Staging The Bomb

Abstract

This essay examines the creative processes, experimentation, technical approaches, and audience experience of our immersive installations developed across a two-year period, 2014-15, via a program of creative residencies with community and visiting artists. Here we give focus to the first piece produced, 10 Minutes to Midnight, made with the community of Australian nuclear veterans and first presented in the rural South Australian town of Balaklava, home of nuclear veteran Avon Hudson, a key Australian campaigner for veterans' rights. In 2015, a companion installation Ngurini (Searching) was developed with the Yalata Aboriginal community in the far west of South Australia. Jessie Boylan details this piece in 'Residual: after the event of Maralinga' (this volume).2 Together, the two installations cover the emergent community stories of the British led nuclear experiments in Australia, shared by service and civilian personnel.