David Walsh has announced that he will  “kill” Dark Mofo this year over coronavirus fears, which could see the festival and the Museum of Old and New Art suffer considerable losses.

In a statement this morning, David Walsh began: “Rational consequences of risk are defensive planning (toilet rolls), and late decision-making. Kirsha, my wife, was planning a fundraiser for her garden project, in April. She sold just two tickets (thanks, and sorry, Tim and Irene). Her events are very popular, so what happened?  Fear is what happened. That fear is compelled by uncertainty. Fear is the right response. And that right response means we would have trouble selling tickets to Dark Mofo events, also.”

Walsh cuts straight to the point, explaining that MONA and the Tasmanian Government could stand to lose a significant sum of money if ticket sales were to plunge, with Dark Mofo Creative Director Leigh Carmichael pitting the figure at $8 million.

“That kind of blowout would affect Mona’s program, and I’d be back to subsisting on the diet I had when I was eighteen – pineapples and mint slice biscuits,” Walsh adds.

Sales aside, if staff members or performing artists were to contract the virus, it could also see the festival shut down last minute.

He closes by saying: “It’s likely that nothing will happen. June will roll up, COVID-19 will die down, and I’ll look (more) like a fool for having cancelled. But that’s the best thing that could happen. The worst thing that could happen is not me trashing my cash. We could soldier on, without consideration or advantage, have the crowd turn up anyway, and send them home sick. But that wouldn’t be the worst thing, either. Worse than that, for me at least, would be proceeding with Dark Mofo and having it fail, and thus having it become the final Dark Mofo. That would mean facing a future of Hobart winters unpunctuated by pageantry, and thus returning to a tyranny of complacency – that worse-than-COVID Hobart malaise of believing we don’t have to seek to do more, and we don’t have to seek to do better.”

Read the full statement here.