LaBeouf anti-Trump art project shut down by threats
An anti-Trump art project by actor Shia LaBeouf was shut down for a fourth time on Friday a day after it opened in its latest location, the British city of Liverpool.
The project “He Will Not Divide US”, by LaBeouf and two other artists, began the day of Donald Trump’s January 20 presidential inauguration, as a streaming-video performance installation that aimed to provide a forum for anti-Trump expression outside New York’s Museum of the Moving Image.
The digital art project consisted of a microphone-equipped camera mounted on a wall, where visitors were invited to chant the words “He will not divide us”. The footage was live-streamed on the project’s website, intended to broadcast for the duration of Trump’s fouryear term.
But the museum — located in the city’s Queens borough — shut the project down, saying the controversial exhibit “had become a flashpoint for violence and was disrupted from its original intent”.
LaBeouf’s collective moved the “He Will Not Divide Us” project to a cinema in Albuquerque, New Mexico, before removing it following reports of gunshots nearby.
In March, it was moved to an undisclosed location, where it took the form of a flag emblazoned with the project’s title — until far-right activists stole the flag.
On Wednesday, Liverpool’s Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (Fact) centre said it would display the flag after the artists said that “events have shown that America is simply not safe enough for this artwork to exist”.
But the exhibit’s new lease on life proved to be short-lived. The centre removed it on the advice of police, citing “dangerous illegal trespassing”.
The Twitter account @ReadyPlayerOn posted a photograph purporting to show two masked people on the institution’s roof.