Image via Complex Original
Sometimes people forget that art can be more than one thing at the same time. Across all mediums, a single piece of art can be both pretentious and poignant, silly and special, fake-deep and complex. The best art contains a multitude of layers, and challenges us to think abstractly to reconcile those differences on our terms.
Shia LaBeouf seems to understand this better than most young artists working today, and his oft-derided performance art is proof. Over the last decade and a half, we’ve watched Shia evolve from precocious Disney kid (Even Stevens), to a bonafide blockbuster leading man (the Transformers franchise, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) to art house purveyor (Nymphomaniac Vol. 1 & 2). He’s a star for a reason. He possesses a magnetizing presence—go see American Honey in case you forgot—and an emotional intelligence that only heightens the authenticity of his performances. His talent justified his celebrity.
But, as we all know, celebrity can be a malignant tumor on the physical and psychological well-being of certain personalities. Late-career Shia (a weird phrase, since Shia is still only 30) suddenly seemed to be the topic of conversation less for his on-screen efforts and more for his off-screen public antics. But instead of building Potemkin villages around himself —as many of us do as an act of self-delusion to tell ourselves things are fine when they clearly aren’t—he channeled that raw energy and existential burden into experimental avenues—performance art, if you will. These strange performances were mostly met with slander and mockery, mostly from armchair critics and pseudo-philosophers who’ve never had the balls to create anything so they choose ironic detachment rather than engaging with art honestly.
But Shia tapped into a something real about the human condition with his various performance pieces, pondering depression, loneliness, love, community and self-actualization, while inviting us to join along and do the same. To honor Shia’s joyous marriage to longtime girlfriend Mia Goth, which was officiated by an Elvis impersonator at a Vegas chapel and live-streamed for the world yesterday, let us rank the actor’s most ambitious performance art with creative partners Nastja Sade Rönkkö, and Luke Turner.
#StartCreating
Special shout out to Shia for reminding us what an underappreciated art form skywriting is. This came at the tail end of his Apology Inception Tour, where he apologized for lifting author Daniel Clowes’ IP by using a completely plagiarized apology. He first sky-wrote “Stop Creating” in response to Clowe’s cease-and-desist letter, then "#StartCreating." #StartCreating was a call to arms, signaling that Shia was back on his game, and an encouragement to other artists to do the same.
#TakeMeAnywhere
What seemed to be his boldest enterprise yet, #TakeMeAnywhere found LaBeouf, Rönkkö, and Turner on their Jack Kerouac shit, embarking a hitchhiking odyssey across the states after dropping their coordinates on Twitter. Strangers would pick them up, hang out, participate in the journey, and then drop them off for the next coordinates dump.
Once it was revealed that the performance was commissioned by the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and co-sponsored by Vice, any sense of tension or danger dissipated. Perhaps it was just a continuation his character from American Honey, the anarchic traveling magazine salesman, whose lifeblood was the liberation and sense of purpose provided by the pavement of the open road.
#MetaMarathon
Running a marathon around the outside of Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum while an all-day art conference goes on inside? *Extremely Vince Vaugh voice* You're so meta you don’t even know how meta you are, Shia!
Those purple spandex, though.
#FollowMyHeart
Equal parts creepy and clever, #FollowMyHeart was as literal as art can get. LaBeouf, using the social media platform pplkpr, provided a live-stream of his heartbeat for audiences to listen to. Again pushing the boundaries of intimacy in an emotionally distant world, hearing his heartbeat was just a simple reminder that the common core of our carefully curated digital existence is this thumping sound. Beneath our surface, we’re all trying to find our rhythm. We’re all trying to find our music. We’re all trying to get in tune.
#Elevate
“How do we do this and not feel douchey about it? How do we make this egalitarian like the Internet?” Shia asked this during #Elevate. This installation involved the trio standing in a stationary elevator in London for 24 hours, inviting strangers into the lift to discuss any and every thing that comes natural to the moment. It was an extension of the Oxford Union, the prestigious debate society where LeBeouf, Turner, and Rönkkö would later be speaking.
It wasn’t the most enthralling of his pieces by any means, but it certainly spoke to the democratization of discussion and engagement with others thanks to the far-reaching power of the Internet. And it also produced the beautiful moment above.
#Introductions
This may not have been the most profound pieces, but it was certainly of the dopest. A collaboration with—and a love letter to—a graduating class of art students at the Central Saint Martins school in London, #Introductions found LeBeouf in front of a green screen introducing each student’s work as they instructed him to. Shia read Bukowski passages, meditated in front of a slab of butter, and, of course, recited the now infamous “Just Do It!” motivational speech.
Not only was his involvement a gift back to the future artists of the world, but also the self-awareness of performing in front of a green-screen was a gift to the people of the Internet, who then got to showcase their own artistic capabilities by turning the backdrop into their digital playground.
Introducing an Internet Icon.
#TouchMySoul
Another exploration of how we communicate with one another in a hyper-connected world, #TouchMySoul finds LeBeouf, Rönkkö, and Turner fielding over a thousand phone calls from strangers while sitting in an art gallery. Each conversation starts with them asking the same question: “Can you touch my soul?” What follows feels like truly organic breakthroughs on both ends of the line.
A call from a disabled child brings tears to all parties involved (viewers included). Push-back from aggressive, cynical callers ends with mutual understanding; a woman who helps men get off by choking them with her thighs recognizes her own power; an aspiring actor struggling with depression can’t help but objectify LeBeouf, who in turn reminds him how similar they are.
With so much noise in the world, we often forget the power of listening. People want to be heard. #TouchMySoul provided that safe space.
#IAmSorry
The infamous paper bag that started it all. The actor donned a brown paper bag over his head on the red carpet of the Berlin Film Festival while promoting Nymphomaniac back in 2014. The words “I Am Not Famous Anymore” written in black marker across it, the act of defiance seemed bizarre at first, but soon transformed into an unsettling, powerful indictment of obsessive celebrity culture.
LeBeouf took the brown bag back to Los Angeles where he found the space for his next performance art piece at the Cohen Gallery. In a sparse, claustrophobic room, Shia sat at a table with the bag over his head, and allowed hundreds upon hundreds of strangers one at a time to sit across from him. They’d remove the bag to reveal a crying LeBeouf, who’d sit in complete silence. As reductive and silly as it sounds, that the celebrities we deify are just as broken, flawed, sad, curious and human as we are, and sometimes it takes being face-to-face with them (not separated by a screen) to realize that.
Shia was following in the long tradition of performance artists like Chris Burden, who sacrificed their own bodies for the sake of art (while highlighting the inherent violence of art). To make matters more disturbing, LeBeouf was sexually assaulted by a woman in the room, further exposing the culture of gross entitlement to celebrities’ bodies.
#AllMyMovies
I’ll admit: when I first heard that Shia would be watching his entire filmography from top to bottom at the Angelika Film Center in New York for three days straight, I rolled my eyes probably more times than you did reading this article. This was peak self-indulgence, I thought.
Then I started watching the live-stream. Here was a 29-year-old-man who had lived more than half of his life in front of camera confronting his entire professional existence, the same space where he brought all his personal baggage to be surveyed and documented. I felt embarrassed watching Shia feel embarrassed watching Transformers: Dark of the Moon. I felt pure bliss watching Shia feel pure bliss watching Surf’s Up. I cried watching Shia cry watching A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. I felt everything.
#AllMyMovies was a testament to the transformative power of cinema and the beauty of watching someone react to art in a pure, unfiltered way. For Shia LeBeouf, it must’ve been a striking reminder of mortality. For us, it was a reminder what a god damn national treasure Shia LeBeouf is.