Mofo sessions Mona - 5–10.30pm

Mofo Sessions Mona

Mona Lawns, Mona

Ragtag expat Americans invoke the good bits of their homeland through a musical travelogue of songs with USA placenames. Including Brian Ritchie and Blaise Garza from the Violent Femmes.  

The Unites States of Amnesia are supported by The US Consulate

United States of Amnesia

Tassie heroes tell the story of Tassie ennui. Frenzied post-punk fit for the revolution.

Image credit: Reece Lyne

Slag Queens

Surf twang meets thumping, driving rhythms. Straight to the pleasure centres. Frontman is a teacher—school’s out, evidently.

Slaughterhäus Surf Cult

New live soundtrack—voice, keys, bass—for the 1923 French silent film *The Smiling Madame Beudet*. Directed by Germaine Dulac, it’s credited as the first feminist film. Kirby / Ward shed new light on proceedings through contemporary composition, from ultra-minimalist melody to deafening sub-bass droning.


Kirby / Ward

The Smiling Madame Beudet

Friday 22

Augie March frontman dusts off his guitar to spin some philosophical tunes, just for you. Yep, you. 

Glenn Richards

Tough indie pop and punk textures with hard-hitting lyrics.

EWAH + The Vision of Paradise

Poet and blackwave visionary. This is a solo performance of new work developed in isolation. 

Striborg

Follow the bouncing ball. Cross-genre performers reinterpret Cornelius Cardew’s groundbreaking 1960s *Treatise* with their own graphic notation. Pictures, not notes. Under the watchful eye of Michael Kieran Harvey.  

UTAS Experimental Music Ensemble

Treatise

Saturday 23

Tasmania’s premier psychopunkabilly trio returns from self-imposed exile for their first show in forever, just for Mona Foma. 

The Sin and Tonics

It stands for Fluid Femme Luminaries Offering Rhapsodic Ascension. A collective of femme and gender-fluid musicians, plenty of improv, each performance unlike the last.

Image credit: Bella Waru

FFLORA

Punk / funk trio who like to swap instruments and sing about a variety of existential issues. 

The Implications

A tribute to the pioneering cool jazz saxophonist Lee Konitz, who died from the pandemic earlier this year. He was 93.

Spike Mason Trio

Sunday 24

Catch the ferry to Mona and set up camp on the lawns for an evening concert (or three). There’ll be bars open, food options aplenty, and music galore. There’s your hierarchy of needs sorted, right there. There will also be large yellow mats. Sit on them.

Mofo Sessions at Mona

Aboriginal artist Tony Albert takes on Captain Cook.

Image credit: Tony Albert, *You Wreck Me*, 2020. Image Courtesy Sullivan and Strumpf

You Wreck Me

Tony Albert

A video work in which teen whip-cracking champion Emiliqua East performs at the East Gippsland Live Stock Exchange, wielding a single-tail, braided-hide bullwhip: the first human invention to break the sound barrier. It’s a metaphor, says artist Zanny Begg, for accelerating unpredictability in economic supply chains.

Image credit: Zanny Begg, video still, *The Bullwhip Effect*, 2018

The Bullwhip Effect

Zanny Begg

Gang-fight with guitars. Two warring guitar armies do battle via epic walls of melody, harmony and amped-up craziness. It’s a saga of ancient rivalries, from a fantasy world where disputes are settled musically, and heroes and villains live and die by the power of their solo.  

Performers include a doctor of architecture, a semi-retired Glenorchy newsagent, a Nepalese restaurateur, a Kiribati-born soul singer, and a high school student.  

__Performances__  
Thursday 21–Sunday 24 January, 7.30–7.50pm nightly  

__Composer /  Director / Performer__  
Peter Brennan  

__Performance dramaturge__  
Willoh S.Weiland  

__Guitar Wars Official__  
Marcus McKenzie  

__Guitarists__  
Crystal Livermore, Crystal Campbell, Tex Napalm, Dennis Joel, Antonio Papadimitriou, Roxy Roxburgh, Sandesh Pariyar, Jo Brockman, Justin Orr, Sam Burk, Alysia Bennett, Sanjan Shrestha, Philip Bohm, Tim Dossor, and Sienna Stewart  


Guitar Wars

Giant marble track manifesting the 24/7 news cycle, social media, political jargon, activist slogans and business speak. Altered beyond recognition, of course, as your ball runs helter-skelter down the track between words and phrases.

No News is Good News

Andy Hutson

Follow Dorothy and Toto as they lead you on a bonkers, technicolour trip over the rainbow. Part imperialist nightmare, part fluorescent pop culture rave. What are you waiting for?

