Organisers of Tasmania’s Dark Mofo winter festival have used their ingenuity to turn winter into a drawcard for visitors with a 10-day program of weird and wonderful events.

The annual festival, which launched its 2015 program last week, embraces the romanticism of the cold season and the mysticism of the solstice.

“Hobart has the longest night of any capital city,” says creative director Leigh Carmichael. “Rather than moan about the darkness, we are celebrating it.”

This year’s line-up for the June 12-22 festival includes performances by 250 artists from 12 different countries and will feature large outdoor installations, provocative art shows, an eclectic collection of music concerts, a mini film festival, a late-night “ceremonial death dance” and a five-day Bacchanalian winter feast.

It will culminate with the annual Nude Solstice Swim at Long Beach at sunrise on June 22, when participants are encouraged to “throw caution (and your clothes) to the wind”.

The 2014 Dark Mofo Nude Swim. Photo: Rosie Hastie

Dark Mofo is hosted by Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art, which was established by art collector David Walsh and is credited with significantly boosting tourism to Tasmania. MONA has attracted around 1.14 million visitors, including 65 per cent from interstate and overseas, since it opened in 2011.

Around 130,000 people attended last year’s Dark Mofo, with Tasmanian Premier Will Hodgman describing it as “a cultural beacon in Tasmania’s darkest and coldest season”.

Carmichael has worked with Walsh for nine years and says they first established the Mona Foma summer festival in 2009 to create a buzz ahead of the museum’s opening. But it quickly became apparent that the cold winter period posed a challenge, so in 2013 they launched the Dark Mofo winter festival.

“It just gets so quiet down here and everyone closes for three months … so there were a lot of question marks around whether it could or would work,” Carmichael says.

“I can say now that it certainly feels that we’ve achieved all of our goals and exceeded them.

“We’re using it [winter] to our advantage – it now seems to have an advantage over summer. It’s absolutely fascinating.”

Carmichael says the third Dark Mofo program is darker than ever. He hopes it will “challenge, disturb, excite and hopefully enlighten”.

“We are trying to explore that dark theme. I think people would be disappointed if we didn’t embrace it.”

Fire Organ, by Bastiaan Maris, will be presented in Dark Park. Photo: Marek Schovaneck

One of the big drawcards is expected to be music headliner Antony and the Johnsons (led by New York-based transgender artist Antony Hegarty), which will play two shows with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra at Hobart’s historic Odeon Theatre.

Carmichael says another highlight will be a new Dark Park precinct at Macquarie Point in Hobart, which will display large public artworks and installations, including Fire Organ, a huge steel tubing structure which shoots flames into the air, and Bass Bath, which promises a “full-body sonic massage immersion”.

“2100-horsepower subwoofers create a massive space of bass,” Carmichael says of the latter.

“Really deep soundwaves to a volume that’s so intense you have to wear headphones and sign a waiver before you go in. We are pushing people to their limits.”

Many of the events are based in or around Hobart, but another new addition to the program is a two-night sleepover in the Cradle Mountain Lake St Claire National Park. It will include the opening of an exhibition by Melbourne artist Ash Keating, a banquet by British duo Bompas and Parr (known for their outlandish food creations) and mysterious night-time tours around the Cradle Mountain area.

Returning this year is the City of Hobart Dark Mofo Winter Feast, which has been expanded to five nights of “feasting and fire” at the Princes Wharf featuring a range of guest chefs and culminating with a Balinese ogoh-ogoh parade on the winter solstice night.

If the ogoh-ogoh doesn’t get you, you can join the nude swim the following morning.

The Dark Mofo Winter Feast. Photo: MONA/Rémi Chauvin

Other 2015 Dark Mofo events include:

Music

In addition to Antony and the Johnsons, the music program at Hobart’s Odeon Theatre also includes Arkansas “doom metalheads” Pallbearer, Sydney indie-rock band The Preatures, German “industrial dance occultists” Oake, and British pop-art collective The Irrepressibles. New Orleans-based improvisational cellist and vocalist Helen Gillet will play at Mona, while double bassist Nick Tsaivos and friends will play at an all-night musical vigil at the Peacock Theatre.

Film

Dark Mofo Films will feature the world premiere of The Kettering Incident, a drama filmed in Tasmania. A selection of dark Nordic films with titles such as Severed Ways and When Animals Dream will also be screened in North Hobart’s historic State Theatre.

Theatre

Victoria’s The Rabble theatre company will perform Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. There will also be a “kooky take” on Roald Dahl’s The Witches, and a chance to experience your own funeral in an intimate show called Funeral, which was also part of the recent Adelaide Fringe.

Visual art

Dark Mofo coincides with the opening of MONA’s major exhibition, which this year will be Private Archaeology, by performance artist Marina Abramovic. Other visual artists showing work at various venues include Patricia Piccinini and Peter Hennessey, emerging Indigenous artist Tyrone Sheather, photographer Angela Waterson and textile artist Douglas McManus. There will also be a display of images and artefacts associated with Georgian and Victorian death rituals at the Narryna Heritage Museum.

The full Dark Mofo program is online.