HWNDU: Performance Art or Disaster?
- A.J. Voiles
- Feb 4, 2017
- 3 min read
Shia LaBeouf began his four year long live stream on January 20th, and what started out as a simple protest with random people chanting five words into a camera on a wall quickly turned into a Kek worshiping, red-pilling 4Chan party. He Will Not Divide Us began as a “performance art” piece from none other than our favorite child star from Disney that cracked in his adult years: Shia “Even Stevens” LaBeouf. Shia is no stranger to performance art, and has made a bit of a name for himself being an odd, sometimes aggressive character. With his new piece, as a protest of Donald Trump’s presidency, a camera and microphone were installed in a wall outside of the Museum of the Moving Image, with the words “He will not dive us” painted above. People are invited to interact with the piece and encouraged to repeat those words, sometime transforming the scene into what appears to be a zombie cult.
As with any public expression of opinion, opposition was soon to come. Swarms of MAGA hats, Pepe the frog signs, and Nazi sympathizing rhetoric began taking its toll on Shia. At one point, he attempted to snatch a counter protester’s sign, and on a different occasion, pushed and chased after a man who exclaimed “Hitler did nothing wrong” which LaBeouf was arrested for. People from all over began showing up to either troll or to show genuine support for Trump. Asians, Arabs, blacks, Italians and everyone in between braved the storm of shouting pseudo-leftists to express their support and counter-act the mindless repetition of the hive mind protesters. Comedian Sam Hyde and Twitch streamer Brittany Venti even made appearances.
The outspokenness of many memorable characters ascended some to heroic status in the eyes of 4Chan’s /pol/ board. “Jackie 4Chan”, who was at the installation seemingly non stop for three days, was the first to receive his 4Chan honors. “Jihad Jesus” kept the stream entertained overnight for a few days, while proclaiming Greeks as white and discouraging masturbation. “Granon” was just an old woman who wanted to express her disdain for Julian Assange’s predicament, but ended up explaining who he was and what 4Chan is to a younger, possibly unhinged “artist”. Many times, when the lot in which the installation was placed was more populated, there would be a plethora of white people with glasses and scarfs shouting “He will not divide us” into the ears of a group of minorities in Make America Great Again hats. Ironically, the tension got to the point to where the museum asked police to barricade off the lot, and only allow groups of five people at a time for five minutes, literally dividing people based on their disagreements. This barricade has since been removed.
The faces of white supremacy
The biggest takeaway from this demonstration is that we are heavily divided as a nation. The ones who claim to be against divisiveness seem to be the very same ones causing it, refusing to listen to other viewpoints and instead would rather shout meaningless buzz phrases into a camera. If this “art” installation does last the full four years it promises, at least there will be something interesting to watch.
You can tune into the stream for yourself at any time on hewillnotdivide.us, or one of the many unaffiliated YouTube streams
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