In his video Repetition, artist Artur Zmijewski reenacts and documents Zimbardo’s prison experiment. Zmijewski placed an advertisement in the newspaper, offering readers to take part in an experiment for hourly pay. The experiment continued for seven days, and as with Zimbardo’s prison experiment, the participants were randomly selected to perform the roles of prisoners or guards. Zmijewski, like Zimbardo, took upon himself the role of superintendent of the temporary prison, wholly devoting himself to his self-assumed role. In Zmijewski’s work we evince the power relations constructedbetween prisoners and guards within days. Unlike the original experiment, the prisoners and guards in this work choose to protest against the prison manager, collectively deciding to end the experiment.
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