Setting the scene

It is a hot and dry Summer day in Boronia – a low- density suburb on the eastern fringe of Australia's second largest city, Melbourne. The street we are standing on is lined with brick suburban houses complete with tiled roofs, low front fences and neatly trimmed front lawns. The persistent and unwavering sound of combustion engines can be heard in the background, along with the occasional warble of a magpie that is watching the street closely from the top of a telegraph pole. Below the magpie stands a group of ten people. They shuffle on their feet nervously as they stare at an unusual looking single storey brick house with a double- bay garage. The home has been painted – rooftop to footings – with a thick black matt paint, including the windows, meter box and a couple of friendly garden gnomes who stand on its front stoop like loyal sentinels.

Kasey, a tall woman dressed in black with an official looking lanyard swinging around her neck approaches the crowd and begins to speak, straining her voice above the volume of the passing traffic.

Kasey

Introduction

This chapter grew out of a collaborative research project with Knox City Council, a local authority located on the eastern fringe of Melbourne, around 35 km from the city's centre. It articulates the role site- responsive artworks can play in interrogating the impact of climate change and new and old technologies on specific communities, by exploring the development and reception of Section 32, an immersive performance installation that converted an ordinary suburban home into a speculative vision of the Australian suburbs, somewhere at the end of the 21st century.