Phrogging In The Mall: An Artist’s Desire To Understand Mall Life
Trummerkind.comMichael Townsend sits in his apartment he built within a mall.
In the early 2000s, artist Michael Townsend found inspiration in an unusual place: a Christmas ad for a mall that featured “an enthusiastic female voice talking about how great it would be if you could live at the mall.”
Artists pull inspiration from numerous things, so this alone wasn’t that surprising, but Townsend’s execution of this inspiration certainly was. Rather than opting for a more conventional form of creative expression — a painting, perhaps — Townsend and a group of other artists secretly constructed a 750-square-foot apartment in a Rhode Island mall’s parking garage and lived in it for up to three weeks at a time.
As NBC News reported at the time, Townsend and his fellow artists started building the apartment in 2003 and went largely undetected for about four years. They hid the apartment behind a cinderblock wall and nondescript utility door that kept most curious passersby at bay, and even though it was a simple setup, the artist had plans to make the small apartment “super-sweet” by installing laminated wood flooring.
Trummerkind.comTownsend and his friend hanging out on a sofa while phrogging in the mall apartment.
They even had a PlayStation 2 inside — although it was eventually stolen after a burglar broke in, Townsend said. Evidently, their camouflage wasn’t as effective as they thought, and this came back to bite them when Townsend entered the apartment one day to find three security guards waiting for him.
Townsend ended up pleading no contest to a trespassing charge — and was eventually sentenced to probation for his actions — but local detectives were admittedly curious about what Townsend had done.
Providence Police Maj. Stephen Campbell even remarked, “I was surprised at what he was able to accomplish. But what he did was clearly criminal. The mall is private property.”
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