Review:
"Secret Mall Apartment"
Release Date: April 4, 2025 Rating: Not Rated Running Time: 91 minutes Most crazy ideas are just that, and pursuing them would cause more headaches that they are worth. But what about that one crazy idea that speaks to who you are, how you live your life, and how you view a community undergoing change? With his 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival entry Secret Mall Apartment, documentary filmmaker Jeremy Workman reveals how eight Providence, RI artists undertook a creatively unique but personally risky four-year project in response to the gentrification of their neighborhood. In 2003, artist Adriana Valdez Young was watching a commercial for a new mall, Providence Place Mall, that was built to revive the city economically and usher in a new era of urban renewal. The commercial featured a mother so enamored with the upscale mall that she wanted to move in. “I just had this idea, “We should live in the mall,” Adriana says two decades later in Secret Mall Apartment. Adriana’s then-husband Michael Townsend seized on her idea, and along with two other artists, they identified under-utilized hidden space in the mall they could surreptitiously occupy. “It was safe and secure, and we were completely off the radar and we weren’t sure where in the mall we were,” Michael says in the documentary of the 750-square-foot negative space that his hush-hush art collective lived and worked over the course of four years. Workman employs low-res footage shot by the collective—which grew to eight members early in its formation—to show how they entered and exited the space, furnished and decorated it, and lived, worked, and played there as they pleased. Even with each member being as careful as possible to cover their tracks, it is stunning to see these eight people come and go without arousing any suspicion in a post-9/11 surveillance society. More so because they managed to move furniture and other heavy items without being stopped from the mall parking garage, into a stairwell, through a labyrinth of corridors, and up the metal ladder that leads into the secret apartment. That is not to say there were not any close encounters, but the fact they were able to do this for four years is a testament to their dedication and shrewdness. At least until the events that led to one of them being caught by mall management and turned over to the authorities. What makes Secret Mall Apartment all the more fascinating is the collective’s political and cultural agenda, which was set by Michael Townsend. Forced out of living space in an old mill building redeveloped as a supermarket, Michael saw the secret apartment as an essential reaction to and statement on the disruption and displacement cause by gentrification. And Workman positions Secret Mall Apartment as much as a crucial examination of a city in transition—and the impact on a community in danger of being pushed aside for commercial endeavors—as it an incisive profile of like-minded and committed artists who view everyday life as an art project. “So much of what the mall sells us is this performance of a consumer lifestyle, and so the mall apartment was this opportunity to have this set where we could play out the unrealistic and unobtainable fantasies of the mall,” Adriana Valdez Young tells Workman. But four years is a long time to remain committed to a single art project, especially one that is being conducted in secret and with no discernible endgame. And, naturally, this led to some vital discussions and personal revelations among collective members about the commitment to an art project that could go on indefinitely, per footage Workman includes. In hindsight, the project may have had more universal meaning and community impact had the collective gone public on their own terms instead of being discovered and locked out. And there is an answer to this of sorts in the documentary in the form of an exhibition that Workman films being curated and uses for several reenactments. But if anything comes out of Secret Mall Apartment, it’s that Michael Townsend lives for his art and can commit to a project for as long as it comes to its natural or forced conclusion. But even he cannot deny to Workman that the questions raised about the continuing and seemingly endless occupation and maintenance of the secret apartment were not valid after four years. Even if Workman’s documentary leaves you asking yourself whether there is any difference between what the collective did vs. what squatters do, in spite of their artistic intent and integrity, the audacity, ingenuity, and objective of the collective must be commendable. They found a way to turn the tables on a corporate entity that forever changed the neighborhood they lived in and loved. Progress is inevitable, but so is taking a stand for your community. Even if that means doing it on the quiet. FYI, Jesse Eisenberg is credited as a producer of Secret Mall Apartment. And he needs to look no further than Secret Mall Apartment for his follow-up to last year’s A Real Pain. He not only could pass as Michael Townsend at the time of the secret apartment but possesses the sharp comic wit to turn this unbelievable tale of art vs. commerce into a celebration of the pure, undiluted artistic mind and a sharp statement on gentrification, mall culture, and consumer consumption. Posted: April 4, 2025. Web site: https://secretmallapartment.com/ |
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