A media storm erupted as cynicism about contemporary art and celebrity culture collided with stereotypes about sexual assault; columnists, bloggers and social media users clashed over whether the alleged crime was a publicity stunt or part of the performance art. The revelation came in a Dazed interview with the 28-year-old Transformers star, which was also staged as a performance called #INTERVIEW; after exchanging emails, LaBeouf and the writer Aimee Cliff met in person and sat face-to-face in silence for an hour, filming each other with GoPro cameras strapped to their heads.
Over the past year, LaBeouf’s entire life has seemed like it might be an act. His increasingly erratic behaviour has rarely been out of the gossip columns – from walking out of press conferences to getting arrested for slapping fellow theatregoers during a Broadway performance of Cabaret. But at the same time, the actor has attempted to subvert his public image through a series of performance art pieces that play on his very public problems, and it’s never been clear where reality ends and the performance begins. In February, he began a project called #IAMSORRY, during which the alleged assault occurred, in which hundreds of people queued outside a Los Angeles gallery for a one-to-one encounter with him. Billed as a penance for his plagiarism of comic book writer Daniel Clowes, it borrowed heavily from the work of performance artist Marina Abramovic. Days earlier, at the Berlin premiere of Nymphomaniac, LaBeouf responded to questions about his sex scenes by quoting without attribution a surreal statement by Eric Cantona, in another reference to his plagiarism scandal. He later appeared on the red carpet wearing the now-infamous paper bag over his head.
Now matters have become more serious. But questions remain. Why did not one of the “hundreds of people” LaBeouf says saw his alleged rapist walk out of the Cohen gallery – people who posted hundreds of tweets, YouTube videos and blog posts from the event – mention the incident? These questions prompted a backlash from other, largely feminist, commentators who argued they reflected negative social attitudes about male victims of rape. At first, the artists who had collaborated with LaBeouf stayed quiet.
Eventually the duo – British artist Luke Turner, 32, and Finnish artist Nastja Säde Rönkkö, 29 – published two “important clarifications” on Twitter. The artists said they put a stop to “the incident” as soon as they became aware of it and “ensured that the woman left”. But they also tweeted that they didn’t know what was happening and that the woman had “swiftly exited” before they could stop her. Far from ending speculation, this just fuelled it. Piers Morgan lambasted Turner on Twitter, later writing that the incident was “a repulsive insult to every single person who has ever been genuinely raped”.
Perhaps stung by this opinion, perhaps for reasons of their own, they have now decided to talk at greater length. When they meet me, the pair seem anxious to say the right thing, sometimes correcting themselves, and they are clearly anxious to put the incident in the context of their collaboration. Turner has brought some lecture notes, which he quotes from and offers to email to me. The “metamodernist” theory they subscribe to is not for the faint of heart, and it embraces contradiction. In his 2011 Metamodernist Manifesto – the authorship of which was later attributed to LaBeouf in another nod to his plagiarism scandal – Turner writes that “it must be art’s role to explore the promise of its own paradoxical excess towards presence ... Thus metamodernism shall be defined as the mercurial condition between and beyond irony and sincerity, naivety and knowingness, relativism and truth, optimism and doubt”.
At the start of the interview Turner insists they can’t say any more about the alleged rape. But as the pair talk through the set up of #IAMSORRY, more details emerge. Unfortunately, instead of clarifying things, they mostly invite further conjecture and confusion.
Here’s how it was supposed to run: participants entered a room where Rönkkö stood behind a table bearing an eclectic array of objects related to LaBeouf’s life and career – including a bullwhip, a Transformers toy, a bottle of Jack Daniels and folded notes bearing mainly derogatory Tweets about him. They were invited to take one into the next room, where the actor sat at a small wooden table. Once she had led the participants into the next room, the artist would leave. “There was another exit [at the back],” she says, explaining that she did not walk through the space but took another route to the exit. “I was waiting behind the other door and I could take them out through the back of the gallery.”
So, I ask, how long could people stay with Shia? “We had no set time,” Rönkkö replies. “We didn’t tell them what they were supposed to do.” What about the end of the encounter, then? If she led them out of the room, did that mean she could see what was happening? There’s a pause and then Rönkkö says: “I couldn’t see Shia.”
OK. But she doesn’t clarify how she knew when to lead people away. And later she expresses concern as to how her comments might be interpreted. “I’m not sure I should have said that,” she says, looking to Turner, who seems less worried by this particular detail. However, he later adds, with reference to the rape allegation: “I never feel I have a right to ask for details.”
That doesn’t sit comfortably with the decision to intervene on Twitter. So why did they do it? “People were saying it was this show in which you could do whatever they wanted to Shia, and that it was a publicity stunt,” says Turner. “I don’t think we need to say it was not a publicity stunt. We wanted to give clarity without speculating and adding. There was so much conjecture printed as fact. It’s not our place to say certain things.” In somewhat contradictory fashion, Rönkkö goes on: “We’ve been transparent about it, but what happens afterwards is beyond our control.”
