Australian performance artist Mike Parr will be buried for three days underneath one of Hobart’s main roads for this year’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) Dark Mofo festival. The 73-year-old artist will be encapsulated in a steel compartment and inserted into the middle lane of Macquarie Street. The container will be fully fan forced allowing the artist to have a constant flow of oxygen. For 72 hours Parr will only have access to drawing tools, bedding, water and a copy of The Fatal Shore, which details the history of colonisation in Australia. With no food supplies he’ll be fasting for the duration of the project.
The intention of the performance is described by the Dark Mofo program as “conceived to memorialise the victims of twentieth century totalitarian violence in all of its ideological forms, including the shadow cast by the genocidal violence of nineteenth century British colonialism in Australia.”
Leaders of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community are divided over Parr’s art piece. Some consider the performance disrespectful while others hope it will raise awareness on Tasmania’s dark past of colonial violence. Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre CEO Heather Sculthorpe told the ABC, “If indeed that is what it is meant to be about then perhaps we should have Aboriginal people involved in it, not just Dark Mofo deciding what will tell our history better than what we can ourselves.” Conversely another spokesperson for the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, Michael Mansell, said, “Instead of Tasmania putting its head in the sand it needs to openly talk about the past and how it affects people today. Mr Parr is making his contribution.”
Parr is no stranger to conducting radical art performances in pursuit of public statements. In the past the artist has sewn his lips together, nailed himself to a wall, covered himself in his own blood, sewn fish on his body and cut off his prosthetic arm with a butcher’s knife. “Maybe that’s why I love Tasmania so much, I don’t think you’d get away with this anywhere else,” Parr told The Australian about his upcoming performance.
Dark Mofo has a reputation for pushing boundaries and commissioning controversial pieces. Last year’s event made headlines when artist Hermann Nitsch slaughtered a bull in a performance piece.