What are the intersections of creativity and economy, of domesticity and adventure, or even just of art and life?
Well, if any film is looking for an answer – or at least examining the questions – it’s “Secret Mall Apartment,” the standout documentary of a years-long “art project” that made waves at deadCenter 2024 and that now returns for a run at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art April 18th through 26th.
Recounting the true exploits of a group of Providence, Rhode Island artists that spent four years building a hidden, livable space inside the bowels of the Providence Place Mall, the documentary fuses first-hand interview accounts, dioramas, creative reenactments, and the group’s own remarkable wealth of self-shot footage.
For a story of something so seemingly odd and so ultimately fleeting, it’s a surprisingly rich and cavernously deep exploration of everything from individuality in the face of gentrification to the inherently transitory and temporary nature of art.
But arguably more than anything, the film considers the question of what place art has within the endless encroachment of capitalist commerce and how creative expression will survive even when hidden and locked away inside the belly of the commercial beast itself.
And also, you know, it’s just weird and fun.
The film and the artistic minds at the center of its story – primarily group leader and secret apartment mastermind Michael Townsend – definitely frame the four-year experiment in hidden art and trespassing as something creatively noble or even necessarily insurgent.
But documentarian Jeremy Workman is also smart to focus on the clear absurdity and natural comedy of the whole thing as well, pivoting between the gravity of art and cultural defiance and the increasing ridiculousness of the group’s undertaking with surprising ease.
As the film plays out, it gradually unfolds not only the collective’s evolving plan of building a fully furnished, walled-off apartment inside of an abandoned liminal space within the mall, but also the economic and developmental circumstances of Providence – and indeed, of America – that led to the idea.
See, in the late-90s and early-2000s, Providence, like so many cities across the country, was attempting to recapture some decades-past, industrialized heyday by demolishing the remnants of its municipal history and constructing all manner of modernized commercial centers atop the rubble.
Part of that plan in Providence meant clear-cutting a huge swath of historical buildings in the inner city, including one that had been made into a beloved underground gathering place and home for much of the city’s artistic community.
But nothing represented the monstrous, capitalist beast slouching towards Providence more than the mammoth, 1.4 million square-foot megamall that was Providence Place, built barely a mile away from the now-destroyed artists’ hub.
With their creative home base destroyed, and with the gigantic mall now hovering over their every move, Townsend and his friends endeavored on a lark to spend a full week living in the mall, for no other reason than the dumb fun of the attempt. But when they discovered a huge, empty space entirely hidden away, the idea grew into something much more long-term.
There’s no shortage throughout the film of explanations or pontifications for why they did it or what the apartment came to represent to each of the participants, and there’s even no shortage of people laughing it off as inane or claiming that they don’t understand it at all.
But it feels clear that it was largely an attempt to peacefully – if still defiantly – coexist with the commercial beat, to accept that they’d been eaten by the whale and to make their own artistic home inside its stomach.
The opening few moments of the film make it plainly obvious that the apartment will eventually be discovered and will send some shocks through the community, and so the journey of the ongoing “art project” becomes one of understanding and embracing the impermanence of art and its fleeting nature.
That element is driven home beautifully, and more than a little emotionally, as the film veers into a deeper look at Townsend’s life and artistic work, with much of his career focused on creating intentionally temporary masking tape art for children’s hospitals and memorial projects.
He and his friends spent years on a guerrilla project around NYC memorializing victims of the September 11th attacks, and even took a trip to Oklahoma City in 2005 to create an official – albeit still temporary – art project for the tenth anniversary of the Bombing.
It’s a fantastic few moments of aside in the film (and unexpectedly appropriate for the week in which it’ll screen at OKCMOA,) and it creates a surprising and welcome direct connection to OKC, even as Providence, with its rapidly disappearing edge and cultural history, already so resembles our city.
We all know what it’s like to see the creative and artistic, and cultural histories of our cities paved over to make way for some new shareholder value. And any artist in the modern age has surely banged their head against the question of what their art is worth if no one ever sees it.
Even if this film can’t provide any final answers to those questions and concerns, it absolutely explores them all in much greater detail and much deeper consideration than you’d ever expect from a 91-minute movie.
So if you’ve ever lamented the loss of your city’s character, or if you’ve ever struggled with art’s place in a commercial society, or even if you’ve ever done something stupid and crazy with your friends just for the memory, you’ll find an unexpected little home in “Secret Mall Apartment.”
“Secret Mall Apartment” screens at OKCMOA April 18th through 26th.
For showtimes, tickets, and more, visit okcmoa.com.
Catch Brett Fieldcamp’s film column weekly for information and insights into the world of film in the Oklahoma City metro and Oklahoma. | Brought to you by the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
