Secret Mall Apartment
After members of a Rhode Island art collective were forced to evacuate Eagle Square's Fort Thunder, an old mill warehouse used for underground music and artists' living space, the development of the Providence Place Mall, purposefully situated to cut this area of the city off, drew ire from the displaced artists. But an ad for the mall that featured a woman wishing she could live there gave RISD teacher and public works artist Michael Townsend an idea, and when he found an 'underutilized' 750 square foot space hidden within the mall, he recruited others to create a "Secret Mall Apartment."
Laura's Review: B+
Director Jeremy Workman ("Who Is Henry Jaglom?") heard about this story at an art festival in Greece from Townsend himself long after the apartment had been discovered four years after it was created and Townsend charged with trespassing and banned from the premises. When he heard that they had filmed most of their exploits with a small Optio S5I digital camera, he knew he had spread this tale, legendary in Rhode Island but largely forgotten after a rash of local news stories, to a wider audience. Workman does more than focus on the apartment, however, grounding its genesis in the gentrification that was overtaking the city under Mayor Vincent "Buddy" Cianci Jr., the twice convicted felon who championed the development, and broadening his scope by highlighting the public art projects the collective created at the time, Townsend adamant that the apartment itself was one of them.
If that last idea sounds strange given the fact that only the eight people who used the apartment knew about it, consider Townsend's 'The Tunnel," an astounding secret public work which could only be accessed via a sewer hatch, mannequins suspended in wires, an exhibit which was destroyed in 1999. One artist recounts searching for it several times, but never finding it and we are lucky to be able to see it here. But while we cannot see how that large scale exhibit was constructed, we do witness Townsend, along with his then wife Adriana Valdez-Young, Colin Bliss, Andrew Oesch, James J.A. Mercer, Greta Scheing, Jay Zehngebot and Zoe Liu, the latter seven only publicly revealing their involvement here for the first time, creating the apartment and what they accomplished is jaw-dropping.
After finding two different ways to get into the space from outside, the group proceeded to bring in such things as a sectional sofa, large hutch and tables and chairs, hoisting them all up a narrow metal ladder. They ran an extension cord to tap into the mall's electricity for lamps, a television set and waffle iron. When they weren't making waffles, they ate in the mall's food court and used its public bathrooms. Perhaps most amazingly, they built a wall and enclosed a locked door, hauling almost five tons of cinderblocks up into the space. When noticed by security guards in the parking garage, Townsend had such a straight faced explanation for the activity, they were left alone, a situation that caused the group to reflect on white privilege.
During the four years the collective hung out in their apartment, sometimes one or two spending the night, they worked on such art projects as creating 'tape art' with patients at a local children's hospital, creating temporary art with colored tape applied to hallways and walls. Using the same method, they created a huge mural commemorating the Oklahoma City bombing and took trips to New York City over the course of years to create tape profiles of all the first responders and plane passengers who had been killed on 9/11, following heart shaped patterns across Manhattan neighborhoods and documenting their work for a website. For this documentary, production designer Suja Ono was hired to recreate the apartment, allowing former inhabitants to reminisce about their experience for the camera and to recreate scenes of the place being discovered (but apparently not reported?) by two security guards who used it and Townsend's final visit, breaking his own rule by going during the day to show it to a visiting artist, when he was confronted by mall executives. Although access to the apartment ended on that day in 2007, all eight former inhabitants still have their key to it.
Robin's Review: B
In 1999, the Providence Place Mall was being built, shutting down and removing entire neighborhoods for “urban renewal and development.” In 2003, artist Michael Townsend and seven other rebels found an unused and unknown space within the structure and built a 750 square foot apartment. On and off, they lived for four years in their “Secret Mall Apartment.”
As I watched Townsend and his fellow conspirators of clandestine occupation, I found a story of quiet rebellion as they find the hidden space and exploit it into a “home away from home.” Once they find that space – the whole process is captured on cheap, easily hidden Pentax Optio video cameras, which they buy at the Radio Shack in the mall – they begin the heavy lift of creating a secret apartment, which includes “lifting” two tons of cinder blocks in to build a concealing wall. The nuts and bolts of the process is fascinating and ingenious.
The filmmakers shift gears at about the midpoint and make a strong statement against the entire concept of the Providence Place Mall – a shopping destination for outsiders, not for locals. One of the distinguishing features of the mall is that access is primarily via the garage, not the street, further alienating the locals – if there were any left.
This brings up the subject of “urban renewal” and the mall. Less than a mile away, Eagle Square in Providence and the Fort Thunder neighborhood were claimed by eminent domain and eliminated – all for a shopping mall. The “renewal” did not include the people of the neighborhoods destroyed.
My only complaint about “SMA” is the last quarter where the document shifts from the secret pad and indictment on urban renewal to Michael Townsend and his art – which does not float my boat. As such, what could have been a tighter, better and more concise documentary on a fascinating rebellion turns into something, in the end, that loses its edge.
There is also a sequence where a production company recreates the SMA on a set, entirely fabricating the gang of eight’s fascinating experiment. I do not see the point of the construction and the entire ending took away from the positive impact of the story of occupation and the treatise on urban renewal.
mTuckman Media released "Secret Mall Apartment" in Providence, RI on 3/21/24, expanding to other cities in subsequent weeks - check for listings here.
