 1: in Hobart called Mona. According to one of his collaborators
Speaker 1: Lee Carmichael. There's one thing Walsh doesn't like, spending money
Speaker 1: on marketing. Mona lures hundreds of thousands of visitors a year,
Speaker 1: but there used to be a winter loll when Hobart's
Speaker 1: cold and generally miserable winter kept the tourists away.
Speaker 2: So Walsh, Carmichael and their.
Speaker 1: Offsider Brian Ritchie, the bassist from the Violent Femmes by
Speaker 1: the Way, took ninety percent of their advertising budget and
Speaker 1: threw a party. It is very noisy, but that noisy
Speaker 1: to here is all part of attracting the evil spirits
Speaker 1: and then burning them in order to start a new
Speaker 1: life free of evil, not just any party a backenal
Speaker 1: that turns the city into a pagan playground. Tim Douglas
Speaker 1: is the editor of The Australians Review Arts and Culture section.
Speaker 1: The Dark Mofo Festival sets out to be provocative, which
Speaker 1: is an interesting choice, isn't it for a state which
Speaker 1: is probably regarded by the rest of Australia as relatively conservative.
Speaker 1: Yet the choice of a festival is to be as
Speaker 1: troublemaking as possible.
Speaker 2: Is that fair?
Speaker 3: Absolutely fair? David Walsh is nothing if not an gen provocateur.
Speaker 3: The idea to make it as edgy as possible was
Speaker 3: certainly a conscious one and it's paid off. It has
Speaker 3: really changed the face of not only Tasmanian tourism, but
Speaker 3: midwinter tourism in that state. At the beginning, it was
Speaker 3: basically all funded by David Walsh. They eventually got some
Speaker 3: government funding and then they had some commercial funding. They
Speaker 3: ended up scrapping that commercial funding about twenty fifteen or
Speaker 3: sixteen because they felt like they were being creatively compromised
Speaker 3: by those commercial imperatives. Now do they go out of
Speaker 3: their way every year to program something provocative? You'd have
Speaker 3: to say yes, I mean this year is another great example.
Speaker 3: Nathan Maynard's work called they threw Us down the rocks
Speaker 3: like they did with the sheep, a verbatim quote from
Speaker 3: a police report in the nineteenth century about the murder
Speaker 3: of some indigenous people. This work by Maynard includes four
Speaker 3: hundred and eighty decapitated sheep in formaldehyde, which is a
Speaker 3: comment on the way indigenous remains have been fetishized and
Speaker 3: kept in private museums around the world. Now, that was
Speaker 3: the first programming venture for this year. They a ounce
Speaker 3: obviously hoping to capitalize on media attention. Tasmania, as we know,
Speaker 3: has a very complicated relationship with its indigenous past, and
Speaker 3: in fact, this work didn't go down particularly well with
Speaker 3: a lot of indigenous people. There were some people who
Speaker 3: came out and said dark Mofo has some sick fetish
Speaker 3: with indigenous pain. So I'm not sure it worked entirely
Speaker 3: in their favor during the initial launch a few months ago.
Speaker 3: But the first weekend has apparently gone off without a hitch,
Speaker 3: and there's plenty of other dark things to come over
Speaker 3: the next week and a half.
Speaker 1: Presumably the artist's intention was to shock people who wear
Speaker 1: twin sets and pearls and not your art crowd, not
Speaker 1: necessarily to shock the people whose narrative he was trying
Speaker 1: to amplify. And that reference to dark Mofo having a
Speaker 1: fetish with indigenou pain, that's a reference to a twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two work, isn't it That caused a big controversy.
Speaker 4: It did.
Speaker 3: Santiago Sierra called on Indigenous Tasmanians to donate their blood,
Speaker 3: which would be collected in a vessel into which the
Speaker 3: Union Flag would be doused.
Speaker 4: The work was called Union Flag. It caused a huge storm.
Speaker 3: Aboriginal people have spilt way too much blood over the
Speaker 3: past two hundred years.
Speaker 2: We don't feel like we need to bleed in.
