Loosely based on a land use policy by The Victorian State Government
SYNOPSIS
(Set in 2057 Wade is a white property developer in his mid thirties who is unable to sleep without the assistance of ASMR YouTube vids. The legacy of his father’s real-estate empire haunts him and after the failure of his latest mixed use-housing precinct he can’t afford to fuck up again as he dreams of past glory.)
SECOND DRAFT
October 2021
FADE IN:
1. INT. CAR. DAY
SCENE: NAIL POLISH
An extreme close up of Wade’s eye lingers for ten seconds. Laurie Anderson’s O Superman plays loudly in the background. As the music fades the camera pans out to reveal him in the back seat of his car, parked just outside his office.
He is meditatively painting his thumbnail with sparkle nail polish, which brings him joy. He only paints his left thumbnail, as he loves the way it feels and finds himself touching the nail throughout the day occasionally tempted to suck on it.
He needs the nail to remind himself of her. Because anything else would be too obvious, like he was obsessed or stalking her. He just likes her vids and the way he falls into a deep sleep so quickly at the 5-minute mark. He didn’t intend to find the make-up tutorials and the repetitive nail painting so addictive; she’s just an object designed to help him get to sleep. Viewing the rest was just an accident.
WADE (V/O)
I’m not addicted
I’m not addicted
I’m not addicted
She just helps me
to relax better and
get some sleep. I’m
not going to try
and find her on
Insta, she probably
doesn’t reply to
DMs anyway. It’s not
like that. I totally
understand that this
is her job and
she doesn’t know me.
2. INT. OFFICE. DAY
SCENE: BEFORE THE MEETING
Wade enters a large industrial warehouse in Collingwood that has been converted into bespoke office spaces where a number of architectural, design and development firms hot desk. He notices Dora as he walks in and rushes to the communal kitchen area hoping to avoid her. As he starts to make a coffee he doesn’t notice her behind him until he hears her voice.
DORA
Um you’re touching your thumbnail again.
WADE
I don’t think I am.
DORA
Um, yeah I think it confuses clients, I mean obviously they love you. But yeah.
WADE
Yeah sorry, totally makes sense.
DORA
I mean there’s nothing wrong with it. I was a nail biter for fucking years. Like there’s help available, hypnosis and shit and tbh it’s kind of endearing, I mean when you think about your status, your dad and everything. It’s not what you’d expect. I think I like it.
WADE
I’m not a nail biter, I just like touching my thumbnail.
DORA
Totally, I get it.
3. INT. BEDROOM. NIGHT
SCENE: A SPECULATIVE DREAM
Wade is lying in bed watching ASMR videos; a close up lingers on his face as the light from his Mac illuminates the dark circles under his eyes. He returns to the same vids and the same person who gets him to sleep. He stares at the screen intensely, his face momentarily full of joy. Once asleep we enter his dream as he relives the glory of past projects, which have been impossible to repeat. The kinds of projects that lead to the highest career accolades, creating the kind of success that left Wade oblivious to the injustices of what he had actually done.
DREAM SEQUENCE: Before Wade was even born he discovered that in 2010 the Victorian Planning Authority had created a policy statement and planning framework on the Maribyrnong Defence site. The critical outcomes included:
An open market disposal on behalf of the Commonwealth commenced, but despite interest from heavy weights such as Mirvac, Stockland and Fraser Property a sale was never secured, most likely due to the cost of environmental remediation, which was likely to be more expensive than the cost of the land itself. By 2020 the site remained abandoned as both developers and government continued to speculate over its future, imagining a new community that would evolve into the suburb “Remount Hill”, a name proposed to reflect its long history as a manufacturing plant for cordite and other materials used to make military explosives.
Looking through old websites; piecing together the visions and plans that had never eventuated for Maribyrnong, Wade scanned his urban design framework, conscious to check that nothing was missing. It set the guiding principles for an infinite future where resources, community connectedness, jobs, social infrastructure and pleasure coalesced in an endless cycle of equitable prosperity.
Infinite. He loved how the word rolled off his tongue and what it represented. It had replaced the buzzwords that his millennial parents had gravitated towards: sustainability, resilience, intergenerational equity, decoloniality, and social justice.
