When artist Michael Townsend first spoke to documentarian Jeremy Workman when he and his friends lived in a secret apartment hiding inside Providence Place Mall, he thought he was being punctured. Townsend then pulled out the cracked iPad and displayed a grainy video in Workman. “I was just umbed and blown away,” Workman said in a video interview with Townsend. “Then I immediately got to understand how to persuade him to make a documentary about this.”
The result was a new film, “Secret Mall Apartment,” which tells the story of how eight artists created homely apartments in abandoned spaces in a shopping centre between 2003 and 2007. Using footage shot with small cameras by residents, Workman places stunts in the context of the rapid gentlemanship that is taking place at the pinnacle of the 21st century, simultaneously relying on several heist film conventions. So, how did they do that? Here are six steps.
1. Find an abandoned space.
When the mall was built, Townsend noticed what he called “space anywhere” – an “architectural anomaly” that does not serve its purpose. So when Townsend and his friends decided to camp at the mall, teasing that the place was so well-maintained that it had everything a person needs to live in, he searched for the corner as a place to sleep. How did Townsend watch it in the first place? He believed it fixed it with the concept of space that occurred when the mall was rising.
“It's not just a loss of a home, it's a loss of historic vertebrae in the neighborhood,” Townsend said. As for the mall, “we had no choice but to internalize that there was a lot of dead space in that structure,” he said. Thus, the concept of apartments was born.
2. Get a sofa.
In the film, Townsend explains that the first residents of the mall apartment agreed that the most important thing they first got is the sofa. Why the sofa? “It was a joint project,” Townsend said in our interview. “So, the couch is like the easiest gesture to collaborate, as far as seats are concerned,” he added that the sofa also serves a dual purpose. You can sit on it, hang out or play video games. (Residents of the mall apartment have brought their PlayStation to their homes and played only one game called “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,” but they can also use a sofa for sleep. “If you can choose one thing to move into the space, you'll always choose a sofa on top of the mattress.”
3. Build a wall.
The most ambitious renovation the artist has made on his mall apartments was to build walls from train blocks, allowing doorways to be built and doors installed. That meant carrying about two tons of heavy material upwards down incredibly steep stairs. “I knew these scenes sneaking into walls and cinder blocks and cement were these incredible adrenaline rushes,” Workman said. “We built a film around them,” seeing the footage in the documentary struck him with a youthful determination. “This week I was carrying two cinder blocks,” he said. “I, well, these were nothing fooled.”
4. Get land laying.
On-screen, Colin Bliss, one of the residents of the mall's apartment, builds a model for the mall and shows how they infiltrated it. He explains that there was an entrance from the outside, but you can also use the emergency exit to get to the hall leading to the apartment. In one particularly hilarious footage, you can see the crew climbing a tunnel hidden above the toilet and accessing the so-called home. Speaking of toilets, Bliss says he most frequently used the public toilet on the first floor.
Of course, that raises another question. What would have happened if he had to go in the middle of the night? In our interview, Townsend, who said he would live in the apartment for several weeks at a time, answered the question. “As for personal transparency tips, that hasn't been an issue for me so far.”
When it comes to feeding themselves, they of course use food court and cinema popcorn, but they also had waffle irons and hot plates. The year they were caught, Townsend said they began experimenting with buying groceries at mall restaurants and began ordering what they called “the whole salad.” “I recall, “Bring me a head of carrots and tomatoes and half a lettuce. I'll pay you whatever it takes for it to happen,” he recalls, adding that he would describe it as “a dietary thing.” He then made stir-fry from those ingredients in the apartment.
5. Follow the “no outsiders” rule.
“The big rule was not to take people from outside,” one of the artists, Jay Zengebott, said in the film. In the end, there were eight people who had access to the apartment. If they start bringing friends, their holiness will be threatened. Despite being essentially the founder of the project, Townsend broke that rule when he decided to open the apartment door to his friend from outside of town. At that point, the mall security officer was aware of the artist's presence, but Townsend's Misstep closed it.
6. Believe that anything can become an art project.
For a mall apartment to exist, it had to be more than just a prank. Townsend and his fellow people believed it as an extension of their artistic practice. Not only was it a place to plan their other works, but among them was the guerilla 9/11 memorial on the New York City site, which also existed as an art object in itself. That's one of the reasons it lasted for so long. “I think there's definitely a solid vein of intentionality that runs through the whole, which has increased its survivability,” Townsend said.