Image credit: *Over The Rainbow*, 2013, Rachel Maclean

Over the Rainbow

Rachel Maclean

Pay your respects at the foot of a Buddhist torii gate constructed from stacked Marshall amps. And perhaps achieve spiritual ascension via the rites of rock’n’roll. Book in to cut sick on the guitar or let the professionals show you how it’s done.

Image credit: Nell, *ROCK GATE*, 2019. Image courtesy of STATION

ROCK GATE

Nell

Trade in your AUD for blood money dollars: limited edition banknote artworks celebrating Aboriginal leaders, social advocates and warriors, replacing the colonial figures of our national currency. Cash in quick as the exchange rate fluctuates throughout the festival.

Money received through the exchange goes to the Karadi Aboriginal Corporation.

Image credit: *Blood Money Currency Exchange Terminal*, 2018, Ryan Presley

Blood Money Currency Exchange Terminal

Ryan Presley

An isolated character performs bizarre charades of self-care and improvement. Listen in and watch as she wrestles with anxieties about identity, authenticity and alienation.

Image credit: Phebe Schmidt, video still *Your Time*, 2018

Your Time

Phebe Schmidt

No Place Like Home - 4–8pm

No Place Like Home - Thursday 21

K&D Warehouse, Hobart

No Place Like Home - 12–8pm

No Place Like Home - Saturday 23

Click your heels together three times to explore a new exhibition at the old K&D warehouse: video installation, sculpture and more, here to help renovate your desperate hopes and dreams for the year that was.

No Place Like Home

Judith's Return - 8–9pm (doors 7.45pm)

Judiths return - Saturday 23 + Sunday 24 January, 8–9pm (doors 7.45pm)

Theatre Royal, Hobart

‘Ah, that I am Judith, am coming from him,  
out of the tent out of the bed, out-trickling his head,  
three-times drunken blood.’  
—Rainer Maria Rilke

This, a world premiere performance, is a soaring, romantic and full-throttle new opera, inspired by the story of Judith: a biblical heroine and murderous widow who seduced an invading army general and (allegedly) chopped off his head. Nine disembodied male voices sound in the dark: prisoners from Warsaw’s Białołęka Prison contemplating Judith’s tale; and a chorus with skin in the game when it comes to matters of violence and virtue.

Joining these absent men on stage is renowned soprano Jacqueline Dark in the role of Judith, and mystery guests who lend the story a Tassie take on Judith’s crime: courage or madness?

The Theatre Royal’s trad stage is hijacked with multi-channel video shot at great peril in Poland, from mountain ranges to bombed-out warehouses, as music for church organ, synthesisers and drums fill the theatre. With a libretto by Rilke, performed in German, Polish and Tasmanian.

Judith’s Return is six years in the making, including the lengthy process of gaining access to Białołęka—one of Eastern Europe’s largest detention centres. Here in Hobart, the opera will also stream live to an audience inside the Risdon Prison walls (we hope).

James Brennan

Judith’s Return

DIG: 10am–2.45pm + 3–8pm

DIG: 3–8pm

DIG: Friday 22–Sunday 24 January

Hinsby Beach, Taroona

You’re invited to dig for buried treasure at a site somewhere in Hobart. What bounty lies beneath the earth? Good question. It’s a secret, you see; prized objects of great value, symbolising loss and regeneration… As Hobart digs, a new work of land art emerges at the site: a shifting terrain of craters, hills and holes. BYO shovel.

Curated by Emma Pike

Michael Sailstorfer

Hobart Digs

Faux Mo 9pm–midnight

Faux Mo 22+23 Jan

kunanyi / Mount Wellington

#### [Watch the livestream](https://fauxmo.monafoma.net.au/)

This is not the club.  

Into the long, dark night of 2020, Faux Mo disappeared.  

From the hopeful, sweet dawn of 2021, it will reappear. Like everything, changed. Like always, tickets are very limited—more so this year than ever.  

It’s no longer Red Bulls and disco biscuits, shared sweat and pashing strangers—it’s Faux Mo FM, coming to you live from the Observation Room, kunanyi / Mount Wellington.  

Listen from home via Edge Radio 99.3 FM, or Edge Radio DAB + or livestream. Or for the adventurous, buy a ticket and make the epic ascent up the sacred mountain. Drive to the peak and be treated to a sober and snack-filled listening party for five, for your car only. A specially commissioned and crafted Faux Mo mix lifts you gently into this new reality. From dirty, wild dance music, directed at the wilderness, to futuristic predictions and heartbreaking reflections, from esteemed club makers all over the world.  

