While shopping malls have been hit with hard times due to the ease of online shopping, back around the turn of the 21st century, they were desirable places to go and hang out — so bustling and packed with people that, in 2003, a group of eight artists, led by Michael Townsend, got away with living in a secret apartment they built and furnished in the Providence Place mall in Providence, Rhode Island for four years.
The terrific new documentary “Secret Mall Apartment,” directed by Jeremy Workman (“Lily Topples the World”) and produced by Jesse Eisenberg, chronicles this amazing true story, which is described by one interviewee in the film as a “work of art,” “performance art,” “trespassing” and “a prank.” Townsend, along with his seven coconspirators — whose names had not been divulged until this film was made — regroup for the first time in 17 years to describe why they did it, and how they went undetected for so long.
“It seems like you shouldn’t be able to pull it off,” one artist stated, but Townsend and his friends slowly developed this underutilized, windowless area, loading in a couch, a TV (and PlayStation), a large cabinet, a table and chairs and dozens of cement blocks to create a space that one "squatter" described as a sitcom set. (The footage of them moving is fantastic.) They ran an extension cord to steal electricity and had a waffle iron to make breakfast when they weren’t snacking on popcorn that they got from the mall’s IMAX movie theater. It was a fabulous hang-out space — until Townsend was caught.
Workman includes plenty of background on Townsend, a tape art artist, who teaches kids how to create art and, with his coconspirators, made 9/11 memorials in New York City, among other projects.
Townsend’s subversiveness serves a purpose; he is making an artistic comment on gentrification and urban renovation in Providence as well as capitalism and the unrealistic/unattainable fantasies of consumerism. But maybe he is just eking out life with no end game. Whatever the reason, his act of resistance is inspiring as Workman’s fun film shows.
Salon spoke with Workman about “Secret Mall Apartment.”
How did you hear about this remarkable story and how did you conceive of making this film 17 years after the event?
I met Michael Townsend randomly in Greece when I was filming “Lily Topples the World.” I was meeting Ernő Rubik and we were in a cultural center, and it was covered in tape art. And as you know from “Secret Mall Apartment,” Michael is one of the greatest tape art artists in history. He had done this building in Greece. I was attracted to that. I’ve always made films about artists. We met and became friends; he told me about this story. I thought he was totally punking me. When I was so skeptical, he pulled out a cracked iPad and he showed me footage of them pushing the couches up the ladder. My jaw dropped. I wondered, how come this is not a huge movie? I proceeded to spend the next months getting him and everyone else to let me make the movie. What I didn’t know was that a lot of filmmakers tried to make this movie. The artists had been approached for 15 years and were always turning folks down. My own naivete was trying to find the right way to tell the story.
So many people had come to them and wanted to tell the sensational New York Post side of the story — 'Oh, My God! They were living at the mall for four years! Oh, My God! They were eating at the food court!' Of course, I loved that part of the story — how could you not?! — but what really connected with me was how what they were doing on the side with their art was interconnected with the secret apartment. The secret apartment is bonkers and crazy and ridiculous, but it also had all these connections with their working in hospitals and going into cancer wards and [making] 9/11 memorials. I was always interested in the bigger picture, and that really spoke to Michael and the others.
What do you think of the secret mall apartment? Would you have participated and lived there for four years if you could?
I don’t think I would want to have gone in there. It’s cramped, it’s dark, it’s dirty, it’s dusty, it’s hard to get into. There is this line Adriana [Valdez-Young], Michael’s ex-wife said to me off-camera: “I didn’t want to eat all my meals at Panda Express.” The fantasy of living in a mall is not really for me, but what amazed me was the passion of all these guys who pursued this. That this became so important to them for so many reasons. First, it was a stance against gentrification and then it became an art project, and then it was this stage. I love capturing that on film. It’s so inspiring.
You assemble some fantastic footage that Townsend shot over the four years with a tiny camera while he was “living” in the Providence Place mall. How did you select what to use and how to explain what transpired?
