Would You Like to Live in a Secret Mall Apartment? Review Inside
The idea that eight people could theoretically live in an upscale mall, undetected, for four years is outrageous.
Secret Mall Apartment is a new documentary about eight artists who made a home inside the Providence Place Mall in Rhode Island. For four years, 2003-2007, these Rhode Island artists secretly (illegally) built and lived in an undetected apartment. When officials eventually found the space, the group was forced to abandon the apartment, and artist Michael Townsend was banned from the mall for life. According to an article from WPRI.com, Townsend was approached by almost 30 filmmakers about adapting the story into a feature documentary, but it wasn’t until director Jeremy Workman joined the project that everything came together.
It took this long to make a documentary happen because Townsend believed no one understood the connection between the art and the true vision of the space. It’s easy to look at the entire thing and make a blanket statement that these eight artists were solely squatters who felt like Providence and by extension the mall was required to provide them a space. After watching the documentary I still feel that way actually, but Workman wisely focuses on Townsend’s work outside of the mall to add credence to the art project.
In 1998, the Providence Place Mall opened and promised luxury brands and experiences to the citizens of Rhode Island. This was a mall that had a Nordstrom, a full-screen IMAX theater, Dave & Buster’s, and a whole lot more. It was viewed as a way to bring patrons from all over to visit this colossal luxury mall. Living in Rhode Island myself, I remember when the mall opened and the hype around it. While I was barely a teenager when the mall opened, there were artists a few miles away who had negative feelings about the new centerpiece of Providence.
Fort Thunder, a warehouse on the second floor of an old textile factory, was a venue for underground music and events. It provided a living space for artists who could otherwise not afford living accommodations. Rhode Island is known for its art school, RISD (Rhode Island School of Design), and while artists earn an incredible education there, it isn’t a promise that they’ll make a lot of money with their art. After the mall went up in 1998, Providence began looking at other areas of the city to modernize and thus Fort Thunder was demolished. The buildings were demolished for Shaw’s grocery store and Staples, but both closed soon after opening. One of the big arguments of Secret Mall Apartment was the development and gentrification of that area of Olneyville in Providence, considered one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city.
So with their place destroyed, some of the displaced artists looked toward the mall, this monolith that might’ve been responsible for them losing their space. The documentary shows how they located this space, made it their own, survived in the mall, and went undetected for years. Certainly, the most captivating part of Secret Mall Apartment is the footage that Townsend and his friends took while moving furniture into the mall. They never intended the footage to see the light of day and mostly kept it as a record of the time spent in the mall. It’s unbelievable that they were able to get large pieces of furniture into that space undetected, never mind that they used an extension cord to power their tiny TV and Playstation 2 they’d play in there.
But there’s only so much footage from the time within the mall, so Workman incorporates other elements of Townsend’s life into the documentary. There are new interviews with the other seven residents of the Secret Mall Apartment, who had never been revealed until this documentary premiered. There’s also footage of Townsend’s artistic pursuits and charity work. He specializes in a type of art known as tape art— he takes different colors of duct tape and makes temporary art installations with the tape. It’s unique and beautiful, but it doesn’t make him financially stable. In the documentary, his current girlfriend is on camera laughing uncomfortably and explaining that Michael often has less than 20 dollars on him at any given time. There are also numerous recreations of the space in different models which represent the closest the audience can come to witnessing that tiny space.
Some stories seem too unbelievable to be true. The idea that eight people could theoretically live in an upscale mall, undetected, for four years is outrageous. While they do admit that white privilege played into the (success?) of the project, it’s still hard to fathom. Secret Mall Apartment attempts, repeatedly, to drive home the fact that these eight individuals were artists and they weren’t stealing from the mall. Rather they were making a statement on gentrification and privilege. I’m still of the thought that they shouldn’t have ever been in there, but at least this documentary asks the audience to consider their perspective. [C+]
The mall has been declining in the last five years. While the pandemic didn’t help, online shopping is becoming more dominant every day, reducing the need for these giant shopping centers. Ironically, the City of Providence has floated the idea of building apartments inside the mall so that the space can continue to be utilized.
The documentary ends with a caption stating that artist Michael Townsend has not entered the mall since being banned in 2007. Nearly 18 years later, he was allowed back in to witness the premier of the movie.
In Providence & Newport, RI Theaters Starting March 21st
New York City Theaters March 26th
Los Angeles and Additional Markets April 2nd & Beyond