Infinite brought the past, present and future together, allowing cities to embrace their multiple histories because time didn’t exist. But was perpetually re-beginning.
Wade was close to getting a permit – the final legal barrier before he could realise his vision for an infinite future. Purchasing the site was the easy part, but he hadn’t anticipated the myriad applications and amendments he would need to adhere to as he wondered what the planning system was and why it still existed when people were capable of deciding where and how they wanted to live. Instead he had to follow a series of rigid rules, as if planners with their augmented sense of authority, had any better understanding of environmental impact, integrated transport, cultural heritage and affordable housing than he did.
A colleague had started hearing rumors of a positive planning movement, a radical uprising where urban policy and planning professionals started to acknowledge that the industry was part of the problem, and made conscious steps to become part of the solution. To stop, reflect, educate and do better. Because social change mattered and so did planning. There were protests in the CBD. People shouting ‘climate change is in our backyards’, with (CCIBY) painted on large placards, without realising that they were selling the same dream as the property developers and real-estate agents who they despised. The dream of your own backyard to protect to begin with, where fighting for your private property was just a $500,000 mortgage away.
Wade was honest and resented the reputation his profession had developed. He was confused as to why they had become the symbol of capitalism’s most grotesque attributes when they were really just dream facilitators, dedicated to delivering their clients a delicate balance between location, architecture, social cohesiveness and connection to nature. There would never be a positive property developer or real estate movement because they had nothing to hide.
Committed to producing the best in residential design, the exhilarating transformation of the Maribyrnong Defence site would also reference its original inhabitants. Wade had done some research and believed that it was important to acknowledge their contribution to this great country. He would achieve this by creating a textured render on the exterior of apartments as a homage to the campsites and corroborees which had occurred along the river’s edge by the people of the Kulin Nations. Imbued with Japanese design principles, he wanted to provide innovative, thoughtful, community-enriched living for future residents.
The interior of the apartments combined a tactile palette of materials designed to invoke a sense of warmth, culture and tranquillity. It responded to the original inhabitants, echoing Australia’s pre-colonial past beneath the feet of those who entered. High ceilings and dual aspect windows had been developed to invite the outside in, with city views that corresponded to the surrounding river.
Wade had organised billboards; erected along the West Gate freeway advertising the dream. 15% affordable dwellings, attainable to the lower middle classes and funded through a portion of his return, given he only had to sell 40% to make a profit. He anticipated the buzz of his phone as people registered for the beginning of their new lives, lives in which one’s house was a financial asset and physical manifestation of one’s ultimate self.
He decided to dig the first hole on site as he waited for the final planning approval and permit to come through. It was his entrance into a new world created from what was always there. He had found the future and it was infinite.
4. EXT. VACANT SITE. MORNING
SCENE: THIS COULD BE THE ONE
Dora and Wade drive to a vacant site in Caulfield, wedged between the Frankston and Cranbourne train lines. For decades other developers tried to transform the block into marketable town houses but lack of interest from buyers meant that the projects were abandoned. Dora takes Wade into the center of the site. They lie down imagining the infinite possibilities that others failed to see as trains go past.
DORA
I just don’t think
people were ready before.
WADE
I mean it seems like a
small area but residents
will have access to two
train lines in walking distance.
DORA
Exactly!
The end.
Timmah Ball is a nonfiction writer, researcher and creative practitioner of Ballardong Noongar heritage. Her work is often informed by studying urban planning and offers a critique of conventional city-making systems. In 2018 she co-curated Wild Tongue for the Next Wave festival, with Azja Kulpinska, which interrogated labour inequality in the arts industry.
In 2016 she won the Westerly Magazine Patricia Hackett Prize, and her writing has appeared in a range of anthologies and literary journals. More recently she has created audio work for ACCA and Liquid Architecture, which contemplates the past, present and future of both physical and online spaces in the COVID era.
Loosely based on a land use policy by The Victorian State Government
SYNOPSIS
(Set in 2057 Wade is a white property developer in his mid thirties who is unable to sleep without the assistance of ASMR YouTube vids. The legacy of his father’s real-estate empire haunts him and after the failure of his latest mixed use-housing precinct he can’t afford to fuck up again as he dreams of past glory.)
