By Bleu Cease

On April 10, The Little Theatre hosted this film as part of their One Take Documentary Series presented in partnership with Rochester Contemporary Art Center (RoCo). The film tells the story of a group of young Rhode Islanders who secretly built an apartment inside the Providence Place Mall from 2003 until their discovery and arrest for trespassing in 2007.

Today, malls may seem nostalgic and all 90’s vibes, but their construction, especially in urban areas, signaled or directly involved significant displacement. In this case, some of those forced out were artists who had built genuine local culture there. The warehouses that were raised nearby were their homes and studios.

This film reminds us of the long-standing tension between grassroots art communities and real estate development. AND the rich history of creative resistance to the commodification of space, land, and daily life. Think of Gordon Matta-Clark’s Fake Estates, where he purchased slivers of forgotten New York City property and absurdly honored and celebrated them. Or Dutch artist Karl Philips’ who literally inhabited billboards. And Tadashi Kawamata’s adult-sized tree houses, surprisingly positioned in urban and industrial areas. 

Numerous artists have blurred the lines between activism and homemaking, reclaiming spaces meant for profit and imagining alternative ways to exist. They asked us to envision someone — maybe the artist, maybe a stranger — living there. Secret Mall Apartment takes that idea and tucks it, quietly and secretly, right under the noses of developers. A non-commercial domestic space hidden in the heart of a mall— it’s absurd, juvenile, hilarious, and kind of profound. 

To use the anti-consumerist term of the later mall era, you could also call it a “culture jam,” a long slow one. It was an act of creative resistance—grueling, ingenious, and driven by equal parts muscle and imagination—that ultimately got the last laugh. After they lost their beloved space and a shiny new mall was built, they didn’t smash the windows, these artists one-upped the system by moving in. They found the cracks in the commercial façade and used them for their own purposes: to make more public art. 

While gentrification may look (a little) different today and in our own city; there are many parallels, and the impacts on arts and culture can not be denied. Consider the displacement of artists and destruction of the culture of the Hungerford Building, and the divisive attempts at creating a Business Improvement District on the backs and good will of artists. Even when projects like this fail, they significantly disrupt fragile art scenes that took decades to build. 

The Hungerford Building — long a cornerstone of Rochester’s creative landscape — has rapidly unraveled. After its acquisition by real estate investor Peter Hungerford in 2022, artists faced rent hikes, poor communication, and deteriorating conditions. Studios now sit empty as nearly all artist tenants fled, with many citing hostility, neglect, and overpriced rents. Once a vibrant arts ecosystem that evolved over 30 years, this building is now a cautionary tale of how quickly a culture can be gutted in the name of profit.

In 2023, a proposed Business Improvement District (BID) in downtown Rochester sparked major backlash. Supporters framed it as a revitalization effort, but many artists and small business owners saw it as a top-down plan favoring big developers. The Rochester Downtown Development Corporation’s attempt to enlist artists to “beautify” public space was seen as an effort to co-opt, divide the arts community, and artwash — using their labor and visibility to sell a vision that could ultimately push them out. 

In a post-screening interview, the filmmaker and lead artist offered updates that further highlighted questions about the value and persistence of public art—especially the temporary, unsanctioned, and challenging kind. The mall that once promised economic revitalization has gone the way of so many others: hollowed out, passed around, and now in receivership. And in a poetic twist that’s almost too perfect, the same artist once banned from the premises is now headlining the venue, his once-clandestine creation, is now celebrated. The film Secret Mall Apartment is being screened in the mall only feet from the original apartment—helping, ironically, to draw traffic back to the very ailing temple of consumerism that the artists originally tried to subvert.

As space, attention, and leisure time become increasingly commodified, Secret Mall Apartment reminds us that, through great effort and imagination, spaces can be reclaimed — for safety, for rest, for play, and for creativity. It also reminds us, well reminds developers: BEWARE artists hold grudges and can make relentless adversaries.

– – Rochester Contemporary Art Center (RoCo) We’re committed to projects like the Secret Mall Apartment. They are directly linked to the social relations they inspire, they resist commodification, and they challenge conventional definitions of art. While this is not the only type of artwork we support at RoCo, we have a proud history of it — and we will continue to do so!