Secret Mall Apartment (2024)

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News at Noon.

This is an incredible tale.

Artists set up an apartment

inside Providence Place Mall,

going undetected for years.

We were listening to the radio and this ad

came on for the Providence Place Mall.

It was this woman, she was a mom,

and she was talking about how great her

life was about to become because it was

going to be so convenient for her to get

everything that she needed for her kids,

for herself, if only she could live there.

I just had this idea, oh, we should live

in the mall.

Live at the mall, like, it seemed like a

very absurd fantasy and a great way to

plow through all of the negativity that

had been built up for years in the loss of

our homes and the homes of, like,

hundreds of people.

And so Adriana and Andrew

and Jay and myself decided

that we would go live

there for at least one week.

It was more of a game of survival.

Who was going to get kicked out from security

and who was going to last the longest?

I think we were making bets about it.

I definitely thought that I was going to

live there the longest.

I think my mind, I was like, oh,

we need to document.

And I'm like, oh, we need a sketchbook.

And Mike's instinct on the document was

like, all right, we all need to have a

point and sh**t camera and be able to do

video.

We had a little camera called a Pentax

Optio S4i.

It is incredibly low res and the audio is

terrible.

It's not designed for video.

Interestingly, it fit inside an Altoids

can.

In my hand, that camera

disappears, which meant that

I could walk through the

mall with my arm like this.

That sounds silly, but I would forget it

was there.

It was a fair bit of the food court.

It was trying on clothes.

You know, funny kind of teenage mall hang

existence.

We ate all the leftover food at the food

court.

We saw like almost every movie at the

movie theater, which was awesome.

But as the sun set, we

started to internalize the

dilemma we put ourselves

in, which is we have no plan.

Where are we going to sleep?

Jay and Andrew found a four foot by four

foot column in the parking garage that had

an opening that they could sneak up inside

of.

I was in a really small space,

unable to stretch out.

I believe I slept in my jacket with my

knees kind of curled up to my chest.

I've been camping in some

way, shape or form since I was

a small kid and I've had a

lot of miserable nights out.

And this is in the pantheon of worst.

The place that Adriana and I find is based

on my memory of the mall's construction.

When the mall was being

built, I saw a space that

I could not figure out

what it would be used for.

It was a nowhere space and I saw them

store construction materials on it.

And I just sort of made a mental note

about it.

I proposed that perhaps

the nowhere space, as

it were, would give

us shelter for the night.

And we went looking for that

anomaly in the architecture and

we snuck ourselves in there

and we took out our flashlights.

And we kept poking around and it struck me

that the nowhere space, as it were,

must be up here somewhere.

And we were able to push ourselves up

I-beams.

And there it was.

And it was safe and secure.

We're completely off the radar.

We weren't even entirely sure where we

were in the mall.

But there was... the debris of

construction was still there.

You know, four years later after the mall

had opened, it was dirty.

It was truly abandoned.

And we were like, oh, this is great!

Mike had been like, come see the space I

found.

And so, like, we all went

down and into the bowels

and saw the, like,

cavern that he had found.

Looking around at all

the clues, it's like, no

one's been in here

since they built the mall.

It started the conversation immediately

about, like, wait, this is a lot of space.

Maybe we have a responsibility to do

something with it.

It was sort of agreed pretty quickly that

the couch was the most important thing.

We're going to the mall, we're going to

eat.

We'll have receipts from eating.

This proves nothing...

Right, we could say we're

in the process of moving...

we wanted to get something to eat.

We went to the mall.

The reason for the plan is, if we do

corner the mall, we're gonna eat.

get caught to keep our

story straight, that's all.

So, we just need to move it to this one

door, which sets off the alarm.

And there is a security camera,

but it's not pointed in our direction,

which is excellent.

And um, yeah, we're just sort of waiting

out the security office since we can see it

[ Door alarm buzzing ]

Any time I went to a hearing at City Hall

for a new real estate development,

this term of underutilized space kept

coming up.

It was almost like it was a

moral obligation on the part

of the developers to tap

into this underutilized space.

It was almost like a crime.

We must extend our progress, and it must

fill in every gap and crevice in the city

until there's a seamless development.

And so this was, like, a funny way of,

like, itching back at that, of,

like, well, we found some space.

We need to develop this underutilized

space.

And I remember having this funny, jokey

conversation about being micro-developers.

You know, that seemed really funny to us,

that we would become developers,

but just for 750 square feet.

We put a bunch of ideas into the table,

some of them were absolutely ridiculous.

You know, even about opening up our own

store for, like, how would anybody visit it?

And we're like, we can just build a

condominium, like, right here.

And, like, the couch is the thing that

sort of made it a home immediately.

Providence had one time been one of the

wealthiest cities in the United States.

And after World w*r II, an inexorable

decline began to happen.

Providence seemed

little more than a parking

lot by day and an

abandoned city by night.

Serious decline soon created an

uninviting, neglected environment.

It wasn't until in the mid-1980s,

late 1980s, that the idea of a mall became

the centerpiece of the whole Providence

Renaissance.

You wanted retail to come back.

You wanted performing and visual arts.

You wanted all the things that Providence

had been known for.

All of those things that would

make Providence a destination,

and not just a drive-through

to another major city.

The Providence Place Mall

was considered to be a major

new engine to help the

revitalization effort take place.

The city had began to lose its retailing

sales to the surrounding suburban areas.

But the mall did not happen overnight.

It took years and multiple administrations

in order for this to occur.

It was a major building.

While the mall was

being built, I really

started to internalize

its impact on the city.

Because all of a sudden, I literally

couldn't see the city anymore.

Look at this giant...

Look at this thing.

It's totally overpowering.

Looks like something out of a science

fiction movie.

You've got the state house.

You can't even see it anymore.

They've practically buried it.

I mean, it was no small task to move the

rivers and to move the railroad tracks.

But I think it began to show that things

were happening.

I remember the preview event, and everybody

coming from all parts of New England.

It wasn't even just Rhode Island.

