The Stanford Prison Experiment (1971) cannot be repeated. However, contemporary artist Artur Żmijewski does not have the same restrictions as a social psychologist on his research-based art project Repetition (2005). And so we observe how an artist can enter the back door and avoid ethical considerations in order to open up for us the limits of what art can and cannot do. With Repetition, Zmijewski aims to repeat the basic construct of that landmark research experiment, and therefore test its potential for successful repetition. Zmijewski's half-hour film depicts how he, like my father, social psychologist Philip Zimbardo, created a temporary mock prison in which his research team documented the behavior of a group of men randomly assigned the role of prisoner or guard. The Stanford Prison Experiment was terminated early because of the guards' abuse of their power and the prisoners' mental duress. In Repetition, the participants fear how the situation will change their behavior and choose to end the 'experiment' before it escalates further.

The temptation to recreate the drama of this infamous experiment through media reenactments predates Repetition, albeit in the realm of entertainment media, not the art world. The Stanford Prison Experiment has been the subject of countless news features, either as a story in its own right, or revived in relation to real world examples of the institutional abuse of power. Every so often, the Stanford Prison Experiment receives television and cinematic renditions exploring the possibility of alternate endings, notably the German feature-length film Das Experiment (2001), the British reality television series The Experiment (2003), and now an upcoming Hollywood drama. The celebrity of the original serves the celebrity of these films. Zmijewski chose his target wisely.

Repetition follows on the heels of the most recent explosion of citations of the Stanford Prison Experiment: the worldwide news coverage of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. The visual parallels in the imagery of prisoner humiliation are immediately striking. The disturbing visual documentation of the Stanford Prison Experiment is part of what it offers Zmijewski, an artist attracted to and regularly employing intense physical imagery, such as amputees and colliding naked bodies in his photography and films. The analogy to Abu Ghraib during the controversy went beyond the visual similarities. The study was used to question whether this atrocity should be considered as the isolated, deviant behavior of a group of prison guards, or a product endemic to the military prison situation and its political governance. The Stanford Prison Experiment asks us to consider the role of the situation in shaping human behavior, instead of attributing abusive actions only to individual disposition. It has been a powerful tool for understanding the dynamics of authority, the role of deindividuation, and the diffusion of responsibility. As studies alone, the Stanford Prison Experiment (1971) and its frequent comparison, the Milgram Experiment [Obedience to Authority Study] (1963), are both essentially time capsules in the history of social psychology. Both remain difficult to reproduce and are no longer able to be granted approval to be reproduced by the Human Subjects Committee.

Berek (The Game of Tag) (1999), a previous video by Zmijewski shown at the Wattis Institute also centers on creating a psychologically difficult situation based on a historical referent. Zmijewski organized a group of men to run naked inside of a former Nazi gas chamber. While I initially viewed Zmijewski's practice as drawn to darkness, it also tends to gravitate towards unexpected light. Momentary humor and eroticism can be found in the otherwise chilling and cathartic situation of Berek, and negotiation and camaraderie appear amidst the emotional tension of the mock prison. Zmijewski foreshadowed his lead-in to Repetition in an interview, "instead of a tragedy, we are seeing a childish, innocent game. It almost resembles a clinical situation in psychological therapy."

The work solely focuses on being a simulation of a simulation, and not a commentary on the prison industry at large, nor a replication of the Stanford Prison Experiment's effects on prison reform. The conclusive message that mock prisoners and guards will peacefully cooperate bears even less of a relationship to the harsh realities of real prisoners and guards than the Stanford Prison Experiment did. If I must find a theoretical application, the film demonstrates the power of observation in effecting behavior: the role of subjects who are aware of being observed by the camera. The project also emphasizes the importance of video footage in narrating the events and explaining methodology. Interestingly, Zimbardo and Milgram each collaborated on documentaries based on their filmic and photographic records. A contemporary of Repetition, Haron Farocki's film installation I Thought I Was Seeing Convicts (2000) exposes the daily conditions of life in a maximum security prison in California and its episodes of violence as documented by surveillance cameras. The footage functions as both evidence of the prison system's failures, as well as the institution's own record used to justify its disciplinary measures.

Emphasizing the slippage between past and present, between the event and how it is reprocessed through time-based media, is Repetition's shared strength with several videos investigating the concept of reenactment. Examples include recent work by Jeremy Deller and Pierre Huyghe. The title 'Repetition' should be qualified in that the artist, in avoiding making a nostalgic period piece, allowed for considerable differences between the art project and the original experiment. Such factors include inviting older, unemployed Polish men to participate in a movie, instead of college-age Americans to participate in a research experiment. With an art film, achieving exact replication seems beside the point. However, to my surprise at the panel in Timken Lecture Hall (CCA), the artist insists on that problematic comparison as proof to challenge the study's findings. In his effort to claim that his reenactment resulted in a positive ending, Zmijewski turns a blind eye to the unethical features of his own construct. While adhering to certain protocols and missing others like providing debriefing or counseling, the project has potential negative implications for participants. The problem with collapsing the distinctions between art and social science is that the work's status as art is ultimately its legitimization. Using art to investigate these distinctions saves Zmijewski from being a pseudo-scientist.

The presentation of Repetition at the Wattis Institute is significant to the Bay Area, not only for it's proximity to Stanford University, but in its being situated within the California College of the Arts, an academic institution fully embracing the recent development of social practice in art. In contrast to Repetition, some recent examples of local artists mimicking professional practices, such as adopting the role of the therapist, are innocuous and often predicated on offering a service. However, Repetition raises challenging questions about the differences between art and life, the ethics involved in working with human subjects, and the extent to which artists will put others at risk in order to carry out an action.