It makes zero sense. Inside Hobart’s City Hall on a crisp Sunday afternoon, 34 men in dark suits are arranged in a six-metre-high, multi-layered ziggurat formation. It goes like this: 14 men stand on the floor, clenching a huge wooden table with their teeth. Upon that table, 10 men stand holding another big table with their teeth. On that table are six men chomping into a family-size dining table, upon which four more stand biting into a small table at the very top. This is Stasis by Belgian artist Ruben Bellinkx, and it’s both distressing and deeply supernatural.

For its silent 30-minute duration, the only signs of life are an unclasping of hands. A finger twitch or tremor of suit pant material. Some of the figures don’t seem to move at all – neither do the tables. Sleight of hand? Are the performers even real? Built into the structure, maybe? No, the people definitely are real. So aren’t they in danger of collapsing under the weight of so many men and tables? The longer it persists, the faster my mind races. Eventually the wash of light dims to black and the unnerving silhouette remains as we shuffle out. Look for yourself. I don’t know how they do it and I don’t care to.

In its second year under artistic director Chris Twite, Dark Mofo felt like it was crystallising into some new structure. Not the carnage or controversy of its earliest years. Not the DIY discovery or bold headliners of years since. In 2026, it seems sure-footed and in sync with the city – less an affair, more a marriage. Once decried by locals as “satanic”, it’s now almost part of the furniture. You can snap a photo of “your iconic Dark Mofo look” and tag the shoe store to win a free pair. The barefoot girl frolicking around a “Jesus heals trauma” sign on the waterfront mustn’t have seen it.

This year, I sank into the second week of Dark Mofo, where I found the performance and installations (and new works at Mona) awesome; the standalone music moments less so. The Winter Feast still served: at week’s end I consisted of half chicken shawarma from Elle’s Eatery, half Martini from Brine’s addictive Unhappy Meal (a Punch and Ladle Dirty Martini, paired with fried green olives and fries).

The festival’s hallowed late-night party, Night Mass, loomed large, but felt less a rabbit warren of wonders and more a fantastical big-club vibe; one you still won’t find anywhere else in Australia. If you tuned into that, it was excellent fun – Skin on Skin, Spicy Music and the Inbraza Baile Funk all ruled here. If you didn’t, well, there were scones and jam, a nail salon, shots squirted through fake penises, a roast chicken mirror ball, party rooms and more. Yes, lines to get into some of that stuff were dire. (Overheard at Night Mass: “Guess what? Everything takes too long!”) But these days there’s a strong sideline in Mofo-adjacent parties, too. Wax’o Paradiso led two late nights at Don Frico, the dank stalwart Grand Poobah ran a 24-hour techno situation, and you could hit the water on the Natty Waves party boat and floating wine bar. Even the hotel I stayed in had a “hidden bar experience” with “cryptic surprises” and “a secret mystery room waiting to be uncovered”. Dark Mofo – it’s a lifestyle.

“I had to sign up to live sex-cam site Chaturbate for work,” is what I will tell my boss about seeing Solas at the Theatre Royal on Thursday night. Spanish artist Candela Capitán explores the divide between titillation and trauma, and in Solas that division is rubbed to its nub. Against cool beats, five beautiful, stern-faced dancers in sheer pink bodysuits and white boots gyrate athletically over laptops, as audience members watch both IRL and via the stream on their phone. Posters of the show suggested some sci-fi romp – in-person, the relentless, stone-faced knotting of bodies grinds the audience into a blank facsimile of their screens. In Spanish, solas means “alone”. My partner, who does Pilates, gave them a standing ovation.

David Walsh is not alone – at least physically. Earlier that day at Mona, I’d seen the bedazzled-sneaker-wearing millionaire striding through the sun-dappled crowd with partner Kirsha Kaechele; just mortals like the rest of us spilling in from ferries, flights and Ubers to poke around his home and find fun. That turned out to be the excellent exhibition Hard Core by French-Swiss artist Julian Charrière, and Mona’s new permanent installation Elektra by Anselm Kiefer. The latter is a massive concrete structure built upon The Phrontisterion, a new a $100 million library which houses rare Shakespeare, a world-first electronic mapping system, secret doors and artworks, but no books on hotdogs. (More on this to come.)

At Hard Core, I was especially stunned by Atlas – a huge spherical stone being polished by three steel grinders; the milky water runoff the evidence of the ancient stromatolite’s slow death – and in Elektra, all of it. One day all of this will sink into the river, and will have been the dream it feels to be standing there looking at it. Go.

Overheard on the street: “There are so many hot people around. Do you guys have hook turns down here?”

Mofo’s performance art came in inward-looking offerings this year – no Mike Parr burying himself under the street for three days, or Paul Setúbal beating the shit out of a hallway. In some ways, it started with me.

On a cloudy Saturday afternoon, my ears still ringing from Night Mass, I dragged my Martini-poisoned body to a deserted red bench outside a church, where I’d been told to wait. The reason was Loris Gréaud’s Sculpt: Eye of the Duck, a rarely seen experimental French film screened for one. The $100 tickets were hot – some people lined up before 5am to try and nab one of just a handful released each day.

