Documentary ‘Secret Mall Apartment’ Chronicles a Prank and a Protest as Art

During their heyday, malls captivated Hollywood filmmakers. From 1978’s “Dawn of the Dead” and 1982’s “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” through 1991’s “Scenes From a Mall” and 1995’s “Mallrats,” important sequences or entire movies were shot within shopping centers. For late Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials, they were often a place one worked at or escaped to, with their all-in-one concept inspiring in some a desire to live in them. The new documentary “Secret Mall Apartment” explores just that: how a collective of young artists created a living space within a Providence, Rhode Island, mall and how they were able to keep it hidden for four years. Absorbing and appealing, the doc arrives at the IFC Center on Wednesday, with special screenings over the weekend featuring the director, Jeremy Workman, and an executive producer, Jesse Eisenberg.It all began with a radio ad promoting the Providence Place Mall in September 2003, one in which a woman declares her wish to live there. Design researcher Adriana Valdez Young hears it, and three of her friends, including partner Michael Townsend, decide to find a space within the building in which to inhabit. They scope out different areas, noting “hiding spots” in a sketchbook, and eventually discover an empty spot in a dark, dusty area of the mall behind I-beams and security doors and up a metal ladder. They even realize they can reach this space multiple ways, including by crawling into an opening in the structure’s architecture. Soon, they’re bringing in furniture bought at a Salvation Army store (not inside the mall), like a couch and a glass display cabinet, and all without security finding out. One of the documentary’s most compelling aspects is the grainy footage filmed by the participants, who thankfully had the presence of mind to record their illicit but ingenious activities. Through video shot on a rudimentary Pentax digital camera, we watch them at various times frequent the food court, exit the mall’s cineplex through an un-alarmed emergency door into the depths of the edifice, sneak in cinder blocks to build a wall, and generally hang out in the 750-square-foot lair. Each member of the cooperative, which expands to eight, vows not to tell anyone about the secret space or bring any outsiders in. While a few occasionally sleep there, they mostly meet in the “apartment” to discuss art projects, with the brainchild behind these being Mr. Townsend, a RISD art teacher who taught many of the younger members.The reasons behind “The Mall Project,” as it came to be called, were myriad. Various commentators, including some of the artists themselves, alternately call it a prank, a social experiment, an alternate universe, and a snarky comment on the belief in beautification through consumerism. Unquestionably, the bit of mischief contained an element of protest against gentrification, reinforced by footage of residents expressing their discontent with the construction of the mall as part of a city revitalization program in the late 1980s and ’90s. Mr. Workman adds panoramic photographs of Providence to demonstrate how the massive building formed a barrier between the town’s “premium” area and its more depressed neighborhoods. Soon after the mall opened in 1999, city officials and business leaders furthered their redevelopment plans, with old mills and warehouses torn down in the nearby Olneyville neighborhood, where Mr. Townsend and many other artists resided.With Mr. Townsend a central figure in the story and Mr. Workman’s snapshot of Providence, the doc turns into a portrait of the artist. The offspring of a peripatetic military family, Michael’s creative ethos explores the art in every activity, the belief that there be no division between life and imagination. A fantastic interlude addresses an eerie installation by the artist in which sculptures of humans were hung in a drainage canal near the mall. Yet he also creates more accessible, approachable artwork, with clips showing the so-called founder of the Tape Art movement adorning the halls of children’s hospitals and a wall near the Oklahoma City bombing with masking tape illustrations. We also see how after 9/11, he and some “Mall Project” colleagues came to Manhattan to grace the streets with silhouettes signifying every airline victim and fireman killed.The documentary’s production designer, Suja Ono, recreates the hidden apartment in a studio, and this gives the director the chance to stage two moments in its history for which there is no video record: a break-in by possibly two security guards and the 2007 discovery of the space by mall authorities while Michael was present. The artist was subsequently arrested and charged with trespassing, and eventually was given six months of probation and ordered to pay court costs and restitution. Yet the idea that he and his merry band of trespassers were “micro-developers” tweaking the concept of underutilized space — particularly in a taxpayer-financed property — remains shrewd. One could call them squatters or performance art poseurs, but they also come off as self-aware, civic-minded, and passionate about art. “Secret Mall Apartment” ends ironically: With the mall’s current owners defaulting on the mortgage in 2022, the complex may include residential apartments in the future, reflecting a national trend where shopping centers adapt to a decrease in brick-and-mortar sales. Maybe the kids were onto something after all.

Documentary ‘Secret Mall Apartment’ Chronicles a Prank and a Protest as Art

Documentary ‘Secret Mall Apartment’ Chronicles a Prank and a Protest as Art

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