The Art is Coming from Inside the Mall

Are anti-capitalist guerilla artists hiding in YOUR shopping mall? Will these daring Duchamp-esque renegades judge you for your hideous wall art and fealty to the great god of consumption? Did your Wetzel's Pretzel pretzel always have a nibble hole in the corner or are those counter-culture rebels stealing the food off your plate and the shirt off your back? 

This may sound like a '50s-scare video about the dangers of consuming "the wrong kind" of art, but in the small town of Providence, RI, that's exactly what happened. Sort of. As with any situation involving experimental artists, it's both a lot more complicated than that and also pretty simple as the documentary Secret Mall Apartment shows.

In the '90s, after the Providence city government and land developers destroyed a local arts district where punks, artists, and other cool people gathered, the city started construction on a giant mall to "revitalize" the town. And when the Providence Place Mall was completed, one local artist, Michael Townsend, challenged some of his friends to see how long they could live in the mall without getting caught. That Jackass-esque prank led to Townsend discovering a secret, unused room deep in the heart of the mall—completely free from prying eyes, easily accessible from within the mall and outside, and large enough for a medium-sized family to live comfortably (provided they don't need sunlight or fresh air). So began a years-long art piece(?) in which Townsend and seven of his friends lived inside a secret apartment in the Providence Place Mall.

It's a very compelling situation for a documentary. It's got it all: absurd situations like the residents pushing a couch and a surprisingly nice living room cabinet up a narrow ladder and through a tiny crevasse into their new home; drama as Townsend and his new wife struggle to balance their twin passions of owning a home versus living in the mall; the sheer awe it elicits seeing an actual home built out in the skeleton of a giant mall in defiance of all common sense. But what makes Secret Mall Apartment, which had its world premiere at SXSW, so unique is that the tantalizing made-for-a-movie hook is just one small aspect of these artists' lives and aspirations. It was a project to them—a fun one and probably one of the most unique artistic concepts they attempted, but ultimately just one angle of the kaleidoscope of their lives and their art.

Much of the film is dedicated to showcasing Townsend's other artistic pieces and ambitious goals: mannequin bodies wrapped in string hidden in a sewer tunnel with no visible indication of what was inside; temporary tape art in a children's hospital; portraits of every deceased firefighter, paramedic and victim of the 9/11 attacks throughout the city of New York. Townsend lived a rarified life as a sincerely curious artist, and he continues to do so today—in one tragicomic moment, his girlfriend mentions that Michael will sometimes text her a picture of his bank account when there's less than a dollar remaining because he thinks it's funny.

Secret Mall Apartment could easily have been a straightforward hagiography of a generous, interesting artist who also lived in the walls of a mall, but director Jeremy Workman never lets the catchy hook get in the way of the larger story. Secret Mall Apartment follows a handful of kids secretly living in the mall, sure, but it's also about gentrification, the march of "progress," what it means to give energy and time and money to a fundamentally ephemeral project, and what it means to live as an artist. Workman pushes past the tempting trap that so many documentaries fall into when they focus on a charismatic interview subject to the detriment of any larger meaning. There is a larger story here of which Townsend is a part, rather than the sole focus.

In Secret Mall Apartment, we see Townsend spend hundreds, even thousands of his own dollars driving from Rhode Island to New York over years to put up tape portraits of the 9/11 dead without official authorization. Some people get it, some people don't. Some people yell at the artists, some people want to know more. The website where the portraits were documented is now defunct with no easy way to even see the years-long project in completed detail. Does this mean that the project was meaningless?

What value does the arts and the people who make them serve in a capitalist world? It's a question that weighs heavy on anyone who cares about the answer with the rise of AI-generated art, the continuing closure of independent arts criticism outlets, the rising cost of living and devaluation of art's monetary value, and the persistent narrative that each new generation cares less about film, paintings, books, etc. than the previous one. But to ask that question is to set the answer up for failure. Art has no value because it doesn't need to be for sale. Art has no value, but that's not the same as art being meaningless. 

Eight young adults built a living space in a place explicitly designed for people to leave at the end of the night and lived there for longer than most lease agreements; a handful of artists spent their time and their money striking back nonviolently at the symbol of their destroyed former home and the vision of a Providence that had no room and no interest in their ideas and their joy. How can there not be meaning in that act even if some people don't see it?