Dark Mofo creative director Leigh Carmichael has given his strongest indication yet that this year’s edition of the winter arts festival could be the last of its kind, the ABC reports.
The comments come after the Tasmanian event was cancelled last year, and at the same time as coronavirus travel restrictions prevent Melburnians – who typically make up a huge chunk of visitors – from attending this year’s festival, which starts on Wednesday.
“Perhaps it’s run its course?” Carmichael told the ABC.
“Festivals are hard in COVID times, so we’ll wait to make a decision after this year’s event.
“We’ll use the audience response as a guide to inform a view about the future.”
He pointed to the fact that this year’s event has already had to be scaled back due to the pandemic, and that the festival’s “almost irreplaceable” co-founder Kate Gould was moving on to another job.
Dark Mofo, which is the Museum of Old and New Art’s winter festival, has been held annually since 2013. If this is indeed the last edition of Dark Mofo, this means one of two things.
Either, you’ve missed your chance to make it to the cult event if you haven’t already, as this year’s festival is running from June 12 to June 22. So if you haven’t already made plans to visit, you’re probably too late.
Alternatively, time might really be up for the controversial event, with more and more people becoming sick of its shit.
It was only back in March that the festival (and Carmichael himself, in fact) announced that Spanish artist Santiago Sierra would be asking Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people for their blood as part of his Union Flag artwork, which was to soak the British flag in the blood of colonised peoples.
That stunt naturally sparked a massive backlash, causing the festival to issue a lame response before finally pulling the artwork entirely.
We’ll have to wait and see what happens next year, if anything. Pandemics are weird like that, ya know?
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