The Gist – Episode Summary

Episode: Michael Townsend & Jeremy Workman: "Secret Mall Apartment"
Host: Mike Pesca (Peach Fish Productions)
Guests: Michael Townsend (artist, subject of "Secret Mall Apartment"), Jeremy Workman (director of the documentary)
Date: October 20, 2025

Episode Overview

In this episode of The Gist, Mike Pesca delves into the story behind the new documentary "Secret Mall Apartment" with its subject, artist Michael Townsend, and director Jeremy Workman. The episode explores the remarkable true tale of a group of Providence artists who covertly built and inhabited a fully furnished apartment within the massive Providence Place Mall for multiple years in the early 2000s. The discussion highlights themes of gentrification, urban transformation, the evolution of city culture, and the tension between art and commerce—while also reflecting on how such a project would be virtually impossible today. Beyond the documentary's wild premise, deep questions arise about surveillance, artistic protest, impermanence, and what it meant to “live” between the cracks of early-aughts America.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Providence’s Transformation and the Birth of the Mall (09:45–13:25)

• Context: In the 1990s, Providence, Rhode Island, saw rapid urban change under the controversial but effective Mayor Buddy Cianci. Artists benefitted from cheap rents in old mill buildings, forming a vibrant creative community.
• Emergence of the Mall:
  • The Providence Place Mall, one of America’s last super-regional malls, opened in 1999—”the largest construction project in Providence’s history, the largest tax break in Providence’s history,” as Michael Townsend states.
  • Simultaneously, artists’ neighborhoods were demolished to make way for new developments:

    “All these industrial mill buildings were viewed as blank canvases. Artists were living in them. But developers looked at it as blank space for the next strip mall. And there begins the great tension.” (Michael Townsend, 12:04)

• Effects on Artists: Hundreds of artists lost homes and studios, directly relating their struggles to the encroaching presence of the mall.

2. Genesis of the Secret Mall Apartment (13:25–19:18)

• “Week in the Mall” (2003): After losing their own spaces, Townsend and friends decided to intimately explore the mall by camping in it for a week, prompting the central dilemma: “if you commit yourself to saying, we're not leaving this building for a week, your number one problem becomes, where do you sleep at night?” (Townsend, 15:50)
• Incremental Development: What started as urban camping morphed into a larger art project—a true “secret apartment” hidden inside the mall’s infrastructure.
• Not a Political Statement—At First:

  “No, not at all…we’re giving you the blurted, short version…but this is the challenge for Jeremy…He’s got to try to, in under an hour and a half, dissect why this could possibly happen.” (Townsend, 15:57)

• Universality: The story resonated with audiences in other cities—“This is not a Providence issue. This is a, like, big city issue. And it's national.” (Townsend, 16:34)

3. The Art, Motivations, and Methodology (19:18–24:04)

• Artist Backgrounds:
  • The project came from a collective well-versed in guerrilla art, previously executing a vast, unsanctioned September 11th memorial in New York:

    “…doing life size silhouettes…drawn directly on the buildings of Manhattan without permission…that turns you into somebody who's a little bit…'art righteous,' where you're like, I feel that this is an important thing to do and I'm willing to take the risk.” (Townsend, 19:46)

  • All of their art was temporary, leading to a habit of documenting their work obsessively.
• Relationship with Legality: “We were used to sort of living in that gray space between legal and not legal.” (Townsend, 19:38)

4. Documentary Approach: Footage, Tone & Serendipity (22:12–25:30)

• Archival Goldmine:
  • The artists filmed ~25 hours of footage inside the secret apartment—for their own documentation, not for a future film.
  • The technical quality (grainy, early-2000s digital video) ends up enhancing the authenticity:

    “The footage was so good that they captured. They really filmed everything that…the technical quality doesn't matter, just because it's so incredible to sort of watch this and be alongside.” (Workman, 23:19)

• Unexpected Candidness: Key moments, such as breaking up with a partner in the food court, were captured:

  “Michael breaks up with his wife at the food court and it's like recorded in this crappy camera that, you know, nobody has seen.” (Workman, 25:30)

• Not Documentarians by Design:

  “…a big one is like, why did you film, like, was it ever meant to be a movie? No. Like a hard, hard no on that. The reason we're filming is because our tape artwork is temporary … puts you in the habit of documenting everything.” (Townsend, 24:04)

5. The Impossible Project in the Era of Social Media (26:06–28:25)

• Pre-iPhone World: The project ended just months after the first iPhone—no culture of constant recording.
• A Lost Era:

  “It couldn’t happen today. No one would be able—eight people couldn’t keep this off social media today.” (Pesca, 27:58)

  • Both the artists and, in today’s world, random mall-goers would have publicized such a secret instantly.
• Changing Meaning of Malls:

  “You're reminded like, oh yeah, like it wasn't that long ago when people really thought malls were these great places that we could all come together and be together and they were going to save our communities.” (Workman, 28:25)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Providence’s Changing Landscape:

  “You've got a super center of three to 500 artists within a couple city blocks, all living, working on the cheap. On the cheap means you're paying 200 to $300 a month … one of the strongest epicenters of artists in the United States.”
  —Michael Townsend (11:11)

• On the Artistic Motivation and Ethical Ambiguity:

  “We were used to sort of living in that gray space between legal and not legal.”
  —Michael Townsend (19:38)

• On the Core of the Story:

  “This is not a Providence issue. This is a, like, big city issue. And it's national.”
  —Michael Townsend (16:45)

• On the Power and Limits of Documentation:

  “We were shooting it basically for in house... that footage was parked on a hard drive. And that hard drive… survived for almost 20 years…”
  —Michael Townsend (24:04)

• On Cultural Changes & Social Media:

  “I think…not just those eight people, but the entirety of the mall population and society itself. So inevitably somebody would point a phone at us…and start posting. So there would be a record… just from the pedestrians who are filming all the time.”
  —Michael Townsend (27:58)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Providence’s Artistic Community and Urban Transformation – 09:45–13:25
• Birth of the Secret Mall Apartment & Relationship with the Mall – 13:25–17:32
• Director’s Perspective – Discovery of the Story’s Depth – 17:32–19:13
• Art Practices and Ethos of the Collective – 19:18–22:12
• Archival Footage: Technical Limits, Candid Moments – 22:12–25:30
• Reflections on Pre-Smartphone Culture & Impossibility Today – 26:06–28:25

Episode Tone and Style

Mike Pesca maintains his characteristic tone: inquisitive, wry, and lightly skeptical. He probes beneath the surface of headline-friendly oddity to highlight the seriousness and resonance of the story, yet keeps the discussion accessible and often humorous. Jeremy Workman and Michael Townsend match him with direct, thoughtful answers—punctuated by self-deprecating artist wit.

For Listeners: Why This Episode Matters

• Urban change, artist protest, and subversive creativity—all wrapped in a tale that is stranger than fiction but deeply relevant to American cities everywhere.
• Insight into lost urban environments: What happens when creative spaces yield to corporate ambitions?
• A unique pre-social media feat: A demonstration of how much the texture of urban life, secrecy, and protest has changed in just twenty years.
• For creatives and activists: A reminder of the gray-zone bravery, humor, and camaraderie that meaningful protest—and meaningful art—can foster.