This is a large mall.

Am I correct?

Oh, definitely.

You know, three and a half million square

feet.

You don't get this type of mall in any

city and everything.

It's very unique.

It makes this a destination city.

So having this big mall

that represented a big

investment, it was

kind of like a new face.

For Providence, I think

that was more probably

something that was aligned

with what politicians wanted.

But not necessarily for the communities,

especially the adjacent communities.

We all hated the mall when it went up,

right?

Nobody wanted that to happen.

It was infuriating.

Instead of putting the money into downtown

in general and supporting the businesses

that were already here, they built that

monstrosity.

We hated it.

And then as they started to sort of shore

up the side facing our neighborhood,

I realized like, wait, there's no

entrances for us.

This whole thing faces the east side.

It wasn't designed to be used by the

people from this neighborhood.

In a way, it's like drawing a boundary in

between the premium Providence and then

just like, you know, the unattractive,

kind of historically excluded Providence.

The stores, some stores, it's like the

prices are like kind of outrageous.

But for some people, I

guess they can afford it.

Me, personally.

This mall will attract a

better clientele of people.

It's gonna basically cater to the

people that have a little more money.

The poor people in Providence

can't afford to go to these stores.

No.

I've been there. I know.

I can't go to these stores.

By the time the mall opened, there was a

sense that more changes were coming our way.

And there was a sense of impending doom.

Even before the Providence

Place Mall was complete,

developers were getting ready

to build Providence Marketplace.

Even while scaffolding still scales the

Providence Place Mall, another huge

project is in the works.

The Providence Place

Mall opened August of 1999.

And shortly after, a developer came to the

mills spaces that we were living in and

put a proposal out that perhaps the best

way to serve this neighborhood was to

knock down every single

mill in a 13-acre area and

replace it with a strip

mall and a supermarket.

So one of those buildings they wanted to

knock down was Fort Thunder.

So behind the mall, we see the skeleton of

the Industrial Revolution.

It is mill building after mill building.

And in the middle of all this mill

building mess is called Eagle Square.

And in the heart of Eagle Square was a

place called Fort Thunder.

And I was very fortunate to live there for

a couple years.

Well, Fort Thunder was a mill space.

It lasted, I think, from 95 to like 2001.

It started out with four of us renting

this space.

My band, Lightning Bolt, needed a place of

practice.

And we wanted to have shows.

The history of that area,

the history of Olneyville, is a

really specific history that you'll

see throughout New England.

There were these factories.

People would live in the neighborhoods.

And then when the manufacturing sector was

destroyed in the United States,

it destroyed these neighborhoods.

So if you were going to Fort Thunder for

the first time, it was scary.

It was sort of like this secret playhouse

for a while.

They just wanted to have fun.

They wanted to create.

They wanted to have their own world there.

You know, museums were like crypts,

graveyards for art.

And our house was like a living art

creature that we lived within.

I think it was like emboldening in a way

to have this kind of like wild,

untamed space.

Just like living this really loud,

literally like very loud.

So living in Fort Thunder is that sense of

no routine, but a great sense of purpose.

And then, you know, within the year of

that super heyday, a developer came in.

People started getting kicked out and the

city just started looking at that area.

These developers saw a great opportunity

for themselves because they knew that they

could buy these buildings and knock them

down.

Come back July 2nd.

The joint better be empty.

Make sure you're out of here and that the

joint's empty.

I'm not f*cking around.

The developer was just

looking at it as if it was any

old parcel that could

become a suburban strip mall.

I mean, it's just an algorithm.

And they're like, oh, there's

room for a supermarket

here because the

property value is so cheap.

All we have to do is just knock down all

these buildings.

There was no outreach to

the community to talk about like

rent control and how

under-resourced the community was.

It's okay.

Like change happens.

Like there's nothing inherently wrong or

evil about it.

But there was no effort to bring people

along.

And I think that in a way, Fort Thunder

was like the first strike.

And I think the real

estate developers were just

starting to understand that

there was so much to exploit.

We'll take a motion to

close the hearing,

and allow everyone to speak

that's signed up to speak.

Michael Townsend?

Over the course of the chaos

in the last year and a half

everybody who lived in the area

has been slowly pushed out.

And now, I just want to give a heads up

to the concept of responsibility for these buildings

as far as who have responsibility for it.

When the Eagle Square fiasco was

unfolding, the mall becomes this sort of

cultural enemy.

It becomes a sort of ogre in the cave that

the townsfolk are afraid of.

They're not sure how big it is,

but they just know it's nasty.

And so that tension just

boils over as soon as an actual

person comes in and says, I'm

going to knock down your home.

People being evicted, people losing their

spaces, people getting kicked out,

people getting priced out.

It's just sort of something kind of

happening.

The mall comes, totally remakes your

neighborhood.

You adjust.

It doesn't adjust to you.

You adjust to it.

And it was impossible to not see the

apartment project through that lens.

Yeah, just go quickly.

It won't set up at once.

Yeah, we can go straight from the moon to

our house.

Brilliant.

By this stage, the

group of people invited

into the space had

grown from four to eight.

And occasionally, a few of us would sleep

there.

But for the most part, it was a fantastic

place to just meet and hang out.

The food court was closed, so please,

people, enjoy what you can.

The mall project, I think, it emerged

fairly organically.

The main person who really started the

project and who had the initial idea was Mike.

It wasn't as though Mike sat down and was

like, I got to assemble a super group of

people in order to,

like, create this artist

collective that will be

a public-facing thing.

As with other projects that

Mike has done, he wanted

to involve the people

who were in his life in it.

He wanted to make it a group project.

Michael was a thread that connected

everybody.

A lot of folks he met through his time

teaching, and so they were students,

former students of his.

He and Adriana were

married, and then the

two of us were in this

grad program together.

Everyone was sort of very driven, but

we were all real sort of nerdy and weird.

That group felt really at home.

We all felt really fun together.

That just sounds like such a magic thing,

to take a space from the mall.

Like, it seems like you shouldn't be able

to pull it off.

