Shia LaBeouf Completes Conceptual Art Marathon

Shia LaBeouf preparing to pass the baton during his "METAMARATHON" event/performance piece at Amsterdam's Stedeijk's Museum. Photo: EPA.

On September 25, actor-turned-sort-of-artist Shia LaBeouf successfully completed his conceptual performance piece METAMARATHON by running 144 laps around Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, reports the BBC.

As previously reported by artnet News (see “Shia LaBeouf Will Jog Around the Stedelijk Museum for Art“), the former child star, who has recently made headlines for his eccentric behavior, including announcing his retirement from public life and being arrested for disrupting a theater performance in New York, announced the art stunt earlier this month through a series of cryptic Tweets.

Wearing purple leggings and a mint green tank top and bouncing on the balls of his feet as he waited at the starting line to receive the baton, LaBeouf teamed up with two other performance artists, Finnish conceptual artist Nastja Säde Rönkkö and the British performance artist Luke Turner. An Instagram video captures part of the race.

METAMARATHON is the Transformers star’s second foray into conceptual art, after a strange event in which LaBeouf wore a paper bag marked “I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE” over his head, and sat, ignoring the public. The piece, #IAMSORRY, was also created in collaboration with Turner and Rönkkö. (LaBeouf also broke out the creepy bag for a recent red carpet event, as reported by the Daily News.)

The Stedelijk performance piece was planned to coincide with a 12-hour-long debate hosted at the museum between about 600 artists and philosophers about the perception of the world held by the media-savvy generation born in the 1980s.

“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,” public program curator Hendrik Folkerts told the BBC.


Follow Artnet News on Facebook:


Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward.
Article topics