Secret Mall Apartment
Director Jeremy Workman has made a career documenting such unique personalities as Barbie doll photographer Al Carbee (Magical Universe), champion domino toppler Lily Hevesh (Lily Topples the World), and Matt Green (The World Before Your Feet), who walked every block of every NYC street over the course of six years.
Now that impressive resumé includes the bold group of Rhode Island artists who found a hidden space within the Providence Place Mall in 2003 and created a functional living area that lasted for four years. The appropriately named Secret Mall Apartment greatly benefits from the squatters’ foresight to record so much of their activities, and that footage’s combination with modern-day interviews makes for a wild, emotionally rich, and insightful look at free thinkers who took an inspirational stand.
In a time where the cost of living seems increasingly out of control for the lower-middle class, it’s both reassuring and frightening to learn that these creatives encountered many of the same core issues that linger today. The main impetus for building the covert apartment stemmed from developers pushing the artists out of the cheap, bohemian Eagle Square neighborhood. And with the new, neighboring Providence Place Mall standing tall as a symbol of gentrification, sweet revenge awaited inside the behemoth’s very walls.
Though the discovery of the hidden space is sufficiently explained by those who established it, passage to and from the room without mall security shutting everything down nevertheless feels a bit far-fetched. But fact is indeed stranger than fiction, and as a sofa and other rather large pieces of furniture somehow make their way upstairs, the audacity of the project intensifies.
In the process, Michael Townsend emerges as the group’s biggest personality, but he backs up this leadership position with his work outside of the rogue abode. Rich and entertaining as Secret Mall Apartment is when it focuses on the titular endeavor, the film gains a particular soulfulness when it weaves in Townsend’s tape art projects in hospitals, plus the team’s Oklahoma City bombing tributes and the ambitious Hope Project collages honoring 9/11 victims across public walls in NYC.
After delighting and moving viewers with their endearing story, the artists ultimately get their own shot at vulnerability. The recreation of the mall apartment by production designer Suja Ono and her team yields some sweet nostalgic moments as the former residents “encounter” their one-time home for the first time in nearly 20 years and share their thoughts on camera.
It’s a fitting cap on a story that must be seen to be believed. And by the end of Secret Mall Apartment, you’ll be converted — or at least renew your vows — to the power of art and independent thought.
Grade: B-plus. Not rated, but with adult themes and language. Now playing at the Fine Arts Theatre.
(Photo by Michael Townsend)