So trying to pull it off, it feels like

somebody needs to do it.

This was our group project, and it was,

like, a secret, right?

And it was a secret pact.

The big rule was to not bring people from

outside.

So it was intended to be a fairly

exclusive club, I suppose.

So there's this core team of eight

artists.

That is essentially the brain

trust for the creation of it,

and the curation of it, and the

knowledge of the mall space.

Look at that.

It's got the instant history going on.

Oh, and the shelves are glass.

Oh, that's nice. Do these open?

Wait, what is that?

It's plastic.

Oh, my God.

Isn't it?

No, no, no. Look, this is cast.

Wait.

It's not wood. It's plastic.

We can't have this in our house.

Oh, man.

That is hot.

And it's really shoddily made, but I

mean, it has the illusion of grandeur.

Yeah.

It kinda sucks that I'm more

excited about this apartment

than it's like the one I'll be moving into.

You know, there's art that you see and you

enjoy, and it entertains you.

And then there's art that impacts you.

And that's the kind of piece this was.

It had an impact that was both emotional

and psychological and is not easily

described, which is my favorite kind of

art.

My friend was like, hey, you got to go see

this.

There's like underneath the train tracks,

there's actually like this like weird,

creepy art exhibit that like felt like it

was a mystery and who made it.

So I actually had no idea at the time

anything about why it was there.

You opened up a hatch and climbed down

into the was like a sewer grate,

basically, and then kind of traverse these

few tunnels.

And then it opened up into a bigger open

space, super wet, dank.

But then there were

these sculptures of human

bodies suspended all

throughout the space.

And you could walk through and sort of

interact with them on your own terms.

There's no signage.

There's nobody telling you anything about

what you're experiencing.

There's one day when I

spent a really long time looking

for it, and I couldn't

figure out how to get into it.

But I never, and I never figured it out.

I think you had to like go between the

train tracks.

I'm not even sure actually where the

entrance to the tunnel is now.

I think that the body

tunnel, you could call it a

stunt, you could call it

an installation art piece.

What makes it art for me is that it asked

me to imagine a setting for art that was

not the setting that I had been told art

happened in.

I'm not sure when I put two and two

together that it was Mike's piece.

I think that probably came much later.

But like, I just remember,

you know, that was like one

of my favorite secret spots

in Providence to take people.

And I think Michael was very discreet

about it.

I don't think he was promoting it.

Him finding that tunnel

was, I think, an offshoot of just

like all of us exploring

just whatever we could find.

But where we were mostly just exploring

stuff, Michael was sort of putting his

artistic practice like into

those spaces, like putting

things in the spaces and

messing around with the spaces.

And he's always been an inspiration.

I went to the RISD summer program and Mike

was my drawing teacher.

He did something very rare and very

unusual, which was that he expected you to

have a genuine personal connection to the

work that you made.

It was a way of living, not some sort of

produced object that can be seen,

you know, in a museum, something like

that.

Most of us, myself,

certainly came to that

program thinking art is

a thing you do on paper.

And Mike exploded our understanding of

what art is or could be.

So it was the start of a decade of life

that has had a massive impact on me.

Mike was like a super

involved teacher, like different

than any teacher I had had

up until that point, for sure.

He kind of approached art

in a different way definitely

than anything like I'd

been exposed to before.

Where it was kind of like, what do you

actually want to make and why?

What Michael was able to introduce to me,

which was so powerful at that age,

was that I could

actually just look inside

myself and find things

that were worth sharing.

So yes, like that class with Mike helped

to galvanize me to find my way to publicly

engaged work.

For Mike, the difference between art and

life is very hard to discern.

Art and life are two very porous things

for him.

And so he thinks of art projects as being

so deeply incorporated into his life.

And that's something

you probably will hear from

other people, this life

as art, art as life thing.

And that's something that like,

as a young person, it was super impactful

to see somebody living in a way that felt

like all of it was the art.

The secret apartment was the art.

The teaching was the art.

The interacting with other people was the

art.

All the stuff together is what makes life

meaningful.

And I think that's like, something I've

been trying to do since I was a teenager.

So the secret apartment, nestled down in

here, kind of floating above the train

tracks, kind of tucked in between the

backside of all the stores.

We had a couple of different ways of

getting in.

Our exterior entrance was basically right

alongside the train tracks.

There was a gap in between a couple of

walls that would allow you to get into the

bowels of the building pretty much.

And we were able to shimmy along some

walls to get access to where the space was.

Additionally, we could get into the same

zone of the mall where the secret

apartment was, basically from any emergency

exit door on this side of the building.

That would lead you into a

serpentine bunch of staircases

and hallways somewhere

along that serpentine path.

There were a couple of different ways we

could access the secret apartment.

Because this building is made of a bunch

of really odd shapes.

I mean, you can see, like, the way that

the angle follows the river and the way

that that curve follows

the highway, the building

has a bunch of weird

intersecting shapes.

So I think the space that we discovered

was really a negative space in between two

planes of the building, which created sort

of a triangle in between two parts of the

building, which is where the secret

apartment was.

The food court is this sort of third level

up here.

And the bathrooms, I think our most

frequently used bathroom was on the first

floor, sort of like the main retail drag

of the mall.

There were bathrooms on each floor.

I feel like we used the

ones on the first floor

the most because they

were closest to the entrance.

So the secret apartment

being down in here, we

can have a look at it

by taking this roof off.

And we

can pull that out.

So there's Andrew, James, Jay,

myself, Emily, Greta, Adriana,

and Michael all hanging out in the space

together.

So additionally, just for fun,

hidden in here is the Optio S5i.

Amazingly, still works.

Just needed a charge of the battery.

I can probably sneak a little picture of

the apartment or two if it'll focus.

Once we wanted to really make this an

apartment that was ours, as opposed to

just a room in the mall, we decided we

needed to make it so we had access to it

without having other people have access to

it.

So the apartment in the

mall had this big gaping

space that looked

down into a storage area.

