The awe-inspiring Dark MoFo festival in Tasmania is a vivid mash-up of Burning Man, Brothers Grimm, Heath Ledger b-movies and the Venice Art Biennale. For over a century, the Tasmin capital city of Hobart has been the port of departure for risky Antarctic expeditions. It is now transformed once a year into an edgy arts gathering, a communal sensing experience of nocturnal urban landscapes, brilliant deep red crucifixes, provocative art, local gin, grilled bits and deeper human questions - summarized in some journaling (scroll) - a rich, varied and beautiful life moment with our friends Erich and Dalton.

Travel notes:
Hear this mesmerizing intergalactic, full-body Ryoji Ikeda installation here.
(Turned on only once a year for DarkMoFo)
It inspired me to write this:

Wayfinding with Strangers

First-timing it in Tassie for Dark MoFo

On this abbreviated Solstice Day

Antarctica looms on the horizon

We inhale iceberg-cleansed breezes

Around Hobart, art + sound beckon

Thru thick brick, beat-up buildings

Sagging warehouses glow hypnotically

Loaded up on bass and drum

I dust off my lost flow, my collegiate-bred fluidity

Intuitively roaming from installation to performance to pagan feast

And back again

We are all here together.

Complete strangers.

Yet somehow intimately connected.

Galvanized by a single shared curiosity - ISO the deeper experience

Seeking out brave creative acts down dimly lit red neon hallways

Armed with thick winter coats, nervous chatter and long flowing hair, we enter

Into black rooms bathed in Japanese hypno-soundtracks

Reconnecting with our younger, sentient selves

Our wide-eyed student past, re-seeking, re-visiting a visceral time

Witnessing the awe-inducing unfolding of the creative human spirit, we

Are immersed in an analog galaxy of sound, light, experience and possibility

No screens

No memes

No emojis

We are present, optimistic, curious and alive.

- Dark MoFo 2019