Prisoners' Inventions

Imagine that your house spans six by nine feet, your mattress is just two inches thick, you are known to your neighbors by an identification number, and items most consider crucial to everyday existence are outlawed. How do inmates in prisons like this throughout the United States make such lives bearable?

In 2001, the artists' collective Temporary Services asked an incarcerated artist named Angelo to share with them the ways in which inmates adapt to their confinement. Angelo responded with over one hundred pages of meticulously detailed ink drawings and text. The resulting compilation, Prisoners' Inventions, is a unique guide to prison life, covering subjects ranging from how to cook a grilled cheese sandwich in a locker to how to chill a soda using a toilet. Many of the documented itemssuch as cigarette lighters, condoms, even alarm clocksare considered contraband, and Angelo includes anecdotes describing their creation and use.

Already featured in Playboy, Harper's, Le Monde, and on This American Life, Prisoners' Inventions provides powerful testimony to life "on the inside" as it is endured by over two million individuals in the United States alone.

Temporary Services is an artists' group that rgularly collaborates with others to create works often involving participatory situations.

Editorial Note

Introduction

I. Home Furnishings

Pillows

Cell Door Stops

Air Vent Covers

Light Covers

Work Tables

Entertainment Center

Contraband Radio

Modesty Curtain

Covered Wagon

II. Storage

Shelves

Hook Assembly

Clothing Hanger

Property Locker Organizers

Ballpoint Pen Organizers

Pencil Box

Color Pencil Organizer

Sanctuary

III. Clothing

Heating Food with Cell Light

Stingers (Immersion Heaters)

Steamer-Cooker

Hotpot

Toilet Paper "Bombs"

Cooking with Toilet Paper "Bombs"

Using the Cell Property Locker as a Grill

Cottage Cheese

Extra Finger

IV. Dining

Eating Off the Floor

Toilet Paper Mache Cup

The Tumbler

Insulated Bag

Cooling Drinks

Salt and Pepper Shakers

V. Personal Maintenance

In-Cell Workout Weight

Doing Laundry

Clotheslines

Double-Edged Razor

VI. Bathing

Sink Nozzle

Shower Nozzle

Bird Bathing

VII. Smoking

General Information

Conserving Paper Matches

Reconditioned Cigarette Lighter

Battery Cigarette Lighter

Wicks

Wick Vent

Wall Socket Cigarette Lighters

Electric Cigarette Lighter

Cigarette Lighter with Water Resister

Cigarette Lighter

Candle

VIII. Recreation

Pooling/Flooding

Prophylactics

Muff Bag

Seagull Rocket

A Fishing Tale

IX. Gaming

Paper Mache Dice

Dice Table

Chess Board

X. Arts & Crafts

Tattooing

Picture Frames

Palette

Special Brushes

Stipple Brushed Portraits

Card Game

Glossing Over

House of Cards

Hobby Hot Glue Dispenser and Cigarette Lighter

Christmas Tree

Coca-Cola Machine

XI. Little Extras

Stationary

Pets

Wake-up Alarm

Speakers/Audio Aids

External Speaker

Typewriter Ribbon Slitter

Mini Lathe