You would come up this

steep metal staircase and

you would just be

looking into the apartment.

So there was a real necessity to build a

wall there.

Building a wall was going to be the thing

that made it even more invisible in the

sense that, like, another cinder block

wall with another door just becomes

another thing that if

anyone walks through

the space, they're not

going to bat an eye at.

So many cinder blocks, like, that would

be a... Yeah, even just that one wall...

carrying up at a time.

Four or five.

A lot of a lot.

Obviously the main feat of that whole thing

was just moving that many cinder blocks.

I think, you know, we calculated it was

like, you know, four and a half or five

thousand pounds of cinder block.

So that was, you know, a couple of tons.

The issue of bringing things in here is

obviously the hot one.

Because, like...

That's our only liability.

Right, you have to do it over...

and over... and

over... and over again.

From the time we popped the trunk, to the

time all the cinder blocks,

we're literally through the doors of a

minute and a half.

How long does that alarm sound?

Two minutes exactly.

It's a psychological deterrent.

And apparently nothing else.

In regards to security, we're thinking

about it all the time.

There are constant presence in our mind.

But it's important to

emphasize that there's no, no

part of me that has any

interest in duping security.

I don't...

I don't feel any thrill in that.

They have a job to do.

I respect that job.

I also just want to do my job.

We're heading off.

All right.

Yeah, we'll see you in like ten minutes.

Alright, bye.

There was no way to prepare for it.

Like, we didn't know what circumstances

would trigger us being caught.

We had no idea who would approach us or in

what level of hostility it would be.

We just would be ready to explain

ourselves in whatever moment unfolded.

Now, I have, up until that point,

a career in explaining myself.

My work as an artist means

that I am constantly explaining

my presence to police

officers, to city officials.

It is a space I feel very comfortable in.

You know, we were on a multi-leg journey

coming from Home Depot.

You know, we got these cinder blocks at

Home Depot and now we're going to the mall.

Does it change anything we're doing?

No, it doesn't change a thing.

Because we had the good excuse.

Yeah.

vv

Conviction.

Eye contact.

I guess we should just...

We're fine.

So yeah, it's kind of amazing.

I told the security guard that we had gone

to Home Depot, filled the car with cinder

blocks, come to the mall,

had done some shopping,

and came back to a

car that could not move.

So, we had arranged to move the cinder

blocks down the stairwell to an awaiting

friend's truck.

And he led us on our way.

And I know that has a lot to do with just

who we were.

like, a shield of white

privilege around us.

Black and brown people in the same space,

doing ill*gal things, or doing even not

ill*gal things, are not

treated that way and would

not be treated with the

same deference as we were.

My fear of the police is not the same.

I'm not worried about risk to my body and

life.

You know, simultaneously to this,

I was working with Mike on tape art,

which is Mike's sort of organization that

will go around and do public murals,

do temporary public murals made out of

masking tape.

One of the more notable

ones was going to Hasbro

Children's Hospital and

making murals there.

I first became aware of tape art and heard

about Michael through probably some artist

friends, that there

was some guy out there

who was using tape

and drawing on the wall.

And I thought, I don't know, this is, sounds

quirky and kooky, and what does he do?

I mean, how is this going to appeal to

kids?

So, I had a lot of questions.

Tape art is a unique process.

I don't know any other artists,

frankly, who were doing tape art.

Michael was the first one I met,

and I've never met anybody since.

I think I was fascinated by the

uniqueness.

So, the more I

watched him, the more I

realized that, you know,

he was truly a master.

The patient's immediate

reaction is, first

of all, they're very

open to something new.

And it was, again, a little odd.

It wasn't somebody coming in with drawing

paper and a brush or crayons.

It was somebody

coming in with five rolls of

blue tape on his arm

and swinging them around.

And then the kid would often say,

you know, what's going on?

What are you going to do with that tape?

And Michael would take it from there.

Michael did have a crew of people.

You know, what they drew, the mice and the

horses and the mermaids.

It was that they were

able to engage the child in

conversation about, what

do you want on your wall?

So that when Michael and his team walked

into the room, he didn't come in with an

idea of what he was going to do.

He let the child lead him.

And when possible, of course, if the

patient was mobile, they'd engage the

patient in actually helping him to create

the mural.

But now the patient is involved in a

creative activity and has a responsibility

to seeing what's happening on the wall of

his room and changing his environment.

Having a sense of control.

So I think that the patient just got lost.

Could be for 15 minutes and it could have

been, you know, for a couple of hours.

Michael was coming in

at least once a week and

he was one of the

first people that I hired.

So I would say he was, yeah, he was here

for at least 15 years.

Funding was tough, but free lunch was

provided.

If they came in the morning, they could

stay for lunch.

If they came in the afternoon,

they could come early.

And we always provided a free lunch for

them.

And I think they were pretty grateful for

that, because I don't think many of them,

I don't think they ate during the day.

I think one of the first questions kids

and staff and families always asked,

what's going to happen to this mural now

that's on the wall?

And Michael always made

it very clear that there was

an impermanence and it was

really for the here and now.

And he said, you know, we'll create a new

one tomorrow.

Think of something new that we could do.

So Michael had an interesting beginning.

Because his father was in

the Marine Corps, we lived in

eight different places before

he was seven years old.

I think it made him very open-minded.

I think Michael takes in all kinds of

people, all kinds of social situations.

So basically, I think that's what's made

him someone who's at home anywhere.

So let's get you this one, and this one,

the blue one.

So basically, it's like a form of,

like, tempered graffiti.

And it gives you a lot of freedom.

So I was brought up in a military family.

Both my parents were in the military,

and their parents were in the military,

and I believe their parents were in the

military.

So my brother and I were the first ones to

sort of break that lineage.

In Mike's case, I don't want

to speak for him, but it just

was never, never seemed

like it would be a good fit for him.

He was far too creative growing up,

and I think a military career would have

restricted his level of creativity that

just abounded.

No words or letters are the only rule.

Good luck.

Let's work on that together.

Make sure you got that one technique down.

