Much like Actual Cannibal Shia LaBeouf, the actor’s “He Will Not Divide Us” protest art installation is back from the dead.
After being canceled by a New York museum following outbursts of violence, the livestream, which seeks to run for all four years of the Trump administration, has relaunched at the El Rey Theater in Albuquerque, New Mexico, LaBeouf announced this weekend.
Speaking at the installation’s relaunch, LaBeouf said he wanted to “make this sort of a safer space, even if that’s some hooboo jooboo heebee shit.” He also urged participants to welcome Trump supporters unless they were “tyrants and racists,” the New Mexico Political Reporter wrote.
The art installation was originally hosted by the New York Museum of the Moving Image, but it quickly drew an alt-right following that trolled the livestream with racist signs and chants. In January, LaBeouf was arrested after he punched a man who yelled “Hitler did nothing wrong.”
The installation had become “a flashpoint of violence,” the New York Museum of the Moving Image said in February, announcing it would cancel LaBeouf’s livestream because it was “an ongoing safety hazard.”
El Rey Theater’s owner told the New Mexico Political Reporter that LaBeouf’s relocation to his site “happened in a random way. Like, super random,” saying the two had met during one of the actor’s earlier trips to Albuquerque.
In a statement announcing the reopening of “He Will Not Divide Us,” LaBeouf and his collaborators, Nastja Säde Rönkkö and Luke Turner, slammed the New York Museum of the Moving Image.
“Their evident lack of commitment to the project is damning. … It is our understanding that the museum bowed to political pressure in ceasing their involvement with our project,” LaBeouf, Rönkkö and Turner said, adding that the museum was “not fit to speak to our intent as artists.”