SECOND DRAFT
October 2021
FADE IN:
1. INT. CAR. DAY
SCENE: NAIL POLISH
An extreme close up of Wade’s eye lingers for ten seconds. Laurie Anderson’s O Superman plays loudly in the background. As the music fades the camera pans out to reveal him in the back seat of his car, parked just outside his office.
He is meditatively painting his thumbnail with sparkle nail polish, which brings him joy. He only paints his left thumbnail, as he loves the way it feels and finds himself touching the nail throughout the day occasionally tempted to suck on it.
He needs the nail to remind himself of her. Because anything else would be too obvious, like he was obsessed or stalking her. He just likes her vids and the way he falls into a deep sleep so quickly at the 5-minute mark. He didn’t intend to find the make-up tutorials and the repetitive nail painting so addictive; she’s just an object designed to help him get to sleep. Viewing the rest was just an accident.
WADE (V/O)
I’m not addicted
I’m not addicted
I’m not addicted
She just helps me
to relax better and
get some sleep. I’m
not going to try
and find her on
Insta, she probably
doesn’t reply to
DMs anyway. It’s not
like that. I totally
understand that this
is her job and
she doesn’t know me.
2. INT. OFFICE. DAY
SCENE: BEFORE THE MEETING
Wade enters a large industrial warehouse in Collingwood that has been converted into bespoke office spaces where a number of architectural, design and development firms hot desk. He notices Dora as he walks in and rushes to the communal kitchen area hoping to avoid her. As he starts to make a coffee he doesn’t notice her behind him until he hears her voice.
DORA
Um you’re touching your thumbnail again.
WADE
I don’t think I am.
DORA
Um, yeah I think it confuses clients, I mean obviously they love you. But yeah.
WADE
Yeah sorry, totally makes sense.
DORA
I mean there’s nothing wrong with it. I was a nail biter for fucking years. Like there’s help available, hypnosis and shit and tbh it’s kind of endearing, I mean when you think about your status, your dad and everything. It’s not what you’d expect. I think I like it.
WADE
I’m not a nail biter, I just like touching my thumbnail.
DORA
Totally, I get it.
3. INT. BEDROOM. NIGHT
SCENE: A SPECULATIVE DREAM
Wade is lying in bed watching ASMR videos; a close up lingers on his face as the light from his Mac illuminates the dark circles under his eyes. He returns to the same vids and the same person who gets him to sleep. He stares at the screen intensely, his face momentarily full of joy. Once asleep we enter his dream as he relives the glory of past projects, which have been impossible to repeat. The kinds of projects that lead to the highest career accolades, creating the kind of success that left Wade oblivious to the injustices of what he had actually done.
DREAM SEQUENCE: Before Wade was even born he discovered that in 2010 the Victorian Planning Authority had created a policy statement and planning framework on the Maribyrnong Defence site. The critical outcomes included:
An open market disposal on behalf of the Commonwealth commenced, but despite interest from heavy weights such as Mirvac, Stockland and Fraser Property a sale was never secured, most likely due to the cost of environmental remediation, which was likely to be more expensive than the cost of the land itself. By 2020 the site remained abandoned as both developers and government continued to speculate over its future, imagining a new community that would evolve into the suburb “Remount Hill”, a name proposed to reflect its long history as a manufacturing plant for cordite and other materials used to make military explosives.
Looking through old websites; piecing together the visions and plans that had never eventuated for Maribyrnong, Wade scanned his urban design framework, conscious to check that nothing was missing. It set the guiding principles for an infinite future where resources, community connectedness, jobs, social infrastructure and pleasure coalesced in an endless cycle of equitable prosperity.
Infinite. He loved how the word rolled off his tongue and what it represented. It had replaced the buzzwords that his millennial parents had gravitated towards: sustainability, resilience, intergenerational equity, decoloniality, and social justice.
Infinite brought the past, present and future together, allowing cities to embrace their multiple histories because time didn’t exist. But was perpetually re-beginning.