Don't pull it.

Just let it hang.

And very gently.

That looks really good.

Yeah, keep going, keep going.

Michael as a person is all about involving

people in a collaborative process of art.

And I've seen that in a lot of cases,

that he's just a very selfless person.

And that is something really, yeah, that

is something really special about Michael.

Yeah.

So the cynic might

say that you're not going

to make the world a

better place with your art.

But like maybe you're not

gonna make the entire world a

little better, but maybe you'll

make one person's life better.

And then somebody else's life better.

It becomes the ripples in the pond effect.

So the main priorities in my career have

always been making art and teaching art

and trying to use that art to have

positive impacts on other people's lives.

There's not a lot of money in that.

I work in a nonprofit museum.

Michael is an artist.

We are not swimming in money, either of

us.

And Michael does, he takes it,

sometimes he doesn't take it seriously and

I've gotten upset.

Like he will text me

pictures of his bank account

that has 41 cents and

he thinks that's funny.

And I see the text and I'm like,

this is not funny.

And I've had to talk to

him about like, could you

please not send me this

when you have like a dollar?

This is not, like this doesn't make me

laugh personally.

This is our next ode to...

our relationship with this

large monstrosity.

Is to go in there and actually

consciously and very carefully

develop the space so that it's a...

It represents an

actual domestic living space.

Before Week I The Mall,

we hated that place.

Like we just, we didn't,

the mall was,

we genuinely disliked it.

We felt the disdain for it as a place.

And as a place that had affected

our lives in a very, very deep way.

That's funny because to me it's just a mall.

Well, to me it's not a mall.

And a lot of that has to do with the

evolution of this space over here.

Because that space over there had

my favorite building in Providence.

Now it is gone.

If you can talk about the

idea that there was or is

a G*ntrification

that's happening here?

It's pretty easy to finger this

building as the beginning of that.

So you like this thing now?

I love the place now.

As a member of the city,

I acknowledge its existence.

And, uh, the way that it

acknowledges us is by just

leaving us alone and

letting us move in.

We are no different than

like a barnacle on a whale.

The whale is designed.

The barnacle attaches itself.

The whale doesn't care.

So let's count full bricks first.

So we have...

- 48.

- Yeah.

So we need 72 and we have 48.

So it's like four more runs

with cinder blocks.

f*ck.

Okay.

So let's make this as thick as we can.

After we had a little run in with

security, that encounter forced us to

rethink how we're bringing

the cinder blocks in.

And we're like, well, we

have a private entrance.

So the entrance we had used to initially

discover the space in the first place

became the way that we

bring the cinder blocks in.

I think good day's work right there.

I say we leave these cinder blocks

here for now...

because we got plenty over there to start

building with.

We just got to get ourselves set up.

Yeah, let's go over there and chill out. Yeah.

What you're seeing here is...

Oh, they're all sort of marked.

Oh, that's Better Living... The Children's Hospital.

And where's Alfred P. Murrah?

Children's Hospital.

Museum of Art...

- National Memorial. There it is.

- Yeah, there it is.

So at the same time the core group of

eight of us were working in the apartment

in the mall, we also took a trip

collectively to go to Oklahoma City for

the 10th anniversary of the Alpha Pimura

Federal Building bombing.

Mike was there doing tape art in Oklahoma

City when that happened and made a mural.

I think he was the only non-medical

personnel allowed in the home base and

made a mural for basically the sole

audience of the first responders.

Folks seem to like the idea of it being an

optimism mural.

That's more about individuals being able

to have freedom and flight and maybe

through the help of other

people they can achieve that.

Like that wall right there...

That is downtown Oklahoma City.

We have a great place to stay.

We have a great wall.

The wall is check-out.

That looks amazing.

So we planned a trip back to

OKC like on the anniversary

of the bombing to kind of do

more work with the community.

Special care is a facility.

They have 14 cases of autism.

And, you know, lots of kids with cerebral palsy.

And I set up just a rolling schedule,

and the classes just roll to us.

The group of us spent a full week there

working at like a memorial site and doing

projects in schools.

Basically like a little elite strike force

team of empathetic artists.

I don't think that artists are obliged to

go out and do good works,

or to try to pretend that,

making art has to sort of like

save the world or feed the children

or do any kind of like, you know,

nice crunchy thing that people might want.

But if you can and if there's an

opportunity, why not?

You have the chance to use the skill that

you have to do something good.

And also, you know, I do

really believe that art and

aesthetic experience are

good in and of themselves.

That they're not means to anything,

but that they make life better.

If anyone's interested,

you can do this.

If you want to work in a hospital, in a hallway with

you know just like, hospital kids

this is an opportunity to do it.

So...

anyone wants to do that?

Sounds great.

It's funny.

I imagine when people

heard like the one

snippet of there was

an apartment in the mall.

It's not the first thing that they think

people would be using it for is kind of

planning and discussing things around these

big public art projects that we were doing.

The effort of making these things is a...

something that really really gets...

Like, hits people.

I've seen many an adult cry looking

at what we've made so far.

I know the majority of that is based on

the fact that it is September 11th,

but the artwork has an impact on just citizens.

Like, everyone being a survivor of September 11th.

The central project in our life was the

September 11th Memorial.

It was all-consuming.

We had made the decision to draw 500

portraits, life-size, simple silhouettes,

of every fireman and

every airline passenger

that passed away at

the World Trade Center.

Okay.

There is Saraceni.

Number 38, heart one.

He's here.

We're gonna walk to the other side of this

square right here and put a figure,

um, Mr. Russell.

It's gonna be about a block that

direction.

Mike had drawn these four large hearts

over the island of Manhattan.

And we would basically go down to New

York.

We'd follow that path

and just find locations

on that to try and do

a drawing of a figure.

And we'd document it.

And then this, like, web memorial,

we'd go back and make sort of,

like, a web page showcasing that

documentation.

Portraits of people who died on September

11th along the path of four hearts.

So, like, walking those paths and drawing,

I think, every block a person.

