Ajak Kwai
Mofo 2018 is set to bring an unprecedented 11 days of music and art to Launceston (12–14 January) and Hobart (15–22 January) this summer, with challenging art installations, unexpected world premieres and Australian exclusives set to take place in Tassie’s two largest cities.
“Mofo is a celebration of unique creativity and personal expression ranging freely across music, visual art, dance, spoken word, architecture, spas and more. The messages range from pure abstract form to blatant protest and a few stops in-between. Even the food, wine and beer are idiosyncratic,” said Brian Ritchie, Curator, Mona Foma.
“We’re bringing artists from all over the world to Tasmania. Some are visiting for the first time. Others have moved here as immigrants or refugees. Some of our artists are world-famous exponents of their vision and others come from the margins of society. Even from cultures where they would not have been allowed to create until recently. Mofo will give everyone an equal platform and a chance to be heard.”
The Premier of Tasmania today announced State Government funding for Mofo 2018.
“Thanks to the State Government’s funding announcement, we’ll be seeing a bifurcated version of Mofo in 2018 which means we’ll be holding some major events in Launceston, including a massive free block party, as well as major events at our 2018 festival base in Hobart. The Mofo and Mona teams are chomping at the bit to set off sparks with new partners in the North of the State,” Brian said.
Program highlights include:
– Free Launceston Block Party. – Art-rock legends Godspeed You! Black Emperor (CAN) to provide the live score for The Holy Body Dance Tattoo’s Monumental in Launceston. They’ll also perform live at Mona, playing tracks from their latest album Luciferian Towers. – In an Australian premiere, Gotye and the Ondioline Orchestra to pay tribute to the late, great French electronic composer and pop visionary Jean-Jacques Perrey. – Black metal gods Mayhem (NOR). – Violent Femmes (USA) + Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra to perform the folk-punk rockers’ repertoire backed with a full orchestra. – Brian Jackson (USA) and the Southern Gospel Choir present songs of Jackson and GilScott Heron and Nina Simone.
– Trans artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (USA) and long-time collaborator and fellow Psychic TV member, Edley ODowd (UK), promise psychedelia and poetry. – Punk-poet powerhouse Moor Mother (USA) teams up with collaborator Rasheedah Phillips (USA) to smash apart the protest song and remake it anew. – Barcelona-based producer Filastine and Indonesian neo-soul singer Nova promise to launch an audio strike against xenophobia. – Iraqi musician Karim Wasfi (known for playing his cello in the wreckage of a detonated car bomb) to share his music in a world premiere performance with collaborator Rahim AlHaj. – Breadwoman (USA) will speak to the crowd in the language of bread. – Mofo’s late night art party Faux Mo to move to Hobart’s waterfront venue MAC2.
Mofo 2018 is supported by the Tasmanian Government through Events Tasmania.
PROGRAM OVERVIEW
MINI MOFO IN LAUNCESTON: 12–14 JANUARY
In an Australian exclusive, Canada’s acclaimed dance company, The Holy Body Tattoo will perform Monumental, a riotous and revelatory contemporary dance with a soaring (and an effing loud) score performed live by Montreal’s celebrated post-rockers, Godspeed You! Black Emperor. + Friday 12 + Saturday 13 January, 7pm, Princess Theatre, Launceston, $65 + booking fee, Concession $55 + booking fee.
In an Australian premiere, Gotye and the Ondioline Orchestra will pay tribute to the late, great French electronic composer and pop visionary, Jean-Jacques Perrey, with a pre-synth extravaganza celebrating the Ondioline—an early, and now rare, electronic instrument. + Friday 12 + Saturday 13 January, 9pm, Albert Hall, Launceston, $35 + booking fee.
Tannery: Tasmanian Taiko and Leather Orchestra, with an array of unexpected handmade instruments, will join forces for a special cacophonic performance of Skin Migration. Presented as a double bill with Gotye Presents a Tribute to Jean-Jacques Perrey. + Friday 12 + Saturday 13 January, 9pm, Albert Hall, Launceston, $35 + booking fee.
And we’re throwing a big, free Launceston Party on Sunday 14 January with food and drinks aplenty and music and art galore. Forget about sleep, Launceston. Artists to be announced in December. + Sunday 14 January, 12–9pm, City of Launceston’s QVMAG Courtyard, 2 Invermay Road, free with online registration
MOFO AT MONA: 19–21 January
It’s our last Mofo at Mona for, like, ages (Walshie’s building a hotel and he needs the space). So we’re going out in style.
Mona’s outdoor main stage will host a horde of international artists including Montreal’s legendary post-rock provocateurs Godspeed You! Black Emperor, who will perform songs from their latest record, Luciferian Towers.
Philadelphia’s punk-poet powerhouse Moor Mother (Camae Ayewa) will perform on the main stage with Rasheedah Phillips. Together the pair will also run workshops as Black Quantum Futurism Collective, using Afrofuturism and science fiction to experiment with time travel via memory, imagination, music and language manipulation.
Chicago-based singer-songwriter, poet and Chance the Rapper collaborator, Jamila Woods, will bring her joyful soul and funk grooves on Friday. The all-woman trio Fémina will grace the Mona stage with their rap folk fusion and social consciousness from rural Argentina in their first ever Australian performance.
Jazz master Brian Jackson (USA) (along with the Southern Gospel Choir led by Dr Andrew Legg and featuring Maria Lurighi) will perform songs from pioneering artists of black America: the late godfather of rap Gil Scott-Heron and his long-time collaborator Brian Jackson, as well as the legendary Nina Simone.
Norway’s black metal masters Mayhem will perform their ground breaking 1994 album De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas in its entirety. Described as the Tunisian Björk, Emel Mathlouthi will move seamlessly between rock, trip-hop, North African rhythms and modern electronic beats.
Darling of the avant garde Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (UK/USA) promises psychedelia and poetry alongside long-time collaborator and fellow Psychic TV member, Edley ODowd.
Former conductor of the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra Karim Wasfi will be joined by Rahim AlHaj, a maestro of the oud—an Arabic lute. Together, these Middle Eastern masters promise to unite traditional and contemporary classical music from the East and West in this world premiere performance.
The Hobart Liberation Orchestra, with award-winning Tassie bassist Nick Haywood at the helm, pay tribute to the international protest band from the sixties: The Liberation Music Orchestra, which was led by jazz icon, Charlie Haden. They’ll be joined by a horde of some of the country’s best improvisers plus Petra Haden—singer, violinist and Haden’s daughter—who has collaborated with everyone from Beck and Sunn O))), to Foo Fighters and the Violent Femmes.
Barcelona-based producer Filastine and Indonesian neo-soul singer Nova launch ‘an audio strike against xenophobia proposing a borderless and polyphonic world’ through their collision of wild pop, psychedelic trap, tropical post-folk and future bass.
In a durational performance, composer Austin Buckett and turntablist Martin Ng will sample, loop and layer sounds and rhythms, fusing minimalist ideas with an instrumental DJ set.
Traditional Persian music from the Chakam Ensemble (IRN/AUS) will sink listeners into the delicate depths of melancholic contemplation while Breadwoman (USA), a character developed by artist Anna Homler in the early 80s, will make her Australian premiere with an unbridled string of melodic “bread language.”
Composer Robert Davidson will set audio and footage of iconic speeches—from Bertholt Brecht to JFK to our own Julia Gillard—to live piano, performed by virtuoso pianist Sonya Lifschitz.
We’re also going to set loose the members of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra Chorus in the museum for Truce – just to see what happens.
The Daemons of Dissent will bring gutsy songs of rebellion and protest sung by Tasmanian folk musicians. Expect convict ballads, bushranger bangers and environmental protest anthems, sourced from all around the Apple Isle and the big island up north.
Kardajala Kirridarra will take to the Mona stage on Sunday afternoon with traditional and contemporary songs of empowerment and country.
Local outfit Hobart + Music = Yeah: Re/cognition will present a showcase of underground music from Hobart and beyond.
Adam Simmons, Alessandra Garosi and David Jones rearrange the music of art rocker Frank Zappa in a piano, saxophone and drum trio. Vocal Womb by Eve Klein will see this mezzo-soprano belt out an operatic performance while a laryngoscope inside her throat externalises the hidden, fleshy workings of the human voice. Composer, singer and percussionist Ajak Kwai will take to the Mofo stage to perform traditional Sudanese gospel, funky afro-beats and songs of the ancient Dinka people.
Mofo’s Cinemofo will feature a series of films about everything from African American space philosophy and performance art to avant-garde gender reassignment surgery and cinema relating to Mona’s current exhibition, The Museum of Everything.
Blaise Garza and John Sparrow from the Violent Femmes reinterpret John Coltrane and Rashied Ali’s landmark album Interstellar Space for its 50th anniversary. Meanwhile, Femmes frontman Gordon
Gano (USA) will perform his own renditions of Australian poetry and Australian writer Maxine Beneba Clarke will perform her own poetry and spoken word in the expansive Nolan Gallery.
Experience Thembi Soddell’s Held Down, Expanding, an immersive single-person sound installation housed within a small, dark chamber on Mona’s cafe lawn.
In a world premiere of The Green Brain Cycle, pianist extraordinaire Michael Kieran Harvey will unveil his latest avant-garde composition for keyboards inspired by Frank Herbert’s science fiction novel The Green Brain (1966), which imagines the emergence of a superior insect intelligence in the face of humankind’s devastation of the biosphere. Each movement of the twenty-part cycle interprets the characteristics of a different kind of insect, which writer Arjun von Caemmerer reconstructs into a series of ‘concrete’ poems emblazoned on the walls of a jungle-like gallery space—designed by installation artist (and Mona favourite) Brigita Ozolins.
SAAKA’s Hunger for Gluttony—a critique of mass consumption, environmental destruction and the great class divide via a fashion runway extravaganza—will be accompanied with live music by Military Position, on the tennis court at Mona.
A 24-hour continuous live performance at Mona by Martin Blackwell will be a non-stop marathon of rhythm, meditation, trance and electro-classical flair performed on a mind-boggling array of instruments sourced from around the globe. + Monday 15 January, 9.30pm – Tuesday 16 January, 9.30pm, Turrell Stage, Mona.
Researchers, musicians and makers have reconstructed two of Percy Grainger’s pioneering inventions—the Reed Box Tone Tool and the Electric Eye Tone Tool—and installed them around Mona for Experiments in Freedom. Pull, flick and turn the machines’ levers, switches and cranks to free the music.
Woodwind improvisers and instrument makers Jim Denley and Rosalind Hall will present spontaneous compositions inspired by water, the great outdoors and the free music theories of composer Percy Grainger.
Melbourne-based artist Harriet Kate Morgan explores subjugation and sexuality via extreme music in Military Position.
Mona’s current major exhibition, The Museum of Everything (10 June 2017 – 2 April 2018), is the world’s first non-profit wandering institution dedicated to the advancement, integration and exhibition of artmakers beyond the cultural mainstream. Its most expansive show to date, The Museum of Everything is in Australia for the first time showcasing over 100 artists and almost 2,000 artworks, ranging from 1800 to the present day.
MOFO IN HOBART
In a world premiere and Australian exclusive, the Violent Femmes will take their acoustic punk-rock and work with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra to reimagine it as a full orchestra experience. + Monday 22 January, 7.30pm, Federation Concert Hall, Hobart, $75–$90 + booking fee.
Contemporary Art Tasmania in Hobart will host Three Scenes from In Memory of Johnny B. Goode: World Tour (2014–2017), an artistic collaboration between The Ghosts of Nothing (Sean Lowry and Ilmar Taimre) featuring Laura Purcell. Johnny B. Goode, from the Chuck Berry hit song of the same name, is reimagined as the popular seventeenth-century sad buffoon Pierrot in an exhibition version of past performances.
