On the Rhode Island Report podcast, two of those artists — Michael Townsend and Adriana Valdez Young — talked about what sparked the idea, and what they’re thinking now that their little apartment is about to be seen on the big screen.
Townsend said he was living at Fort Thunder, an artist collaborative in the city’s Eagle Square, when the mall opened in 1999.
“The developers came to our neighborhood and said ‘Hey, we want to develop your spaces, we want to knock down your buildings and the places that you live,’” he recalled. “We were trying to figure out how to respond to all of these threats, and during the course of these sort of ad hoc gatherings at Fort Thunder, the idea of moving to the mall or taking over the mall or living at the mall started to take place.”
Young said she and Townsend were working on an art installation when they heard a radio ad about Providence Place. The woman in the ad gushed about how much better her life was going to be now that she could get everything she needed at the mall, saying, “If only I could live there.”
“I was like, wait a minute, guys, we should live in the mall,” Young said.
As a first step, Townsend, Young and other artists decided to try to live at the mall for one week, she said. As they searched for a place to sleep at the mall, they found the vacant 750-square-foot space that would become the apartment.
“You were witnessing a place lost to time,” Townsend said. “It was ripe for exploration, ripe for, ultimately, development.”
The group ended up bringing in a sectional couch, a dining table and chairs, a television, and a PlayStation. They also lugged in more than 100 cinder blocks and erected a wall with a locking door.
“We thought, wait a minute, we should be developers — micro developers — and develop this into a condominium for artists,” Young said. “Let’s turn the vision and lexicon of these real estate developers on themselves and take back this piece of land.”
Noting that the mall project had received significant tax break, she said, “This is public space, actually,” so “we’re going to develop it into something useful.”
Security guards eventually discovered the apartment in 2007, Townsend explained, and he was arrested after violating one of the group’s rules — never bring someone to the apartment who wasn’t a member of the “Mall 8.”
He said an artist was visiting from Hong Kong, so he brought her to see the apartment in the middle of the morning. “I was caught,” he said.
Townsend ended up being charged with trespass, placed on probation, and banned from Providence Place for life.
But last week, the mall’s new owners allowed Townsend to return to see the secret apartment space again along with Globe columnist Dan McGowan, and he has been invited to take part in eventsthere to promote the film.
Young said the secret apartment was no crime. “If anything, I feel like it was a reverse crime,” she said. “We were trying to give back to the mall. We were like putting things in the mall, right?”
Over the years, the secret mall apartment has been described as a protest against gentrification, a punk prank, or a public art installation. So how do they describe it?
“I think it was just our way of life,” Young said. “I didn’t even think about it as a project.”
But now, she said, the secret mall apartment could turn the cash-strapped Providence Place Mall into “the most interesting mall in the world.”
“I think that people would come from all over the world to visit the secret mall apartment,” Young said. “This is the time to think about like, a new creative economic model. And there’s no better way to get creative than to invite artists in and collaborate.”
To get the latest episode each week, follow Rhode Island Report podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcasting platforms, or listen in the player above.
Edward Fitzpatrick can be reached at edward.fitzpatrick@globe.com. Follow him @FitzProv.