Speaker 3: The festival almost shut down. Lee Carmichael was hounded personally.
Speaker 3: I know that he had a very tough time trying
Speaker 3: to navigate those waters. The festival eventually seated and said, look,
Speaker 3: we made a mistake. They embarked on a six month
Speaker 3: program of Indigenous education for their.
Speaker 4: Staff and for the festival itself, But.
Speaker 3: In so doing many people wondered whether they'd actually compromised
Speaker 3: the integrity of their original vision, which was to be
Speaker 3: as edgy as possible and as unapologetically artistic as it
Speaker 3: was originally conceived to be. And people wondered whether Dark
Speaker 3: Mofo would shift to that place it fears the very most,
Speaker 3: the middle.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in some of the works this year. One
Speaker 1: where an artist is staging ahead on car crash at
Speaker 1: what seems to me like great risk to her personal safety.
Speaker 4: Absolutely so.
Speaker 3: Paula Garcia, Brazilian artist and probably the best known student
Speaker 3: of the world's foremost performance artist, Marina Abramovich. She drives
Speaker 3: headlong into another car driven by a stunt driver.
Speaker 4: Now it's not as simple.
Speaker 3: As that they circle each other in this sort of
Speaker 3: centrifugal motion for ninety minutes until that tension builds and
Speaker 3: they eventually slam into each other.
Speaker 4: It's called body crash.
Speaker 3: The idea behind that work was that she was sitting
Speaker 3: on a bus and she wondered what it would be
Speaker 3: like to be covered in the armor of the bus
Speaker 3: and to have herself magnetically dragged into another object.
Speaker 1: The other question when it comes to provocative art is
Speaker 1: about privilege and who gets to provoke. This is someone
Speaker 1: who has never been in her head on car crash
Speaker 1: that she didn't choose to be in. Presumably survivors of
Speaker 1: head on car crashes who've had their lives destroyed or
Speaker 1: seen other people's lives destroyed would not think it was
Speaker 1: amusing or an artistic endeavor.
Speaker 4: No, I wouldn't think so. But perhaps in the moment
Speaker 4: it was.
Speaker 3: Maybe that tension builds to something quite dramatic and visceral.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure it's a stunt, but it's art, or
Speaker 3: maybe it's a stunt in the name of art.
Speaker 4: I mean, who are we to judge?
Speaker 1: Another one that I was sort of prepared to be
Speaker 1: annoyed by but actually seems like it might have been
Speaker 1: quite fun. Was using the emergency warning system, the sirens
Speaker 1: in Hobart and the emergency messaging system to alert Hobatians
Speaker 1: that there was about to be a really unavoidable performance
Speaker 1: that they were going to have to listen to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: It's Richard Brussel, So, famed English DJM producer was tasked
Speaker 3: with taking over this, as you say, emergency sonic sound system.
Speaker 3: David Walsh is one of the only private citizens in
Speaker 3: the world to own this technology. It's called the Genesis
Speaker 3: three sixty x L and every state has one in
Speaker 3: case there's a title waver, there's an earthquake.
Speaker 4: But they got permission from.
Speaker 3: The council for half an hour last Saturday and this
Speaker 3: Saturday to do whatever they liked, and everyone within a
Speaker 3: seven kilometer radius of the Hobart CBD will find whatever
Speaker 3: comes out of those speakers unavoidable.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting, this idea of deliberately setting out to
Speaker 1: annoy people or to provoke in the hope that you'll
Speaker 1: get some publicity, or to genuinely do something that you
Speaker 1: is different and that is coming out of you in
Speaker 1: an irrepressible way. And you could say that the works
Speaker 1: of Turner were shocking when they were first painted, or
Speaker 1: the music of Shostakovich that were not necessarily intending to
Speaker 1: be provocative in what we might regard as a self
Speaker 1: indulgent kind of dark Mofo got away.
Speaker 2: What's your view about that?