Wade was close to getting a permit – the final legal barrier before he could realise his vision for an infinite future. Purchasing the site was the easy part, but he hadn’t anticipated the myriad applications and amendments he would need to adhere to as he wondered what the planning system was and why it still existed when people were capable of deciding where and how they wanted to live. Instead he had to follow a series of rigid rules, as if planners with their augmented sense of authority, had any better understanding of environmental impact, integrated transport, cultural heritage and affordable housing than he did.
A colleague had started hearing rumors of a positive planning movement, a radical uprising where urban policy and planning professionals started to acknowledge that the industry was part of the problem, and made conscious steps to become part of the solution. To stop, reflect, educate and do better. Because social change mattered and so did planning. There were protests in the CBD. People shouting ‘climate change is in our backyards’, with (CCIBY) painted on large placards, without realising that they were selling the same dream as the property developers and real-estate agents who they despised. The dream of your own backyard to protect to begin with, where fighting for your private property was just a $500,000 mortgage away.
Wade was honest and resented the reputation his profession had developed. He was confused as to why they had become the symbol of capitalism’s most grotesque attributes when they were really just dream facilitators, dedicated to delivering their clients a delicate balance between location, architecture, social cohesiveness and connection to nature. There would never be a positive property developer or real estate movement because they had nothing to hide.
Committed to producing the best in residential design, the exhilarating transformation of the Maribyrnong Defence site would also reference its original inhabitants. Wade had done some research and believed that it was important to acknowledge their contribution to this great country. He would achieve this by creating a textured render on the exterior of apartments as a homage to the campsites and corroborees which had occurred along the river’s edge by the people of the Kulin Nations. Imbued with Japanese design principles, he wanted to provide innovative, thoughtful, community-enriched living for future residents.
The interior of the apartments combined a tactile palette of materials designed to invoke a sense of warmth, culture and tranquillity. It responded to the original inhabitants, echoing Australia’s pre-colonial past beneath the feet of those who entered. High ceilings and dual aspect windows had been developed to invite the outside in, with city views that corresponded to the surrounding river.
Wade had organised billboards; erected along the West Gate freeway advertising the dream. 15% affordable dwellings, attainable to the lower middle classes and funded through a portion of his return, given he only had to sell 40% to make a profit. He anticipated the buzz of his phone as people registered for the beginning of their new lives, lives in which one’s house was a financial asset and physical manifestation of one’s ultimate self.
He decided to dig the first hole on site as he waited for the final planning approval and permit to come through. It was his entrance into a new world created from what was always there. He had found the future and it was infinite.
4. EXT. VACANT SITE. MORNING
SCENE: THIS COULD BE THE ONE
Dora and Wade drive to a vacant site in Caulfield, wedged between the Frankston and Cranbourne train lines. For decades other developers tried to transform the block into marketable town houses but lack of interest from buyers meant that the projects were abandoned. Dora takes Wade into the center of the site. They lie down imagining the infinite possibilities that others failed to see as trains go past.
DORA
I just don’t think
people were ready before.
WADE
I mean it seems like a
small area but residents
will have access to two
train lines in walking distance.
DORA
Exactly!
The end.
Timmah Ball is a nonfiction writer, researcher and creative practitioner of Ballardong Noongar heritage. Her work is often informed by studying urban planning and offers a critique of conventional city-making systems. In 2018 she co-curated Wild Tongue for the Next Wave festival, with Azja Kulpinska, which interrogated labour inequality in the arts industry.
In 2016 she won the Westerly Magazine Patricia Hackett Prize, and her writing has appeared in a range of anthologies and literary journals. More recently she has created audio work for ACCA and Liquid Architecture, which contemplates the past, present and future of both physical and online spaces in the COVID era.
Runway Journal acknowledges the custodians of the nations our digital platform reaches.
We extend this acknowledgement to all First Nations artists, writers and audiences.
Runway Journal is produced by a voluntary board and pay our contributors above industry rates. If you have found some delight in this content, please consider a one-time or recurring monthly donation.
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Runway Journal is produced by a voluntary board and pay our contributors above industry rates. If you have found some delight in this content, please consider a one-time or recurring monthly donation.
Runway Journal acknowledges the custodians of the nations our digital platform reaches.
We extend this acknowledgement to all First Nations artists, writers and audiences.
Runway is supported by