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Actor Shia LaBeouf has an interesting sideline in maverick performance art.
His latest work – HE WILL NOT DIVIDE US – consists of a 24-hour streaming webcam placed on an outside wall of New York's Museum of the Moving Image into which passers-by are invited to declaim the title of the piece.
The quirky artwork, produced by LaBeouf in collaboration with Nastja Säde Rönkkö and Luke Turner, is designed as a protest against Donald Trump.
Of course, a 24 live web stream was always going to, sooner or later, attract some negative responses. In this case it was sooner. On Sunday evening, just 24 hours into the art project’s potential eight-year run, a white supremacist protestor tried to hijack the web feed to put his own opinions about the accession of Trump before the online audience.
White supremacist yells into the camera and Shia LaBeouf shuts him down. This has been a very interesting live stream. #HeWillNotDivideUs pic.twitter.com/CqY9pLobWi
— #HeWillNotDivideUs (@HWNDUS) January 23, 2017
LaBeouf responded by leading a chant of “He will not divide us” which drowned out the racist’s speech. The tactic echoes this non-violent shutdown of an antisemite in New York in 2016.