And those were all temporary drawings.

You know, you're in public.

You're in the streets of Manhattan.

You're trying to go quick.

We almost never had permission to make the

work.

So you're trying to not get busted.

If you got busted, you could just remove

the mural.

The tape isn't permanent.

But as far as tape art goes, kind of an

intense scenario.

You're trying to honor the circumstance,

the people you're representing,

and the seriousness of it all.

But you're also interacting

with people in the public who

are curious to know what

you're doing or if it's ill*gal.

Yeah, it was like a great drawing

challenge.

See these four hearts here?

Yes.

These four hearts span the entirety of

Manhattan.

One, two, three, four.

Yep.

And right now, we are working on part one.

So we're right now right about here.

And these hearts, if you were to connect

the dots between all these figures that

we're drawing, you would be drawing out

these fantastically large hearts.

Wow.

We would hop in the car in Mike's Toyota

and drive to New York to do drawings over

the course of a couple of days.

With a goal, some section of a heart.

And then, with the documentation,

we would head back to Providence,

where we would compile the next set of

collages.

And then once a good window presented

itself to head back to New York,

we'd hop back in the car and get to it.

It took a long time.

Years.

First, this project, when it started,

we thought maybe two, three years,

stretched out to five years.

All of these efforts pretty much,

like, was all volunteer.

The HOPE project was completely

self-funded.

I mean, I know that Mike's

every bit of money that he

made went directly back into

paying for the HOPE project.

Mostly the paying for it was, you know,

all of our labor was completely volunteer.

But for me, just thinking about meaningful

things I've done in my life, that's

something I look at as really,

truly meaningful artwork.

I'm not sure, but the

project that we made, to

be honest, I don't even

know how it exists now.

I'm not sure if it even exists to this

day.

The apartment was the side project to the

other staff.

The HOPE project, Oklahoma City projects,

the work at the hospital, that was,

I believe, our focus as a team.

You know, the mall

project felt like a way for us

to have maybe more fun

than thinking about tragedy.

Which, for a couple years, we were, like,

really thinking about tragedy all the time.

[ Door alarm buzzing in the distance ]

God damn it.

Remember that thing I was telling

you about, about not putting your

tools on the thing or it might fall in?

It just happened.

Yes, it just happened.

Lame!

[ Door alarm buzzing in the distance ]

It's gonna be an awful

day when that door opens.

I know, I know.

The only thing the makes

it better is our door.

Yeah.

And then it's gonna be a really

awful day when our door opens.

Once you have your own wall,

then you get your own door.

And then you have your own lock,

and then you get your own key.

So, our whole team had a key to an

apartment in the mall.

Holy smoke.

So, what I didn't realize when I was

initially looking at these photos,

this step down here that's happening

in the cinder blocks, I was, like, weird.

Yeah, poor craftsmanship.

Because you had built it.

Right.

Ah.

But that brings, like, a

certain degree of charm.

So, with the couch, you

can tell it's a pretty big

couch from the amount of

people that are fitting on it.

Sectional.

Oh, it's a sectional.

Yeah.

Can you draw for me,

roughly, like, the floor plan

or just the orientation

of walls and stuff as you?

So, this is our front door.

This is our back door.

Whoa.

We had a couch here.

We had our entertainment system on a

little tiny table with a TV.

And there was a dresser out here.

Rugs.

Lamps.

You didn't have outlets, did you?

No.

But we had the extension cord.

- Here.

- Okay.

- Down.

- Oh, my God.

One story.

Into... over here.

The door is there.

The couch is basically here.

The little table is basically here.

Mm-hmm.

We walked to the...

That puts the...

That puts the China cabinet here.

Okay.

Getting it to look right.

Like, this is too distressed.

No. No, no. It's not. That's not.

That's brick.

That's closer.

Closer.

That's it!

That's what it looked like!

Yeah, with the folks from Providence who

are helping on this project, it was pretty

easy for me to rope them in because I just

said, remember that time.

Those people lived at the mall.

How would you like to rebuild that room?

You know, we're working with a tight

budget, but everyone's really excited

about the project, so we're doing the best

we can.

I think everyone was sort of willing to

pitch in and just being a little scrappier.

There's a lot of free items that we're

running around and picking up.

We're basically doing what these guys did.

You know, the way that they were finding

their furniture was often times at

Salvation Army or things that they were

finding on the side of the road.

And we're doing a sort of expedited

version of that.

I think more than anything, I want Michael

and Adriana and Andrew and Colin,

whoever else, to walk into the space

knowing that it's just a recreation for

a documentary, but having it sort

of evoke the memory of the space.

What?

Bring your own precious items,

choose a shadow box.

A shadow box will help make a unique keepsake.

This might be something

we need for our space.

Wait a second.

Hey, Glenn.

I have some people who

want to do the shadow box.

If you could meet them at

Design Studio.

All right. So you guys brought some stuff?

Some of us brought stuff.

Where are you guys from?

You don't know?

Here.

Around here.

All right. So I guess the

general idea is that you get

a shadow box, buy a shadow box from here.

And you guys can assemble it

and I'll help you out.

My name is Glenn.

I graduated from RISD.

Oh.

With a master's in sculpture.

And I teach at Brown.

So I was hired at Pottery Barn to do

shipping receiving.

The company was trying

to promote shadow boxes.

So they wanted to do a workshop.

So I did it.

So when they came in, they were really

excited and jovial.

And they were like, we're into this.

They sort of explained who they were,

what kind of art they made, that they were

from Eagle Square and

that they got kicked out.

I had been to Eagle Square.

So I knew kind of the situation.

You know, we had this connection going.

And then they started to tell me,

you know, slowly kind of leaked out.

And then I will share with you cause it's of note

is in our explorations of the mall,

we have found some extraordinary large and

abandoned spaces and

we've been slowly, methodically moving in.

And don't pass this on, obviously,

We have a fully furnished apartment.

In here?

In the mall.

Really? That's hilarious.

So you're basically home.

Yeah.

In some way.