Speaker 1: Do you think art should just flow or is it
Speaker 1: legitimate and is it art to just set out to
Speaker 1: kind of get a headline.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't suggest that that's actually what they're doing. I mean,
Speaker 3: I do support their right to make public art. I
Speaker 3: mean it's no more offensive really than walking past statue
Speaker 3: of rodin and in a public outdoor gallery in Canberra, really,
Speaker 3: and so I think it's really interesting, and I think
Speaker 3: people in Hobart, certainly my family, love dark Moto, love
Speaker 3: that experimental.
Speaker 4: Edge, and are open to it.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't thk there's any other a city
Speaker 3: in the country, let alone the world, that would maybe
Speaker 3: allow that kind of thing to happen, would allow the
Speaker 3: inverted illuminated crosses to go up, would have allowed Mike
Speaker 3: Parer to inter himself beneath the city's main road for
Speaker 3: three days and have cars drive over the top of it.
Speaker 3: I mean it's just you have to hand it to
Speaker 3: the leaders there and also the way the festival works
Speaker 3: with the government to get these things off the ground. Look,
Speaker 3: do I think Richard Russell's work is something of great
Speaker 3: artistic sustenance and substance? Probably not. Do I support his
Speaker 3: right to do it? And do I think Tasmanians on
Speaker 3: the whole, if not loved, then at least tolerate the idea. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2: Coming up.
Speaker 1: Tim goes for a nude Solstice swim with Lee Carmichael
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty three. Tim Douglas was in Hobart for
Speaker 1: Dark Mofo and organized to speak with the festival's former
Speaker 1: creative director, Lee Carmichael. But given the theme, it didn't
Speaker 1: seem appropriate to do a normal interview in a boardroom
Speaker 1: or a cafe.
Speaker 3: And I just said, wouldn't it be great if we
Speaker 3: did the interview naked and we did the swim together
Speaker 3: and he was up for it, which, to be fair,
Speaker 3: no one knows me and it hasn't made it. Everyone
Speaker 3: knows him, and so he had much more to lose.
Speaker 3: The Salsae swim has been a fixture of the festival
Speaker 3: since it started. The water is frigid, I think it
Speaker 3: was seven degrees last year. The first year they ran
Speaker 3: it twenty thirteen, the police threatened to arrest people for
Speaker 3: public indecency because they didn't have a permits to do it.
Speaker 3: It's apparently illegal to go for a nude swim in
Speaker 3: Tasmania and the depths of winter. Such is the popularity
Speaker 3: of it now that there's two thousand tickets, they're all
Speaker 3: gone on the first day. Every year, we ran out
Speaker 3: of towels.
Speaker 1: This year we thought we would get a thousand people
Speaker 1: and we were over one thousand.
Speaker 2: So next year we're going to double our towels.
Speaker 4: But it was a really amazing moment.
Speaker 3: You stand there in your robe, it's dark, and these
Speaker 3: drums that go off and then these whistle blows and
Speaker 3: we're before you know it, we're all tearing down into
Speaker 3: the water. I managed to get a couple of questions
Speaker 3: into Lee while we were standing there before we immersed
Speaker 3: ourselves in the icy depths. But I felt my heart
Speaker 3: rate drop within moments of being in the water.
Speaker 4: I thought I need to get out.
Speaker 3: Of course, there's some other mad lunatics who were backstroking
Speaker 3: out in it to the pontoons. But you come back
Speaker 3: in and everyone's kind of stands naked around these forty
Speaker 3: four gallon drums for the fire, and it's just the
Speaker 3: most cleansing, beautiful community moment.
Speaker 4: It was a really great experience.
Speaker 2: Tim Douglas is the editor of Review, available.
Speaker 1: In the Saturday edition of The Australian and anytime at
Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dot a slash review. This episode
Speaker 1: of the Front was hosted by me Claire Harvey and
Speaker 1: co produced with Jasper Leek, who edited the episode and also.
Speaker 2: Wrote our theme. Thanks for joining us on the Front
Speaker 2: this week.
Speaker 1: Our team also includes Kristin Amiot, Lea Sammaglue, Tiffany Dimack,
Speaker 1: Joshua Burton and Stephanie Coombs.