There is a distinct texture to the modern shopping mall – polished tile, recycled air, and the relentless, humming promise that satisfaction is just a credit card swipe away. They’re designed to be transient; a place of movement, transaction, and eventual departure. You are not supposed to stay. You are certainly not supposed to live at the mall.
But recently, I came across a recommendation from Kevin Kelly about the documentary Secret Mall Apartment (currently on Netflix), which chronicles a band of artists who did exactly that. For years, they maintained a hidden sanctuary inside a busy mall.
“It is way more interesting and inspiring than first appears. It was a bold work of art, and I came away seeing art as a way of life.” — KK
This was art as an act of occupation. These artists didn’t just build a set; they altered their reality. They took a space designed for public consumption and carved out a private, human intimacy. They looked at the rigid architecture of the commercial world and saw a loophole, a blank canvas hidden behind the drywall.
Perhaps we should ask: Where are the secret apartments in our own lives?
We live in structures—both physical and digital—that are designed by others. It is easy to feel that our role is simply to navigate these spaces as they were intended. But the artist looks at the “mall” of daily existence and asks, “Where can I build something that is solely mine?”
Art as a “way of life” means we stop waiting for permission to be creative. It means we stop waiting for the studio or the gallery. For that “special” time or place. Instead we find the hollow spaces in our schedules, our environments, and our relationships, and we fill them with intention.
The sheer audacity of living in a mall was about a refusal to accept the world merely as it is presented – a reclaiming of individual agency.
Perhaps the most inspiring art in our lives isn’t what hangs on a wall, but how we choose to inhabit the “rooms” we walk through every day.
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