Would you pick up actor Shia LaBeouf if you saw him on the side of the road? That’s essentially what the actor-cum-artist is asking of the public with his latest project, titled #TAKEMEANYWHERE, which is part of an ongoing collaboration with artists Nastja Säde Rönkkö and Luke Turner.
LaBeouf announced the project on Twitter, sending out a new geographic coordinate daily. Plugging the number into Google Maps revealed a series of roads and intersections that resemble letters (similar to NASA’s “Alphabet in the Sky”). Put together, the resulting images spell the name of the project, in which the actor will be sharing his location and inviting anyone to come, pick him up, and drive him wherever they want.
Shia LaBeouf released these coordinates as a clue to his new project with Nastja Säde Rönkkö and Luke Turner, #TAKEMEANYWHERE. Courtesy of Google Maps.
As with his earlier performance art, LaBeouf is working with Rönkkö and Turner, the other two members of the art collective. Previous work includes a durational performance piece in which LaBeouf watched all of his movies in a single sitting, running 144-laps around Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, and LaBeouf sitting in a gallery with a paper bag over his head.
For the next 30 days, in their own unique, high-tech version of the great American road trip, the three will depend on the kindness of strangers, travelling based on the whims of their drivers. (#TAKEMEANYWHERE takes its name from a similar solo piece of Rönkkö’s, in which she blindfolded herself, mounted a horse, and let her four-legged friend roam as it pleased.)
Shia LaBeouf, Nastja Säde Rönkkö, and Luke Turner, #TAKEMEANYWHERE. Courtesy the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art.
Commissioned by the Finnish Institute in London and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA), the project is part of BMoCA’s MediaLive festival. Footage shot by the trio during their journey will be screened at both museums.
You can track their progress on the project website, which features a map with real time updates on their journey.
The first group to pick up LaBeouf quickly posted about their experience on Reddit. In a video, three young men recount how they successfully tracked down the actor despite dying phone batteries and location coordinates that changed at the last minute, and found themselves breaking bread with LaBeouf at Colorado’s Oskar Blues Brewery. “We just had a family meal, it was beautiful,” said one of the participants.
Still image of Shia LaBeouf with the first three participants in #TAKEMEANYWHERE on YouTube.
“A bunch of handsome motherfuckers!” LaBeouf interjected. The video ends with a split-second clip of LaBeouf’s terrifyingly-intense motivational speech, shot for a grad student’s art project.
If the first participants are any indication, LaBeouf’s goal of “making friends,” as he told Vice, appears to be a resounding success. The project, he thinks, is unique in that it will be physically wide-ranging, but will be directly experienced by only a few individuals. “What’s trippy is, it’s the most expansive and most intimate thing we’ve done,” he says.
Watch LaBeouf with his first group of drivers:
