A car crash and giant hand that looks like Donald Trump – Dark Mofo is back

The Age

a day ago

Dropping to your knees and screaming at the top of your lungs in public is usually, at best, frowned upon – but here on a drizzly winter night I find myself considering it.
Clearly there is something deep within each of us that wants to make our emotions heard by all around – babies and toddlers do it until societal conditioning teaches them to quieten down, to find new channels of expression, to live more interiorly. And so the screaming changes form; perhaps it turns into high blood pressure, into running marathons, into smashing out angry words anonymously on a keyboard.
In his artwork Neon Anthem, however, Nicholas Galanin invites all who see his light-up sign to take a step back. 'I've composed a new national anthem,' the bright white words read. 'Take a knee and scream until you can't breathe.'
The newest iteration of the work – minus the word 'American' before 'anthem' that has appeared in other versions – is on display as part of this year's Dark Mofo arts festival. The words loom large over a series of mats laid out on the floor, and all around me people are doing as asked; dropping to their knees and making themselves heard.
New artistic director Chris Twite has had to wait a little longer than expected to helm his inaugural festival, but after hitting pause in 2024, Dark Mofo is back, with the Hobart-based arts festival bringing together visual art, music, performance and a series of experiences and experiments that don't fit neatly into a category.
Perched atop one building is a giant hand with a face on it. 'It looks like Trump,' a friend insisted. 'No, it looks like Elon Musk,' another shot back. Actually, it's neither – Quasi by artist Ronnie van Hout is apparently a self-portrait of sorts. The last time I saw it was on its last day in Wellington, New Zealand – at the time, where the polarising work would be heading to next remained a mystery. 'Oh is that not normally there?' a passer-by says, attention drawn by all the people stopping to take photos.
One of the key events of the first weekend of the festival was Crash Body, a work by artist Paula Garcia which saw two cars – one driven by a stunt driver and the other by the artist herself – collide after a series of increasingly tense near misses. To get to the event you needed to walk through Dark Park, a hub of different works including Neon Anthem, down a narrow pathway, past a car suspended by a crane, before trying to find a good vantage point in the crowd.
Over the course of about half an hour, the two cars danced and wove around each other, sliding through puddles as the soundtrack amplified the tension. The crash itself came suddenly, much earlier than expected, the windows of both vehicles blowing out. 'Aggh I wasn't filming,' said a voice to the right of me. The voice's owner and the friends they came with left before seeing if Garcia had safely left her vehicle.