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A hallucinatory experimental film starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Rampling that can only be watched by one person at a time is heading to Australia as part of Tasmania’s 2026 Dark Mofo festival.
It’s estimated that only 500 people in the world have seen French artist Loris Gréaud’s film Sculpt since its premiere at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2016 – though the exact figure is hard to know, since he later supplied the files to hackers to distribute over the dark web.
But come June, a lucky few can bid to join the film’s rarefied audience, when Gréaud presents a new edit – bemusingly titled Sculpt: Eye of the Duck – to one audience member at a time at a secret location outside Hobart; exemplifying the kind of weird and wonderful, rare and had-to-be-there experience that Dark Mofo has become known for.
On the morning of each performance, hopeful viewers will be able to queue at a box office in downtown Hobart for one of nine timed, solo-viewing slots that day. Each viewer will be picked up and driven to an undisclosed location – a remote, “disused facility” outside Hobart – where they can watch the 50-minute film.
There will be 90 viewing slots overall for Sculpt: Eye of the Duck. Those who miss out on tickets each morning can join a physical waitlist – a bench – in case anyone fails to show up for their time slot.
“In a world where screens are everywhere and everything’s infinitely accessible, there’s something to be said about a screen-based work that is almost impossible to see,” said Dark Mofo festival director Chris Twite.
Gréaud’s project is part of a lineup that includes confronting performance, video and kinetic installations by artists including Spanish choreographer Candela Capitán and Mexican performance artist Kiyo Gutiérrez, shown in unusual venues around Hobart – including, this year, a massive cruise ship moored on the downtown waterfront.
The festival’s music program, meanwhile, includes Australian-exclusive performances by New York rapper Princess Nokia, Glaswegian producer Sega Bodega and Texan trash metal outfit Power Trip, among others. The Australian contingent includes Ninajirachi, Baker Boy, Miss Kaninna and Folk Bitch Trio.
Other highlights of Dark Mofo’s art program include Capitán’s dance work SOLAS, which will see five dancers perform in front of five laptops streaming to the live pornographic webcam platform Chaturbate.
Gutiérrez will bring two performance works, Hairline Border and Un muro que parte el cuerpo en dos (A wall that breaks the body in two), in which she respectively drags a concrete block across a gallery space using her hair and lies naked on the floor while a wall of bricks is built across her body – both highlighting the violence of state-imposed borders.
Australian artists will include Hayley Millar Baker, Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Vipoo Srivilasa and Chunxiao Qu. The latter has been commissioned to create a new neon text installation titled There’s Nothing Left to Pray For, responding to her sense of loss and despair following a harrowing family court dispute.
This year, Dark Mofo is expanding its annual art park – Dark Park – on to the water, with a series of videos and installations presented on the Spirit of Tasmania cruise ship. On board, audience members will find 15 “scary as hell” robot dogs, says Twite – part of a dystopian mechanical installation by collaborators Lolo & Sosaku – as well as a selection of international video art presented at massive scale, by artists including US cinematographer Arthur Jafa and Brazilian performance artist Berna Reale.
Festival-specific commissions include a new performance work by Regina José Galindo, a survivor of the Guatemalan civil war, which will explore “attention economies” around war, and the pain that remains after the world stops paying attention to a conflict; and a huge sound installation by Dutch artist and composer Boris Acket, using 135 light and speaker winches to create a moving “cloud” of sound and light that will envelop audiences.
“Boris thinks it’ll be the biggest spatial sound work in the world, but it’s very difficult to fact check,” said Twite.
On the preponderance of Latin American artists in this year’s program, Twite added, “they’re making really interesting things, and they’re maybe not as represented in Australian festivals and galleries … [And] while they’re very different cultures, a lot of those countries are colonial countries [too], who are dealing with the legacy of that.”
Several festival regulars will return, including the annual winter solstice nude swim, the Ogoh-ogoh parade, the Winter Feast food market, and the popular Night Mass party.