A black car pulled up, a woman in a suit and aviators emerged to hand me a metal ticket stub. As we drove away, Willem Dafoe’s voice began ranting over the stereo about humanity, the nature of reality, and something about windows “offering hope” that coincided with mine winding down of its own accord. At some point, I was handed a phone. When it rang, Dafoe’s voice was on the other end blathering. By the time we arrived back in the CBD, it felt like it was personal.

Inside a dim-lit theatre, a saucer-eyed girl in a vintage red usher uniform took my ticket. I was handed a black cocktail, and turned to see all the theatre chairs dumped in a pile, like some terrible flood had swept through. Pale red candles danced on the walls. “There’s a chair for you down the front,” said the spooky usher, pointing to a single spotlit seat. By now, I couldn’t tell if I was still hungover or not.

The curtains peeled back and, for the next 45 minutes, I drank in a black and red fever dream of Willem Dafoe talking to naked girls in bondage, an old man making elixirs in a forest, empty theatres, unreliable philosophy and a disembowelling. Like David Lynch-meets-Anthony Bourdain on SBS. When done, I was shown out and headed off down the street trying to piece it together. A passing guy in a red beret thrust a red USB into my hand. Once home, I plugged it in to discover a beautifully shot film of Willem Dafoe reading this review. Just kidding. The ticket’s tagline: “What happens inside remains your experience alone”.

This kind of large-scale, one-on-one intimacy that Dark Mofo can invent for you is intoxicating. Not everyone can afford $100 for it, but the free options also get their claws in.

In the deserted Pianos Warehouse up on Elizabeth Street, Hairline Border saw Mexican artist Kiyo Gutiérrez “tethered by hair to concrete, the artist’s body [tracing] the lines that divide land, rivers and lives – as both wounds and cracks of possibility”. In other words, a nude Gutiérrez in high boots lugging a square of concrete around with her hair. As Gutiérrez grunted and lurched in a fashion that would usually invite an offer of help, the quiet crowd just looked on. I noticed the only viewers filming the act on their phones were men. “Don’t give up,” one yelled stupidly, when she finally began smashing the concrete block to free herself. He wolf-whistled when she did. The wound is men.

The following night, on the upstairs floor, Guatemalan artist Regina José Galindo staged Times of War. Her “quiet protest against the violence of our times” kicked off with a ring of blazing lights so bright they were painful to look at. When they flicked off, the light trails remained in your vision (like violence does, I guess?). Then suddenly, Galindo appeared within the ring of light, lying naked on the ground. People stood over her body, shielding their eyes to try and see.

Outside, afterwards, the hazy fingernail moon glowed weak on the walk down Elizabeth Street. Smells Like Teen Spirit poured out from the noodle shop. It was 9.6 degrees Celsius and only 8.20pm. “And the old lady has an apple up her bum,” added a teen walking by.

Inside the Theatre Royal, sparks were flying – literally. Lolo & Sosaku are a duo from Argentina and Japan, based in Barcelona, who engineer playful chaos from homemade metal bits and pieces. They were all over the festival, with an installation at Dark Park as well as playing six sets of super fun, industrial-assisted techno in the round under the name Êlêctron. I loved it all. Especially as Êlêctron, when they left the machines to themselves – pistons working as hi-hats, metal scraps click-clacking – and took a breather in the crowd. Sosaku ate an apple, then a choc-top. Eventually, Lolo hopped on stage and threw some hulking electrical thing around, sparks flying. I loved this version of electronic music – off the grid, banging and chaotic, chill about things being a bit dangerous.

Overheard between teens with folded arms: “Well, I want you to be honest first”.

With Dark Park’s traditional home now officially under siege by the Macquarie Point Stadium project, the hulking Spirit of Tasmania had helpfully anchored at Macquarie Wharf to offer up its cavernous cargo bays. Walking past Mac 02 on the waterfront – the Ogoh-Ogoh sculpture, a collection of belts scraping the ground in Monica Bonvicini's Breathing, and Boris Acket’s beautiful “kinetic cloud” light installation Soundspace lay – punters walked up the gangplank into the bowels of the boat’s cold, cavernous car bays. The excellent new space lent a not-of-this-world atmosphere to Dark Park.

But first you had to get past the videos. I felt it last year, too, but in a life plagued by screens, video works have lost their lustre. At Dark Park, these included a figure riding a red horse around a city (Berna Reale’s Palomo), a woman running from a tank (Regina José Galindo’s La Sombra) and an endless stream of random images (Arthur Jafa’s APEX). They felt like screensavers waiting for the art to load. My friend wasn’t having it: “I hate that fucken art. That’s my worst kind of art – a video on an iPhone of someone doing something stupid.” So it made Lolo & Sosaku’s Perros Chaos feel like Dark Park’s headliner simply by being tangible. The pair’s awesome installation of crude, DIY machines fitted across the metal floor, between stacked, smoking cars and throbbing techno beats, felt like stumbling upon another world. Without screens. Bliss.

