TEN WAYS OF DOING TIME

Single channel video, 2013, 1 hr 53 mins.
Written and Directed by James Fotopoulos, Laura Parnes
Original soundtrack by Marcia Bassett
Music by Skullflower, Zaimph and hototogisu

Screened at MoMA PS1, LIC. In James Fotopoulos and Laura Parnes’ Ten Ways of Doing Time, prison drama and science fiction motifs are fused to create an experimental narrative in which scientists research on prisoners, attempting to create psychotic warriors for the army.

This sprawling chapter-based project, both irreverent and outrageous, begins with a formally based structure which explodes into controlled states of anarchy. It stars Jim Fletcher of the New York City Players and winner of the 2012 Obie for Sustained Excellence in Theater as well as Stephanie Vella.

Central to the experiment is a box resembling a cell for solitary confinement. To quote the film’s central scientist: “The box becomes a place of focused consciousness. A portal into our communal negative energy. Together we can create the perfect warrior. One without boundaries that catapults our democratic society forward without being encumbered by its principals.” As the experiment spins out of control the prisoner becomes a portal embodying numerous criminal personalities

Prison life unfolds through a series of vignettes in which the prisoners are forced to submit to the rules of life in captivity. Often these rules are immediately contradicted. Central characters such as the prisoner, guard, female scientist, and witness are performed by actors playing multiple roles. This device is used in both Fotopoulos’ and Parnes’ past work and is employed to emphasize the iconic nature of the characters while exploring issues of gender and authorship.

The highly stylized dialogue shifts back and forth from prison genre slang to that of a psychotic romance novel. Deploying visual and verbal quotations ranging from The Stanford Prison Experiment (1971), Titicut Follies (1967), Rousseau, Ghostbusters (1984) and soft-core porn, Ten Ways of Doing Time presents a highly charged world of psychosexual drama and sublimated violence.