“This has to be the Shia LaBeouf-iest thing Shia LaBeouf has ever done.”
This is how K.M. McFarland describes Shia LaBeouf’s latest stunt, and I can’t say I disagree.
Shia LaBeouf is an interesting man. Once known for his childhood antics on the Disney Channel’s lighthearted Even Stevens, he’s more recently managed to transcend the known planes of reality into a new one of his own making. This year, a video of LaBeouf in front of a green screen went viral. He urges us to “just do it” and to “not let our dreams be dreams.” However, this blog post is going to focus on something that, for me, exists in a completely different realm: Shia LaBeouf’s performance art.
Perhaps his most famous is the one entitled #IAMSORRY. For this piece, LaBeouf sat behind a table in a small room with a paper bag on his head with the words #IAMSORRY scribbled on it in black ink. People were then welcome to come through the room and interact with the star, who remained stoic and unmoving. LaBeouf also attended the premiere of one of his movies with a paper bag again over his head, this time with the words I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE emblazoned on it, as pictured above. I’ll leave these pieces open to interpretation, but I included them in order to tie them into my main focus: #ALLMYMOVIES.
For #ALLMYMOVIES, Shia LaBeouf is, at the time this blog post is being written, currently sitting in the Angelika Film Center in New York City, and he is watching all of his movies—in reverse chronological order. Even better, the public is invited to join him for free. Even better (I know, right? How could it possibly get any better?), LaBeouf has set up a camera in front of his face and is livestreaming the entire event. You can watch Shia LaBeouf watch his own movies for three days straight from the comfort of your own home. Now that’s what I call art.
This may all seem silly, but the second I heard this was happening, I immediately thought of archives. Not only is LaBeouf watching the archives of himself in his movies, but the entire thing is being archived in the livestream of it. It’s an archive of an archive. Even further, at one point of the livestream on Thursday, November 11th, someone sat down next to LaBeouf’s (temporarily empty) seat eagerly clutching a brown paper bag on which he had written I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE. Even the archives of LaBeouf’s previous performance art were cropping up.
I found this piece interesting in comparison to his other pieces. In #IAMSORRY and I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE, LaBeouf hid his face, which for most people is extremely integral to their identity. He was attempting to erase the archives of his life, by proclaiming that his fame, which has played a huge part in his life, was no longer attached to him. However, in #ALLMYMOVIES, LaBeouf is again embracing the archives of his life and work (even including the Transformers movies, which I personally would have chosen to pretend never happened). However, he’s putting a new spin on these archives by playing them in an unconventional order.
Another reason I was so immediately drawn to #ALLMYMOVIES was the conclusion of Joe Moran’s Interdisciplinarity, in which he speaks about modern interdisciplinarity. I see #ALLMYMOVIES as an example of a modern archive. Moran quotes Cathy N. Davidson and Theo Goldberg: “[Interdisciplinarity] derives from the sense that objects (and subjects) of social and cultural life… exist beyond the constraints of analytic singularity and methodological rules.” In other words, interdisciplinarity “disrupts the deceptive smoothness and fluency of the disciplines.” LaBeouf’s performance art, which shifts sharply from an embrace of archives to a rejection of archives, does just this. In bringing to question the importance of the archives of someone’s life to their identity, Shia LaBeouf continues this important and interesting conversation in the public light.