When they were in the secret apartment, they were there for four years and filmed two-thirds or three-quarters of that time with a tiny consumer camera called a Pentax Optio that they bought at Radio Shack for $100. It was not a camera for video. These were artists who were in the habit of recording what they did. They weren’t recording to make a documentary or a film. It was just to catalog what they were doing, and they recorded nearly 25 hours of footage over those years. What they got was just remarkable. It was an inventory of everything they were doing in the secret apartment — bringing in furniture, sneaking in, recording conversations, going to the food court, or going to the movie theater. The coverage was amazing. Besides the secret apartment, they were filming their regular art life. It was an incredible amount of footage. The one caveat was that the footage was of low quality in terms of format. These were not cameras for movies. It was worse than a VHS tape. It posed technical challenges and problems, but they captured so much before everyone ran around filming everything with iPhones.
I really like how you show the development of the space over time as well as that you recreate the space for the artists to recall their emotions and experiences and reenact certain scenes. Can you talk about that?
I was looking for ways to approach the movie in a different way. The space itself was so unconventional, and they were really unique artists. A movie on this story needed to embrace unconventional moves and not feel like just another run-of-the-mill documentary. I invited them to participate in the movie. It’s kind of meta in a way that you watch the process of the movie happen midway. You watch an artist making a model of the mall that becomes a prop in the movie. Other characters participate in the recreation rebuilding the space inch by inch. We watch that as it is happening. I wanted to do a recreation. We didn’t have footage to show the last days of the secret apartment because they stopped filming. I had to figure out a way to tell that story and visualize that. The recreations were a way to do that.
The film addresses issues of race and class in that the coconspirators are all white and had a certain amount of privilege. They discuss how they are able to elude security while smuggling in cement blocks. What do you think of how Townsend was able to get away with this and that he got away with it for as long as he did?
He acknowledges that. It has a lot to do with who they were. The fact that they were white kids in their 20s. Had they not looked like that it probably wouldn’t have gone as well. What is interesting about the film coming out now, there are all these inflection points. We see things differently now. Race is one of them. You can see how they are able to get away with this because they are privileged white people. We are seeing how this story has changed and evolved. There are neat aspects about cities and society and race and smaller details like what malls mean and what private space means. That is very different now than when they were doing this in 2003. It adds another layer to it.
One artist talks about buying stuff from the mall to furnish the home they want to have, rather than the “sitcom” set they do have. What are your thoughts about the meta-ness of the apartment as a commentary about the aspirations of home ownership?
It was so interesting. Adriana sees the space in her own way and Michael sees it as one thing, and Colin sees it as another thing. I started seeing it in all these different ways. Adriana’s entry point was, “I want to create a perfect place or space that is aspirational. Furniture by Pottery Barn.” That was how she was dealing with it and decorating it and processing it as they were creating the space. It was interesting for each artist, because they were approaching it in a different way. These are eight different unique artists and when they were making it, they had different sensibilities that went into it. You can’t put your finger on this space in some ways.
I think it is all that and more. I am trying to remind people that it’s stupid, ridiculous and dumb. These eight people sneak into their local mall and find this concrete box and turn it into a secret headquarters, like a fort or a secret club. In some ways, that is what makes it dada to me. You can look at it and there are deep and profound things to say about where it fits in the history of art and situationism. But is also this stupid idea where they evade security to bring in a couch to play PlayStation. I love how it has that element of humor and ridiculousness.
It is probably not a spoiler to say Townsend gets caught. What do you think about the punishment he received?
He was banned from the mall, and not allowed to go back. He has not been back for 17-18 years. There was a time when it amounted to almost a felony on his record. He understands what he did, and he took the punishment and accepted it. Hopefully, the mall embraces the documentary and sees it as an opportunity to bring the community of Providence back to this incredible urban legend.
Will “Secret Mall Apartment” play at the Providence Place mall?
The mall has booked the movie, and we are very eager. We kept the movie out of Providence for months because we wanted to play in the mall. It took us a long time to navigate that, and now we are opening at the Providence Place mall. It’s so meta. The secret apartment is below the theater and there are scenes in the film that take place at the mall’s theater.
Do you think the punishment fit the crime?
Sure it did. He lived inside the mall. He kept a secret apartment. He went in and out and brought in furniture and passed through alarm doors. He was appropriately banned for 17 years. He didn’t hurt anyone, but it’s become a rallying cry for people in Providence. There is probably an argument that the punishment was not worth the crime.
“Secret Mall Apartment” opens in select cities March 21 with more cities and dates to come.
