Art collective LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner (Shia Labeouf, Luke Turner and Nastja Säde Rönkkö) are occupying a lift of EC English Oxford in Gloucester Green, from 9am to 9am, February 19 to 20.
The trio’s collaboration has extended from a Skype meditation (involving a long-distance skipping session with Hollywood actor LaBeouf) at London’s Auto Italia and a presentation on Guy Debord’s The Society of Spectacle at LCF, as well as the #IAMSORRY Abramović-esque performance at Cohen Gallery in Los Angeles and Metamarathon relay competition at Amsterdam’s Stedeijk Museum.
The artists’ so-called ‘Metamodernist‘ approach to their practice, which also involves reading a celebrity love letter at an awards ceremony and an intimate hour-long press interview with a GoPro, now present celebrity LaBeouf and his collaborators in the “debating chamber” of an Oxford University lift to talk about things with the Oxford public.
In #ELEVATE, a long queue of participants have the opportunity to cram in to the elevator to talk to “the artists, the debating chamber, and the internet, so that their collective voices may form an extended, expansive and egalitarian Oxford Union address” over the space of 24 hours.
A short glimpse of some of the chat so far includes mental health, the queue as part of the art and the notion of ‘acting’, along with child-star LaBeouf’s sense of loneliness in reference to films like Ri¢hie Ri¢h and Blank Check, plus a request by a participant to put words into the actor’s mouth: “I love Leeds United”.
See the live stream on Youtube or embedded below. **