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EIGHT ARTISTS CREATE SECRET APARTMENT IN SHOPPING CENTER PARKING GARAGE
PROVIDENCE JOURNAL - Eight artists snuck into the depths of Providence
Place mall and built a secret studio apartment in which they stayed, on
and off, for nearly four years until mall security finally caught their
leader last week.
The story of their audacious stunt - they call it performance art -
spilled out in District Court, after the leader, Michael J. Townsend,
36, of Providence, was arrested. He pleaded no contest to a criminal
charge of trespassing.
Townsend, a self-described "professional public artist," said the
clandestine project was born of a wish to explore the phenomenon of the
modern American enclosed mall, its social implications, and his own
relationship with commerce and the world.
Pointedly acting without approval from anyone, Townsend, his wife,
Adriana Yoto, 29, and six others in a tightly knit artist collective
produced the project and have documented it with video on Web sites.
The casually furnished, unheated apartment was in a 750-square-foot loft
beneath an I-beam and above an unused dusty storage room in the mall
parking garage that was accessed through a door in a stairwell,
according to Townsend, his fellow artists and the police.
The collective labored mightily to haul in more than two tons of
construction materials and furnishings to build out and equip the space,
which already had a concrete floor. Some of the material was brought in
through an 11-inch-wide aperture on the west side of the mall that
allowed access to the garage interior. Larger items were brought into
the garage by car and carried up fire exit stairwells, the artists said.
http://www.projo.com/news/content/Mall_Dwellers_10-02-07_1F7B9KA.34baf91.html
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EIGHT ARTISTS CREATE SECRET APARTMENT IN SHOPPING CENTER PARKING GARAGE
PROVIDENCE JOURNAL - Eight artists snuck into the depths of Providence
Place mall and built a secret studio apartment in which they stayed, on
and off, for nearly four years until mall security finally caught their
leader last week.
The story of their audacious stunt - they call it performance art -
spilled out in District Court, after the leader, Michael J. Townsend,
36, of Providence, was arrested. He pleaded no contest to a criminal
charge of trespassing.
Townsend, a self-described "professional public artist," said the
clandestine project was born of a wish to explore the phenomenon of the
modern American enclosed mall, its social implications, and his own
relationship with commerce and the world.
Pointedly acting without approval from anyone, Townsend, his wife,
Adriana Yoto, 29, and six others in a tightly knit artist collective
produced the project and have documented it with video on Web sites.
The casually furnished, unheated apartment was in a 750-square-foot loft
beneath an I-beam and above an unused dusty storage room in the mall
parking garage that was accessed through a door in a stairwell,
according to Townsend, his fellow artists and the police.
The collective labored mightily to haul in more than two tons of
construction materials and furnishings to build out and equip the space,
which already had a concrete floor. Some of the material was brought in
through an 11-inch-wide aperture on the west side of the mall that
allowed access to the garage interior. Larger items were brought into
the garage by car and carried up fire exit stairwells, the artists said.
http://www.projo.com/news/content/Mall_Dwellers_10-02-07_1F7B9KA.34baf91.html
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