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When the artist Michael Townsend first told the documentarian Jeremy Workman about the time he and his friends lived in a secret apartment tucked inside the Providence Place Mall, Workman thought he was being punked. Then Townsend pulled out a cracked iPad to show Workman some grainy video. \u201cI just was dumbfounded and blown away,\u201d Workman said in a video interview alongside Townsend. \u201cThen I was, like, instantly, \u2018I got to figure out how I could convince him to let me make a documentary on this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The result is the new film \u201cSecret Mall Apartment,\u201d which recounts how, between 2003 and 2007, eight artists created a homey apartment in an abandoned space in a shopping center. Using footage the residents had filmed on a tiny camera, Workman places the stunt in the context of the rapid gentrification happening at the top of the 21st century while at the same time relying on some heist-movie conventions. So how did they do it? Here are six steps.<\/p>\n
When the mall was being built, Townsend noticed what he called a \u201cnowhere space,\u201d an \u201canomaly in the architecture\u201d that served no purpose. So when Townsend and his friends decided to camp out at the mall after seeing an ad teasing that the place was so well stocked that it had everything a person needed to live, he sought out that corner as a place to sleep. How did Townsend clock it in the first place? He credited that to a fixation with the notion of space that arose as the mall was going up, part of the gentrification of his Providence, R.I., neighborhood that also resulted in the artists\u2019 space where he lived being demolished.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not just losing the home, it\u2019s also losing historical vertebrae of the neighborhood,\u201d Townsend said. As for the mall, \u201cYou couldn\u2019t help but internalize that there was a lot of dead space in that structure,\u201d he said. And thus, the notion of an apartment was born.<\/p>\n
In the film, Townsend explains that the initial inhabitants of the mall apartment agreed that the most important thing to get first was a couch. Why a couch? \u201cIt was a collaborative project,\u201d Townsend said in our interview. \u201cSo couches are like the simplest gesture toward collaboration as far as seating goes.\u201d A couch, he added, also serves a dual purpose. You can sit on it to just hang out or play video games. (The mall apartment residents brought a PlayStation to their abode and played just one game, \u201cGrand Theft Auto: San Andreas.\u201d) But you can also use a couch for sleeping. \u201cIf you can pick one thing you\u2019re going to move into a space, I\u2019d pick a couch over a mattress, any day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The most ambitious renovation the artists made to the mall apartment involved building a wall out of cinder blocks so they could erect a doorway and install a door. That meant hauling about two tons of heavy materials up an incredibly steep staircase. \u201cI knew that those scenes with the wall and the cinder blocks and sneaking in the cement would be these incredible adrenaline rushes,\u201d Workman said. \u201cWe kind of built the movie around those.\u201d Watching that footage in the documentary, he was struck by his youthful determination. \u201cJust this week, I carried two cinder blocks,\u201d he said. \u201cI was like, gosh, these are nothing to be fooled around with.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n