Shia LaBeouf Gives An Extremely Unsettling Hour-Long “Silent Interview”; Claims He Was Raped By A Woman At His Art Show
"When [my girlfriend] came in she asked for an explanation, and I couldn’t speak, so we both sat with this unexplained trauma silently. It was painful."
Trigger warning.
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In February this year, Shia Labeouf premiered his #IAMSORRY LA art project: a by-all-accounts weird as shit five-day exhibition, during which LaBeouf took up residency in a small LA gallery inviting the public to sit with him, one-on-one, in silence.
The project had come about in response to a 2013 plagiarism accusation by graphic artist Daniel Clowes; LaBeouf had apparently stolen Clowes’ work for the short film HowardCantour.com. Pressured into making a public apology, it didn’t take long for the internet to work out Labeouf had plagiarised that too, from a Yahoo Answers page.
He then stole three more apologies, Tweeted in quick succession, before enlisting a pilot to skywrite his wrong.
CLOUD: – vapor floating in the atmosphere – remote servers used to SHARE DATA – to make LESS CLEAR or TRANSPARENT pic.twitter.com/jw9JlEi791
— Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) January 1, 2014
After claiming the whole thing had been a hoax/performance art project, LaBeouf announced he was “retiring from all public life” on January 10.
He reappeared briefly to headbutt some guy in a bar fight and then end a press conference with an obscure quote — “When the seagulls follow the trawler, it’s because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea. Thank you very much.” — before arriving to the Nymphomaniac premiere dressed in a paper bag.
This is all to say: LaBeouf has been going through a fairly strange phase this year.
And overnight, it got a bit stranger.
Dazed Digital have just published a video interview, featuring LaBeouf and his interlocutor Aimee Cliff sitting in complete silence. For an entire hour.
INTERVIEW from Rönkkö / Turner on Vimeo.
The video was accompanied by an email Q&A that had taken place between the pair over two weeks (LaBeouf had suggested they “keep the words online”), covering topics from masculinity and his new film Fury, to art and the meaning of life. At one point, LaBeouf claims he was raped by a woman on Valentine’s Day, during the five-day #IAMSORRY exhibition:
“One woman who came with her boyfriend, who was outside the door when this happened, whipped my legs for ten minutes and then stripped my clothing and proceeded to rape me…
There were hundreds of people in line when she walked out with dishevelled hair and smudged lipstick. It was no good, not just for me but her man as well. On top of that my girl was in line to see me, because it was Valentine’s Day and I was living in the gallery for the duration of the event – we were separated for five days, no communication. So it really hurt her as well, as I guess the news of it travelled through the line. When she came in she asked for an explanation, and I couldn’t speak, so we both sat with this unexplained trauma silently. It was painful.”
While Dazed have edited the correspondence, the actor has published the full thing on his website; he adds no more on the charges laid out above. For the most part, the transcript is lofty and mind-numbingly existential, unless you’re very interested in metamodernism. It includes moments like this:
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