Overview
When you're a former child actor turned Transformers star turned performance artist and activist, it's pretty easy to make a statement. With his various performance projects around the world, Shia LaBeouf has been doing just that. Alas, his efforts to mount a four-year protest against the current President of the United States haven't gone smoothly, with #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS shut down for the fourth time.
Liverpool's media arts centre FACT has ended the project's current run based on police advice after "dangerous, illegal trespassing," according to a statement on their website. It lastest a mere three days in its latest iteration, which involved flying a white flag emblazoned with the project name and live-streaming the results. #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS moved to the UK after three attempts in the US, including hoisting the flag in an undisclosed location.
LeBeouf actually started the four-year-long anti-Trump-focused piece in New York in January, using a different concept: a camera was mounted on a wall outside the Museum of Moving Image, below a printed version of the titular phrase. Participants were asked to stand in the requisite spot and repeat those words as many times as they liked, and for as long as they desired. The project started at 9am on January 20, 2017, timed to coincide with the day of new US President Donald Trump's inauguration, with LeBeouf intending keep a live-stream going 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the four years that followed — or the duration of Trump's time in office.
While designed to act "as a show of resistance or insistence, opposition or optimism, guided by the spirit of each individual participant and the community", and garnering plenty of interest — including from the project's first participant, Jaden Smith — #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS quickly started to attract not just attention but opposition, leading the Museum of Moving Image to abandon the work on February 10. Eight days later, the piece was relocated to a wall outside the El Rey Theater, Albuquerque, before moving to its latest version in March.