BYO Tassie tuxedo puffer jacket, fluffy dice and disco ball. Stop off at Lost Freight cafe at the Springs to buy snacks and hot drinkies.  

You will not return the same.  

Hosted by musician, performer and blak rights lutruwita voice of her generation Kartanya Maynard, with Edge Radio Tassie music expert Aeron Clark. Prepare for listening beauty from DJs Puffy Pank and So Fire with night-life missives from club legends in Kampala, Sydney, Berlin, New York, Taipei, São Paolo and Hobart.  

With lighting design by Matthew Adey for Beizj Studio, streaming wizardry by the genius Exhibitionist team Omar Maashall and Mat Spisbah, and sparkles from Tasmania’s own disco ball Jacob Leary.  

#### [Watch the livestream](https://fauxmo.monafoma.net.au/)

Faux Mo FM

Archipelago Productions

Featuring Kris McQuade + the TSO Chorus

Masque - 7.30–8.15pm

Masque - 9.15–10pm

Masque - Friday 22 + Saturday 23 January, 7.30–8.15pm + 9.15–10pm

St David’s Cathedral, Hobart

Masque - 2.30–3.15pm

Masque - Sunday 24 January, 2.30–3.15pm

A musical, theatrical take on Edgar Allen Poe’s gothic fable. When a blood plague sweeps through Italy, a pleasure-loving duke and his friends party in an abbey until the disease burns itself away. With the sumptuous sounds of the TSO chorus, backed by organ, synth and percussion.

The Masque of the Red Death

MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH AT ST DAVID’S CATHEDRAL

Let Me Dry Your Eyes - Thursday 21–Sunday 24 January, 8—8:50pm

Let Me Dry Your Eyes - Thursday 21

Beaumaris Zoo, Queens Domain, Hobart

Let me dry - 5-5:50

Let me dry - 8-8:50

Let me dry - Friday 22–Sunday 24, 5–5.50pm + 8–8.50pm

Live music and dance up at the old zoo. Second Echo Ensemble’s brand-new outdoor performance tells the watery tale of a bird and a whale with movement, telescopes and underwater noise, including a drummer in an aquarium. Created by and celebrating artists with diverse abilities.

Second Echo Ensemble

Let Me Dry Your Eyes

Second Echo Ensemble: Let Me Dry Your Eyes

After Erika Eiffel - Hobart Friday 22–Sunday 24 January, 4–7.30pm

After Erika Eiffel - Hobart Friday 22–Sunday 24 January

Hobart Archers, Acton Park

How does it feel to have a lethal weapon as the love of your life? In this immersive performance, you’ll discover and embrace the intimate sensation of firing an arrow, then sharpen your skills on a custom-made archery course. Along the way, the targets will reveal the story of Erika Eiffel, the world-class archer who married the Eiffel Tower and attributed her sporting success to her long-term romance with her bow.

Loren Kronemyer

After Erika Eiffel

Quoll - Thursday 21 January, 6–7pm

The Quoll - 830-930

Quoll - Thursday 21 January, 6–7pm 8:30-9:30

Tasmanian multi-talent Joshua Santospirito teams up with violin queen Natalya Bing to tell a tale of part-marsupial figures roaming a deep-future lutruwita. Expect weird guitar, epic violinery, plenty of pictures, and a pipe organ.

Bing / Santospirito

The Quoll

PART-MARSUPIALS ROAM DEEP-FUTURE LUTRUWITA

Zac Henderson

Runaway Belles + Emily Sanzaro + Medhanit

Barn - Wednesday 20 January, 7.30–9.30pm

The Barn at Rosny Farm, Rosny Park

Hit the Rosny Barn for some eastern shore Mofo-ery. Wednesday night sees Zac Henderson launch his latest album and the United States of Amnesia play their greatest location-based hits.  

On Thursday night, it’s a Launceston invasion: Runaway Belles harmonise on sunshiney indie-folk, Emily Sanzaro lets her harp off the leash with looping electronics and violin, and Medhanit delivers bright and bouncy pop straight to our wasted hearts.  

Mofo at the Barn

Gin Walk - 6–8pm

Gin Walk - Wednesday 20 + Thursday 21, 6–8pm

Meet at Fern Tree Tavern

Gin Walk -1–3pm

Gin Walk - Friday 22 + Saturday 23 January, 1–3pm + 6–8pm

Gin Walk - 4–6pm

Gin Walk - 7–9pm

Gin Walk - Sunday 24 January, 4–6pm + 7-9

Fancy a stroll on kunanyi, accompanied by the Van Diemen’s Fiddles and not-infrequent stops for gin cocktails? Good.

