Shia LaBeouf, along with his art collective LaBeouf, Rönkkö, & Turner, has recently enacted and completed his most recent performance piece, entitled “#ALLMYMOVIES.” Briefly, Shia LaBeouf entered the Angelika Film Center in New York, opened the theatre to the public, set up a live-stream, and proceeded to watch every single one of his movies in backwards chronological order over a period of 72 hours. LaBeouf presumably only left the theatre for brief bathroom breaks, otherwise he appeared somewhere on screen—either seated or napping in the aisles—for three days.
LaBeouf’s performance piece can be posited as an experiment of reconciliation. After LaBeouf’s 2013 plagiarism fiasco—during which Labeouf released a short film which was accused of copying a comic by Dan Clowes–he has since spent much of his artistic energy in the ensuing years apologizing for his previous transgressions. His projects “I am not famous anymore” and “#Iamsorry” were both attempts at directly addressing and involving the public in his remorse. The first of which included Shia LaBeouf hiring planes to sky-write apologies for his act of plagiarism, as well as wearing a paper-bag over his head to the red carpet of the Berlin Film Festival with the words “I am not famous anymore” scrawled across the bag. His later performance, “#Iamsorry,” had LaBeouf sitting alone in a room, bag on head, silently weeping, open and susceptible to whatever one member of the public at a time wanted to do to him. It was during the “#Iamsorry” piece that LaBeouf was allegedly beaten, stripped, and raped by a woman.
LaBeouf’s most recent piece is a much more introspective endeavour. While it was open to public viewing, his performance was intensely personal as LaBeouf live-streamed his own staring-contest against existential dread and Lacanian identity-forging.
Observing himself, projected on the big screen, regressing from 29 years old to ten years old, and unable to access his finite subjectivity within these movies, LaBeouf was confronted with himself in the same manner as the audience: as an unknowable stranger. It is difficult to imagine ourselves as the Other to someone else—it is almost impossible to accept that we are not the pivotal point around which the entire universe spins in ordered delirium. LaBeouf, watching himself the way a stranger would from a projected difference, experienced just that. He could see himself, recognize his own personhood behind the character, even remember significant details about that period of his life, but he could no longer access that finished moment of subjectivity. The Shia LaBeouf in these films is gone.
At the same time that he is dealing with the limitations of the inward Self, LaBeouf was dealing with the experience of the Self in an external world. According to Lacan, fundamental development of the “I” begins with the recognition of ourselves in reflective surfaces. We become entranced by these glances of a stranger who moves like us, sounds like us, and, most important, suddenly serves as our perception of what we must look like. The mirror stage, in Lacanian theory, happens too early for us to reconcile our underdeveloped mental sense of self and subjectivity with our sudden awareness of being a body in a world of forms. LaBeouf, by literally seeing himself as a stranger would, is attempting to reconcile his internal Self with the external world with which it must engage.
LaBeouf wept, laughed, and slept through 72 hours of film. He appeared overcome by shame, by disgust, and by boredom during the Transformers series. With tears of joy in his eyes, he and the audience laughed through The Even Stevens Movie. Ultimately, LaBeouf had his most successful reconciliation with the public, but most importantly, with himself.