In what seems to have sparked a domino effect of outrageous behavior, last February Shia LaBeouf showed up to the Nymphomaniac premier wearing a bag on his head painted with the words "I Am Not Famous Anymore." Confusing everyone even further, he then staged a performance piece called "#IAMSORRY" in Los Angeles, a public apology that consisted of him sitting at a table covered in threatening objects—including an Indiana Jones whip, pliers, and a bowl of printed negative tweets about the actor. Visitors were invited in one by one to sit across from LaBeouf (who was again wearing the bag) and do whatever they wanted.
In a conversation on Ellen last night, LaBeouf explained the logic behind this performance piece. "There was a lot of negativity online, so I thought, 'Let's see what this negativity is about, and let's invite it in,'" he told a reasonably shocked Degeneres. While LaBeouf's work may have come from noble origins—to apologize to the public—he was accused of plagiarizing Marina Abramovic, who staged a very similar performance piece earlier in her career.
LaBeouf told Ellen what happened in that room during "#IAMSORRY." "I thought for sure people were going to come in there and be super mean because of what I had been reading, but it wasn't that way at all; it was very human," he said. "Once they got in there, everything changed. They stopped looking at me as like an object and started looking at me as like a human. And they were very loving. It was very human."
LaBeouf blames early abandonment as one of the reasons for his strange antics this year, but he seems to have found some sort of peace within his art. He didn't explain how running around a museum in Amsterdam is performance art, however.
[via E!]
