The streets are lined with gum trees, dogs bark in generous backyards and the op shops still sell clothes for a dollar. This could be any Australian suburb, but there's something unusual going on in Boronia, about 30 kilometres east of Melbourne's CBD.
Neighbours peer curiously over their fences at a house that is painted completely black. As far as urban development goes, they haven't seen anything quite like this.
Taking inspiration from the black monoliths of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the house on Boronia Road is intended to be from the future, shedding light on what our suburbs may look like in decades to come.
"This is my black, suburban monolith," says Clare McCracken. She and a team of other artists have transformed the house inside and out for the annual Immerse public art festival, supported by Knox City Council.
Taking its name, Section 32, from the official vendor statement made to a property buyer, the immersive work aims to provoke discussion about urban development, technology and the effects of climate change on our cities into the future.
"I had a lot of conversations with planning academics about where Melbourne was at, and we're floundering a little bit at the moment," McCracken says. "We had Melbourne 2030 but there's not been any really great vision for the way that we're developing and sprawling."
At the door of the mysterious house, visitors – allowed in groups of only 10 at a time – are greeted by a "futurist anthropologist". Inside, the house itself does the talking.
An eerie soundtrack by Robert D Jordan floats through the corridors. Water drips from the ceiling and laps at the floorboards as a weeks-long storm thrashes outside. "Carbon counters" that track every individual's carbon footprint spin like warning sirens.
In a room with a distinct orange glow, a long-distance lover calls in from Mars. In the bathroom, a family of yabbies can be heard scraping their claws against the bathtub, next to a vibrant indoor garden.
"I feel like yabbies would survive everything," McCracken explains. "When the bushfires went through mum's property in Myrtleford, they were the one survivor that came out of the dam."
There's a distinct sense of unease about the house but it's not spooky, says Brienna Macnish, another collaborator.
The site has been donated to the festival by a philanthropist before its scheduled destruction. But not all the neighbours were initially happy about using it for an art project. McCracken puts that down to anxiety over the future of our suburbs – the very themes the work explores.
This is my black, suburban monolith.
Clare McCracken
"Boronia is going from the quarter-acre block to medium density, and people that have lived here their whole lives are like, 'What is happening?'," she says.
Jo Herbig, community and public arts officer at Knox City council, describes the broader Immerse program – comprising 40 artists across 30 venues for 30 days – as an "arts intervention".
"It's about bringing art to the people as opposed to people having to go to it," she says. "In the suburbs it's not such a popular pursuit to go to a gallery."
"You want to change Australian ideas – come to the suburbs," McCracken says.
Section 32 is on Mondays and Saturdays, 10am to 4pm, from November 12 to December 10 at 231 Boronia Road, Boronia. Bookings recommended: section32art.com
Immerse runs from November 12 to December 12 at various venues.
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