Overheard between kids seeing the flames at Dark Park: “I say they’re dragon mouths.”

Maybe it was Dark Park taking over the big Mac 02 performance space that subtracted an opportunity for big occasion gigs, or maybe it was just the week I was in town. But the Dark Mofo music program this year left me wanting.

On Thursday, Kenyan metal-rap maestro Lord Spikeheart turned Alter Bar into a thudding wash of blast beats, snarl and Korn-like groove and gristle; he would’ve hit harder with a band in tow, but with the fog juice flowing and the audience on stage, it worked. South Sudanese Australian tech-house ripper Skin on Skin seemed determined to blow a hole in the same venue’s ceiling girders with 808 kicks and frantic drops of hard snippets of UK drill – but he really hit spectacularly from the towering DJ booth at Night Mass the following night.

On Friday night, the loved-up ADHD EDM of Ninajirachi blitzed a sold-out crowd at The Odeon, with a frantic unzipping of her mega-debut LP I Love My Computer. From opener London Song, the NSW Central Coast star’s set was a wall-to-wall sugar rush of nostalgic EDM, huge hooks and a face-melting AV show of computer innards. Performing on a run that includes Coachella, Lollapalooza and Primavera – “This is my first headline show in Tasmania” – the 26-year-old closed out with a one-two punch of iPod Touch and Fuck My Computer to turn the room into a glitching sweatbox.

Irish Chilean producer Sega Bodega bears the same hallmarks of a similarly restless electronic innovator. He’s worked with Björk, Rosalía and Caroline Polachek, released music on Twitch, and swings between pop, ambient and dance floor-juddering techno. So when his “new live AV experience”, turned out to be mostly a flickering backdrop of AI slop, I couldn’t get my head around it. Even fun shoegaze-metal quartet Blackwater Holylight had a Twilight-style screensaver that hit harder. Sega Bodega’s visual self-own forced his music to stand on its own, and when it finally emerged from growly bass and airy pads into the skittering Kepko and acid-groove of Piki, it was fun enough. But you can’t unsee it.

Detroit garage-post-punks Protomartyr also had to overcome a distraction at their Alter show Sunday night – a briefly lost guitar. “I ain’t got no jokes, I’m a bitter motherfucker,” cracked acerbic frontman Joe Casey as we waited. “Hey that’s cake, that’s not a guitar! Oh yeah, some Detroit blues everybody. This song is okay.” That personality break cracked something open, and The Devil in His Youth began to make things sizzle. The proximity of Protomartyr’s set to the UK’s WU LYF at The Odeon was unfortunate. I felt like I’d entered an alternate dimension – one where an indie version of Creed had won. The acquired squawk of frontman Ellery Roberts, the Christ-like pose for A New Life is Coming, the strident exhortations that felt unearned. Music is subjective, I know. That’s why we love it. So as the crowd sang along, I slowly backed away.

An aching sliver of time with Canadian artist Loscil as part of Borderlands was a highlight – after all the noise, it was wonderfully elemental, just dusty cymbals, bass pulses, organ drones and cave-like reverb to let the brain wander around in. He was supporting Californian experimental group Xiu Xiu’s Eraserhead set. Though signed off by David Lynch himself, it still had something cosplay-ish about it. The legendary director has loomed large over Dark Mofo in the past, and rebooting his iconography feels like preaching to the converted. Think breathy percussion, metal scrapes and chintzy organ over black-and-white images of bodies, tchotchkes, boobs, girls, old houses and masks. Still, when the set culminated in Jamie Stewart singing an actually glorious In Heaven over Angela Seo’s lonesome organ, you couldn’t help but let yourself go.

Overheard: “I did a body transformation there one year.”

On the last day of Dark Mofo, I was out on the marina looking over the Derwent River when a line of sprinklers switched on to drench the lone bridge I’d walked to get there. Fuck. To get back, I’d have to risk my dignity, or give up and call for help. Very Dark Mofo. Just when I was going to make a break for it, they switched off. Phew. Just another moment of “cryptic surprise”. The kind of thing that can be a marketing slogan for the hotel bar as much as a haunted memory of men holding tables in their teeth, a nude woman trailing concrete with her hair, and Willem Dafoe’s damn voice in my head. That’s why we keep coming back after all these years – to experience the unknown.

Retreating to a bench on the dock, I overheard two people talking about the festival. “I always wanted to go to Dark Mofo and now I’ve done it – wow,” said one. “The way it opens up the city is really wonderful. And the crowd is such a mix of people who have obviously flown in and connect to this. Our plane was just a plane full of goths.”

“When the big red crosses were first installed around the harbour,” replied the other, an older local. “I mean, you’ve no idea of the controversy.”

“That’s what I love about this festival,” said the newcomer. “It’s confusing! Get over it.”

The writer travelled to Hobart as a guest of Dark Mofo.