‘Conceptual artist’ Shia LaBeouf runs around Amsterdam museum

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands – Hollywood actor Shia LaBeouf, star of three “Transformers” films, on Thursday, September 25, ran 144 laps around Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum in his latest conceptual art performance.

Dressed in purple leggings and a green crop top, LaBeouf, 28, appeared intently focused and ignored questions from journalists as he stretched before starting his #metamarathon around the world-famous modern art museum.

“The run around the museum is a performance by Shia and two other artists who were invited by the Stedelijk Museum in the context of a symposium we are currently holding inside,” the museum’s public programme curator Hendrik Folkerts told AFP.

The museum is hosting a conference about how the world is perceived by a generation born in the 1980s, bombarded by omnipresent social media and the cult of celebrity, Folkerts said.

The 12-hour symposium entitled #metamodernism is being attended by 600 artists, philosophers and thinkers from around the world.

“As we are having a ‘marathon’ conference inside the Stedelijk, we also wanted a reflection of that outside. Nobody can do it better than Shia and the other artists at this performance,” Folkerts said.

Thursday’s performance by LaBoeuf follows a string of outlandish appearances, including when he walked out of a press conference at the Berlin Film Festival after quoting French footballer Eric Cantona’s infamous allegory about the media.

“When seagulls follow the trawler it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea,” he said.

He later appeared on the red carpet for the premier of director Lars von Trier’s film Nymphomaniac wearing a paper bag over his head with “I am not famous anymore” written on it.

In February, LaBeouf took part in a conceptual performance at a Hollywood gallery that involved him sitting in a room which visitors were invited to enter.

LaBeouf appeared in a Manhattan court on criminal trespass charges in June this year after disrupting a Broadway musical. – Rappler.com