Yeah. No. We're home in

a very real way, unfortunately.

It was pretty clear from

the beginning that they wanted

to know more

information about the mall.

And I was there inside about that.

We can't figure out how to get into the

tower.

Oh, really?

I have no idea.

I bet you have to figure it out.

Like, is there any place you can

actually go and just take a shower?

Can you get mail delivered

to you here?

I think we need a post office box.

Here?

Yeah.

And then you'd have to rent

space in order to get one.

You might.

If we can get mail to come

here, then we've done it.

Once we can get mail here, man...

Then we can have all our junk mail

sent here from the mall to the mall.

Right.

I really like it.

Damn, that's really good.

I like it.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Good job.

Yeah, thanks for your material and time.

Well, come down sometime and

show me where the place is.

If we get discovered...

Yeah.

What is your sense of...

What would happen?

They'd probably want back pay for rent.

Yeah, we have a location problem.

Alright...

Have a great day.

Alright, thank you very much. Thank you.

So, after they left, you

know, of course, there

were all the questions

from the other employees.

You know, what's this about?

And I just told them

it was an art project.

Here we go...

So, this is our home.

This door also has a

lock, just like our door did.

And, um, it's locked.

So, I can't go in the apartment.

This is the weird thing

about the mall apartment,

is that it makes you

feel really relaxed.

It's this paradox, right?

It's a little prison-like,

because there's

this cement wall and

there's no natural light.

And you could be discovered at any moment.

There's this weird sense of freedom where

no one's gonna bother you.

You're not gonna be late for anything.

It's just this really

quiet refuge, in a way.

You're on, like, the

inside-out version of a

building that you're never

supposed to experience.

Um, and so, it's like being

in the belly of a beast.

In some ways, we had this raw black box.

It was a bit of a space station,

self-imposed prison cell.

There was no windows.

There's no light.

And it was about this desire to cultivate

it and make it more human.

Sleeping in the apartment was,

I think, really cold, usually.

And we had, like, some sleeping bags,

at least in the winter.

It was definitely really hot in the

summer, too.

And incredibly dark.

Slept on this couch a lot.

Probably the most, for me,

the most nights in a row would

have been four or five or

something like that, I think.

We had tried different,

like, sleeping arrangements.

But I remember Mike and I

doing this on this couch a lot.

The head-to-foot sleeping.

And this hutch, I'm

just gonna look for it.

It feels so real.

It definitely, it had a real waffle maker.

So we could make waffles in the mall

apartment.

So I had this vision of staging

this set of domestic bliss.

Gorgeous, very

bourgeois, even within the

dusty, grimy cinder

block of that apartment.

Oh, my gosh.

The cinder block, yeah.

It was, um...

It was dustier.

It was always giving off.

It was always generating kind of like a

fine mist of cement.

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 almost where

we could play out the unrealistic and

unattainable fantasies of the mall.

And the joke would be, you know what?

Oh, you love just beautifying things?

Like, so do we.

Wait a second.

The mail carrier will be

available at the mail room for

accountable mail and parcels.

Where's the mail room?

I don't know, but it's a really good

question to ask.

This is too good.

Well, it would just be nice to

be able to receive mail here.

If we could do that, that would

be a gigantic accomplishment.

It would just save us a lot of stress.

If we were able to receive a bill, we

could use it as like proof of residency.

Yeah.

During the time that the apartment in the

mall was being built, I was married to

Adriana.

And she had a front

row seat to a lot of lunacy.

Right now I'm unsettled because

we have all that stuff in there

but it's not really...

it's not really finished, in a sense.

- I mean, it'll never feel like that.

- Yeah.

It needs to reach a certain state

of finished and then we can

keep upping the ante when

we feel the inclination, the time.

The only problem I have is that

I know Saturday is mall time.

It's just like, I want to spend my

Saturday working on our house.

Right, right.

You know, because our house

doesn't have a floor and...

there's a lot of things

that need to be done.

As egotistical as it sounds, it's something

I just really, really, really want to do.

Like it moves me, and being here moves me,

setting up the space moves me.

You need these kinds of projects

to be who you are and to survive,

and I completely understand that.

But the other part of it is that I

don't need those projects to survive.

and I'm not you and that's okay.

But...

we do...

have a commitment to a partnership where

we're working towards the same goals.

We're doing different things, but

we're working towards the same thing.

and...

I'm not sure if the mall project is

threatening those goals in any sense.

I mean it's very interesting that

you've phrased going down this path.

You know that it is this

battle between these two homes.

Cause it has been very much "home" and

our goal is pushing more and more "home".

I want a f*cking home.

I want a home, but I

don't want it in the mall.

I wanna buy things from the mall

for my home, then bring it home.

We wanna buy things in the mall and bring them

into the home here.

I know, but why are you

going to spend money on that?

You know, it's very much

a home in a lot of ways.

We're making a physical home, but the

act of making it constantly partners

me up with people that I really like.

So...

that's an important part of it.

for me.

There was some part of me that knew this

was not a good relationship.

And then I was able to realize that it was

not the right thing for me.

Yeah.

This illustrates one of the

core dilemmas of driving yourself

towards an art project that

you really deeply believe in.

Because sometimes it's

truly in the face of all reason.

Why are you spending

all of that time there?

Why are you doing that

September 11th project?

Why... there's no... where's

the reward in any of this?

What's your end game?

Valid questions.

At this time, the apartment is starting to

transform into something else.

It's evolving again.

It had started as a response to

development projects in our neighborhood.

And within a couple of years,

it looks like a domestic space,

but it's completely

isolated from the world.

And sometimes when you're in that space,

you felt like you were on the stage of a

sitcom TV show.

And I think kind of

because of that feeling,

we just stopped filming

ourselves all together.

And then...

We had had this break-in...

They were two guys, young guys,

maybe 20, 21, something like that,

who were new security guards at the mall.

I think they were just going

through every door, and they

came upon the door that

they did not have the key to.

So they just kicked the door down.