Tassie boys Scot Cotterell and Andrew Harper will take up residency at the Moonah Arts Centre with Evil Goat, an art project disguised as a doom noise band with a penchant for mantra, repetition and sonic blasphemy. Evil Goat will headline a one-day mini-Mofo-fest featuring Tasmanian bands M.O.I.O, PURE, Crypt Vapor, Phillipa Stafford, Comrad XERO and Cycle. Oh yeah. (You can also see Evil Goat at Mona on the following Saturday.)
Curated by radio queens Sisters Akousmatica (Phillipa Stafford and Julia Drouhin), 13 new radiophonic works by 13 sound artists will be broadcast from transmission points along the Intercity Cycleway between Hobart and Mona in XYL. Climb in, chill out and sync your pulse with your fellow mofos when you settle into a Hypnapod (Unconscious Collective), equipped with sensors and speakers which amplify your heartbeat in real-time.
Mofo presents an organ series in partnership with Hobart Organ Society. Organist extraordinaire and resident organ whizz at St David’s Cathedral Rod Thomson will perform for free at St David’s cathedral in Hobart. Joseph Nolan and Brent Grapes will bring you the organ and the trumpet, together at last. Andrew Bainbridge will also perform for free, at the Hobart Town Hall.
Faux Mo, Mofo’s official late night after party, will move to a new venue this year, taking up residence at MAC2 on Hobart’s waterfront, from Friday 19 – Sunday 21 January from 10pm until late. The full program will be announced on Tuesday 28 November.
Mofo at Mona ticket details: – Three-Day Mona Pass: $179 / $139 Concession, + booking fee. – Locals ticket: $160 / $125 Concession, + booking fee (available until Tuesday 28 November, or until sold out). – Limited Day Passes (available from 28 November): $69 / $59 Concession + booking fee.
Mona Foma takes place in Hobart and Launceston from 12-22 January 2018. Tickets go on sale Monday October 16 from 12pm.
www.mofo.net.au
MOFO 2018 LINEUP ANNOUNCEMENT
Brian Jackson with the Southern Gospel Choir (AUS/USA) Emel Mathlouthi (TUN) Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (UK/USA) Godspeed You! Black Emperor (CAN) Gotye Presents a Tribute to Jean-Jacques Perrey (AUS/USA) Launceston Block Party Mayhem (NOR) Monumental – The Holy Body Tattoo (CAN) with live music by Godspeed You! Black Emperor (CAN) Moor Mother featuring Rasheedah Phillips (USA) Violent Femmes + the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra (USA/AUS)
Adam Simmons Ajak Kwai Alessandra Garosi (ITA) Andrew Bainbridge Austin Buckett and Martin Ng Black Quantum Futurism Collective (USA) Black Rock Band Blaise Garza and John Sparrow (USA) Breadwoman Variations (USA) Chakam Ensemble (IRN/AUS) Cinemofo David Jones Edley ODowd Eve Klein Evil Goat Faux Mo Fémina (ARG) Filastine and Nova (USA/IDN) Gordon Gano (USA) Hobart Liberation Orchestra featuring Petra Haden (AUS/USA) Hobart + Music = Yeah: Re/cognition Jamila Woods (USA) Jim Denley and Rosalind Hall
Joseph Nolan and Brent Grapes Kardajala Kirridarra Martin Blackwell Maxine Beneba Clarke Michael Candy and Rosalind Hall Michael Kieran Harvey, Arjun von Caemmerer and Brigita Ozolins Military Position MoMa Rahim AlHaj and Karim Wasfi (IRQ) Rod Thomson SAAKA Silver Space Sisters Akousmatica Sonya Lifschitz Tannery: Tasmanian Taiko and Leather Orchestra The Daemons of Dissent The Ghosts of Nothing featuring Laura Purcell The Museum of Everything Thembi Soddell TSO Chorus extreme Unconscious Collective
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