Is Shia LaBeouf a success in the world of performance art? Maybe. Is he the perfect conduit to turn performance art into a hilarious meme with which to waste a sunny Sunday afternoon? Of course. The actor reteamed with Nastja Säde Rönkkö and Luke Turner, who last had him sit in a room with a paper bag over his head (and allegedly get raped by one art patron) , for a video designed to be used by art students at Central Saint Martins College in London. The Nymphomaniac star performed 36 different vignettes as submitted by the students in the 30-minute video, reading poetry, recitig lyrics, meditating in front of butter, and delivering speeches. And he did it all in front of a green screen so that the students, and now the world at large, can edit the video into a completely new work of their own.
"The audience for our projects and experiences are as much part of the work as we are — they complete the work," Rönkkö, