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

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

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

After Erika Eiffel - Launceston Sunday 17 + Monday 18 January, 4.30–7.30pm

After Erika Eiffel - Launceston Sunday 17

Paringa Archery Club, Trevallyn

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

Aqua Luma - Friday 15–Sunday 17 January, 9.30–11.30pm

Aqua Luma

First Basin, Cataract Gorge, Launceston

Lasers at the Gorge. Twelve-metre-high water jets will erupt in time with subharmonic frequencies, while a new electronic composition is beamed straight to your smartphone. Overhead, high-powered lasers trace geometrical patterns in the mist and finally envelop you in a canopy of light and sound.

At the Gorge? Join our free WIFI network (Aqua Luma) and listen at [aqualuma.mofo.net.au](https://aqualuma.mofo.net.au/).

Robin Fox

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

Stompin - Friday 15 January, 7–7.50pm

Stompin - Friday 15 January+16

Paterson Street East Car Park

Saturday 16 + Sunday 17 January, 2–2.50pm

Stompin - 6.30–7.20pm

Stompin - 8.30–9.20pm

Stompin - Sunday 17 January, 2–2.50pm, 6.30–7.20pm + 8.30–9.20pm

Treat yourself to an all-expenses paid shopping trip via the medium of contemporary dance. Stompin’s young dancers explore fast fashion, riding the trend train, and the cult of consumerism, in a new performance that provokes a question: how much is too much?

Stompin

All Expenses Paid

Anri Sala

Annika Kahrs

Listen Deeply - 11am–4pm

Listen Deeply - Friday 15–Sunday 17 January, 11am–4pm

Princess Theatre, Launceston

Two cities. Two theatres. One exhibition.

You’re invited on stage—no longer a space of theatrical bravado, but the setting for artworks that bring us together for collaboration and deep listening, among the bare bones of the theatre.

Here in Launceston, humans duet with nonhuman creatures. You’ll see (and hear) a Stravinsky viola solo subverted as a snail ascends the performer’s bow, captured on film in Anri Sala’s *If and Only If*. Then to a giraffe and octobass, and the deep sounds they make in Annika Kahrs’ *Infra Voice*. The giraffe’s hum is one of the lowest noises in the animal kingdom, and the octobass can play notes inaudible to the human ear.

Listen Deeply

Lucy Bleach

With Alethea Coombe

rueremus - Friday 22 January, 6-10

Rueremus - Friday 22 January

rueremus - Saturday 23 + Sunday 24 January, 11am–7pm

rueremus - Saturday 23

31–33 Bathurst Street, Hobart

rue 10-5

rue: monday

rueremus perf - 6–7pm

rueremus perf - Friday 22 January, 6–7pm

Rueremus perf - 11am–12pm

Rueremus perf - 6–7pm

Rueremus perf - Saturday 23 + Sunday 24 January, 11am–12pm + 6–7pm

A meditation on collapse in an old garage. Blocks of ice hang in the air. Each embedded with a frozen stratum of local rocks and minerals, suggesting the island’s geological formation over time. As the ice melts over three days, the rocks plummet, and a violinist performs variations of composer John Cage’s *One6* in a kind of duet with the falling stones and dripping water.  

After the space closes each day, the illuminated ice sculptures and a projected video work will be viewable through street-front windows, from dusk until dawn.  

Rueremus

Eloise Kirk

With Tristan Jalleh

 + Kai Wasikowski

Til it's gone - Friday 15 January, 4–8pm

til it's gone - Friday 15 January, 4–8pm

Old Car Museum, 86 Cimitiere Street, Launceston (Entry at Rear)

Til it's gone - Saturday 16 + Sunday 17 January, 11am–5pm

Til it's gone - Saturday 16 + Sunday 17 January

A host of artists infiltrate an old car museum, and invite you to explore the results. Installation, sculpture, video and site-specific interventions suggest a world in twilight and collapse. Eloise conjures volatile landscapes and mineral opulence, Tristan presents a deserted and crumbling metropolis, and Kai contemplates simulated environments and naturalist ideals. Together, an elemental meditation on geomorphology, capitalism, time and ruin—and your last chance to see the car museum before it’s torn down after the festival. 


‘Til It’s Gone

Zinc - Friday 15–Sunday 17 January, 10am–7pm

Zinc Friday 15–Sunday 17 January, 10am–7pm

Duck Reach Power Station, West Launceston

Across the river in a narrowing gorge lies the ruins of the Duck Reach Power Station: a former Launceston hydro hub on the South Esk River. Here you’ll tune in to a new industrial composition created at [Hobart’s Zinc Works](/program/hobart/zinc). This sound installation echoes the connection of the two sites, bound together by more than a hundred years of water-generated power and industry.  

If you’re up for an adventure: walk to Duck Reach from First Basin, Cataract Gorge (parking at the actual venue is limited). Wear sensible shoes, bring water, and expect heaps of scenery. Find out more about the walk [here](https://parks.tas.gov.au/things-to-do/60-great-short-walks/duck-reach). 


Zinc at Duck Reach

Rachael Kim

Katerina Stathis

Mads Davey

Chairway - Friday 15–Sunday 17 January, 10am–5.50pm

Gorge Scenic Chairlift, Cataract Gorge

Want to take part in a suspended symphony in the sky? As you board the Gorge Scenic Chairlift, and float across a verdant summer paradise below, your carriage emits analogue synthesiser sounds that shift and disperse as other carriages relay past. Heard together, the chairlift sings an evolving new composition for rare analogue synthesisers: a meditation on the ebb and flow of life cycles, and an ode to nature.

Chairway to Heaven

Christian Thompson

Althea Thauberger + Kite

Angelica Mesiti

Listen Deeply - Friday 22–Sunday 24 January, 11am–5pm

Listen Deeply - Saturday 23–Sunday 24 January

Two cities. Two theatres. One exhibition.

You’re invited on stage—no longer a space of theatrical bravado, but the setting for artworks that bring us together for collaboration and deep listening, among the bare bones of the theatre.

Here in Hobart—in Australia’s oldest working theatre, built in the colonial era—Bidjara / Kunja artist Christian Thompson sings in Bidjara, an endangered language revived in *Dead Tongue*. Then the Royal Canadian Navy’s HMCS York Band conch shell sextet rehearses a piece by an Oglála Lakȟóta composer, in Althea Thauberger and Kite’s *Battle Cry (Gift to the Shell Ensemble)*. Meanwhile, Angelica Mesiti reimagines a southern Italian mourning ritual with songs of lament performed at the Ear of Dionysus, an ancient limestone cave in Syracuse, Sicily.

Boatsheds - Saturday 16 + Sunday 17 January, 12–2.30pm

Saturday 16 + Sunday 17 January, 3.30–6pm

Boatsheds - Saturday 16 + Sunday 17 January, 12–2.30pm + 3.30–6pm

Boatsheds around the Tamar and North Esk Rivers, Launceston

Set out on a migratory path around the North Esk and Tamar Rivers, stopping off at boatsheds along the way. Musicians inhabit each shed and perform new compositions for you, inspired by each boatshed’s hidden culture, character and random, shed-related stuff.

Acoustic Life of Boatsheds

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

Self - Friday 15–Sunday 17 January, 10am–8pm

Self - Friday 15–Monday 18 January, 10am–8pm

Albert Hall, Launceston

An audiovisual rite of self-reflection, and a journey of technologically assisted meditation. Solo travellers only. 

Harry Holcombe-James

Self

Happy Days - 12–12.50pm

Happy Days - Launceston Friday 15 January Albert Hall

Happy Days - Launceston Friday 15 January 5-5:50

Happy - Saturday 16 January, 11–11.50am – City Park

Happy - Saturday 16 January, 3–3.50pm – Princes Square

‘Here all is strange.’  
—Samuel Beckett

Free helpings of Samuel Beckett, the poster boy of existential despair. Popping up across Hobart and Launceston. Theatre in the wild.

In a parched landscape, beneath a drooping parasol, a woman stands buried to the waist in the earth. All about her is scorched and damaged. She talks and talks, ad-libbing for her life...

Jane Longhurst

Happy Days

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

Extinction - Sunday 24 January, 3.30–3.50pm

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart

Extinction - Friday 22 + Saturday 23 January, 10am–4pm

Extinction Studies - Friday 22 + Saturday 23 January, 10am–4pm

Extinction - 10am–3.50pm

Extinction - Sunday 24 January, 10am–3.50pm

The finale of a twelve-month-long performance in which Lucienne has undergone a daily reckoning: drawing, then erasing, a recently extinct species. After this year-long work of endurance, she will perform her final erasure at the festival: the Swift Parrot.


Lucienne Rickard

Extinction Studies

Michael Kieran Harvey

Scott Tinkler

Congregational Launc- 1–2pm

Congregational - 5-6

Congregational - Saturday 16 January, 1–2pm

City Baptist Church, Launceston

Two of Australia’s most articulate musicians will perform compositions and improvisations for organ, piano and trumpet. It will be loud. It will be silent. And as a bonus for the Launceston performance, Tinkly Winkly returns to the church where Daddy preached when Scott was a boy.

Congregational

Michael Kieran Harvey + Scott Tinkler: Congregational

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

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

Mona Foma

2021

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