Van Diemen's Band

Forest Gin Walk

Zinc - Installation Friday 22 January, 7–9pm

Zinc - Installation Saturday 23 January, 12–8pm

Zinc - Installation Sunday 24 January, 12–8pm

Zinc Works, Lutana (Access via Risdon Road)

Zinc - Performance Friday 22 January, 8–8.30pm

Zinc Performance - Friday 22 January

Zinc - performance Saturday 23 January, 3–3.30pm

Zinc - Performance Saturday 23 January, 5–5.30pm

Zinc - Performance Saturday 23 January 7–7.30pm

Zinc - Performance Saturday 23 January

Zinc - Performance Sunday 24 January, 3–3.30pm

Zinc - Performance Sunday 24 January, 5–5.30pm

Zinc - Performance Sunday 24 January, 7–7.30pm

Zinc - Performance Sunday 24 January

A new exhibition capturing the hidden sound and vision of the Zinc Works. Performance, video, abstract woodcuts, and found sound from the site wrought into music and image. The sound work will also play in Launceston’s old hydro Duck Reach Power Station. A collaboration with artists from diverse backgrounds.

Big hART

Zinc

Mofo at the Mill - 6–8pm (doors 5.30pm)

Mofo at the Mill - Tuesday 19 January, 6–8pm (doors 5.30pm)

Spring Bay Mill, Triabunna

The good folk at Spring Bay Mill will invite twelve festival artists to their place for a mini residency of sorts—Camp Mofo, if you will—and then you get to come sample the fruits of their labour. Performances, meet the artists, canapés galore, and even a welcome drink. Stay for a sleepover (on-site glamping), if you’re into that sort of thing.

Mofo at the Mill

Mid Fest Meditation - 12–1pm

Mid Fest Meditation - Wednesday 20 January, 12–1pm

Potters Hill Reserve Labyrinth, South Arm

Ritchie plays the shakuhachi in a labyrinth. What more do you want?

Brian Ritchie

Mid Festival Meditation

Marian Abboud

Elyas Alavi

Hannah Brontë

Shiraz Bayjoo and Shivanjani Lal

Dean Cross

Sancintya Mohini Simpson

Shireen Taweel

Making Ground - Friday 22 January, 6–8pm

Alexandra Battery, Sandy Bay

Making Ground - 4–8pm

Making Ground - Saturday 23 + Sunday 24 January, 4–8pm

Princes Park Magazine, Battery Point

Blinking Billy Point, Sandy Bay

First Nations and multicultural artists will stage an exhibition on sites of colonial ruin: a city park, a suburban hillside, and the shores of the river. Each is home to a former military battery, which the artists will augment with video and sculpture, responding to the landscape and histories of each place. Taken together, the exhibition considers displacement, connection and memory in the digital age.

Making Ground

Nearer my horn - Friday 22–Sunday 24 January, as the ferry arrives

Mona

Catching the ferry to Mona? A giant ear (*Mona Confessional*, an artwork by Oliver Beer) heralds your arrival. Tuba, trombone and ferry horn.


Dean Stevenson

Nearer My Horn to Thee

Julia Drouhin + Edith Perrenot (L.P.A.): Fair Distancing 

Preston Spurlock + Jake Hedley: Continual Glitch 

Amber Perez: Womb Room 3.0

Andrew Harper Presents: Light Box – Short Films and Animated experiments 

World of Worlds - Friday 22 January, 6–10pm

World of the World - Friday 22 January, 6–10pm

Good Grief, Hobart

World of Worlds - 10am–6pm

World of Worlds - 8–11pm

World of Worlds - Saturday 23 + Sunday 24 January, 10am–6pm + 8–11pm

Over at Good Grief, you’ll find a collective of artists preoccupied with fictional world building: other dimensions, parallel realities, pataphysics and so forth. There’s a lot going on here. Lean in to the chaos.

World of Worlds

Fernando - 5.30–7.30pm

Fernando - Friday 22 January, 5.30–7.30pm

Contemporary Art Tasmania, North Hobart

Fernando - 2–5pm

Fernando - Saturday 23 + Sunday 24 January, 12–5pm

Every bird seen and heard for 365 days while communicating with sparrows through pishing. Part exhibition / part history-birdwatching tour with the House Sparrow Society for Humans. This Argentinean-Australian artist keeps one foot in the field and one foot deep in the archive.

Fernando do Campo

To companion a companion

Fernando do Compo: To Companion a Companion

Mona Foma

hobart

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