So Colin and I entered into the apartment to

try to figure out what's happened.

Our door's been broken in.

But when we enter into the apartment,

we can quickly assess that someone else

has been spending

time there, and it's not us.

And there's evidence of

entertainment dispersed throughout.

But things have also been stolen.

Our PlayStation, weirdly enough,

was the thing that was gone.

And then there were some other of our

personal effects that were gone.

We had some framed pictures and stuff to

make it feel a little homier.

Those were the things that were gone.

I think they took the

PlayStation because it had all

of our save dates for the

games we were playing on it.

So that's just a record of all the visits

in the last couple of months.

And they took our photo album because it

had just photographs of us.

It was very clearly who

lived in this apartment.

Busted.

Job well done.

Bravo.

We've been in this space for four years.

And there's this underlying dread that

we're going to get caught at any time.

And after we were broken

into, we just stopped

going to that space

during the day altogether.

And then I screwed up.

I had a friend visiting from out of town.

And I thought to myself, I'll bring her to

see the space.

And I went during the day!!!

I disrespected our own

rules and it blew up in my face.

All right.

But this is our secret apartment.

We've been slowly building

this over the last four years.

Moving in pieces of

furniture and slowly building it

up to try to make it a fully

domestic space to live in.

Are you allowed to be here?

Technically, no.

We've been doing it all on the sly.

And within a couple of days,

the wood floors will be in.

And we'll be one step closer.

How did you get this up here?

That is...

[ Police type radio squelching from afar ]

Yeah, so between the sound of the

walkie-talkie and seeing that doorknob

turn, everything just goes into slow-mo.

And it's one of those

times when you can process

a lot of scenarios in a

very short period of time.

One of the possibilities is just to get

out of there.

Book it.

Grab your friend,

head towards the secret

passage, and that's

where you're in trouble.

Because you're asking

them to dive into a place

that's like pitch dark, full

of ledges and I-beams.

They're probably not going to make it.

Another idea that struck me was,

they were entering into my home.

So I should just invite them in....

as guests.

Treat them like royalty.

And maybe they would

treat me well in return.

Hello, gentlemen, it's good to see you.

Ah!

Ah!

Too long.

You.

You, sir.

That probably wasn't going to work.

Another possibility that went through my

mind is that this isn't security at all.

That maybe this is

just a cool person with a

walkie-talkie on the

other side of that door.

Walkie-talkies.

Yes!

Radio Shack.

Sweet!

But, after seeing those three guys step

through that door in their business suits,

I knew it was over.

I remember stepping right

up and saying, surprise!

Do you know who I am?

We know who you are.

You're going to need to follow us.

Our other top local story on

Eyewitness News at Noon.

This is an incredible tale.

A local artist has apparently had some

living space in the Providence Place Mall.

In all, eight artists were in and out of

that loft area.

But there was one man who admitted that he

lived there.

And now he's facing trespassing charges.

And he's also banned from the premises.

In a mall with 24-hour security,

Michael Townsend was able to build a fully

livable apartment, and he used it for

nearly four years.

Townsend was arrested and charged with

trespassing.

A judge sentenced to

him to six months probation

and ordered him to pay

court costs and restitution.

When we discovered it.

A spokesman for the mall said the hidden

space would be sealed up immediately.

Townsend's original charges...

Townsend's been barred from coming to the

mall permanently.

Townsend was released this morning,

spending just one night in jail.

His only regret is that it ended too soon.

In the next year, he planned on expanding

the apartment and building an extra

bedroom, a kitchen, and a bathroom,

all with running water.

When asked if the apartment was a work of

art or just a place to live, Townsend told

us that for him, there's

no line between art and life.

Bryan Cranston, NBC News Providence.

So I was told by representatives of the mall

that they took down our cinder block wall,

and then moved all the cinder blocks

to rebuild a new wall to block off the

entrance we had used to

enter in all of those years.

Far as I know, no one's

ever been in there again.

With our secret apartment in the mall, there

wasn't any sense of it being permanent.

We're just going to keep building it until

we reach that crescendo moment and then...

make it disappear.

So what is it?

What is it?

Is it a work of art?

Is it a social experiment?

Is it trespassing?

Is it a prank?

It's maybe all of these things.

It was this idea of

reinventing everyday life

and making of everyday

life an artistic project.

It talks about G*ntrification.

It talks about capitalism and

everything being co-modified.

It's the perfect site

to address issues of like...

ownership, of capital,

of private versus public.

It was like this alternate universe.

It's like within the real world.

It's a crossover between installation art

and performance art.

I think it was a combo of

like mischief and like snark.

It seemed like a big presentational show

because they don't like malls.

It felt like, meh, whatever.

I don't really get it, I will admit,

which is Michael finds that hilarious.

You know, it's I try to understand why

this was an art project and the deeper

um, messaging he was trying to get

across by occupying unoccupied space.

And like, I've heard it, I've heard it,

but I just don't really get why it's art.

I'm not sure if it moves over

to the area of being artistic.

I think this is just his

creative mind trying

to express itself in

every possible way.

Isn't that art?

Damn it.

I've kept this key on my keychain the

entire time.

Yep, this is the key.

Which used to have flames on it,

but it doesn't anymore.

Well, it's here on my keychain.

Um... yeah...

I have no idea if the

door is still there, so

I sometimes refer to it

as my key to nowhere.

Here is my key.

It's got what's left of an

American flag and an eagle on it.

You can kind of see, like, a little bit of

the flames left in there.

Uh, but pretty well worn.

That was the key.

SECRET MALL APARTMENOther than Micael Tonsend, none of the the other 7 participants of

the secret apartment were ever identified. This is the first time

they have all come forward.Each is still currently an artist or working in the arts.

Micheal Townsend is still doing tape art in Providence.

He lives in a former mill building, down the street from

the Providence Place Mall. He is still banned there.

The Providence Place Mall has struggled greatly in recent years.

In 2022, after the mall's owners defaulted on thier mortage,

they anounced that they were considering putting residential

apartments into the mall complex.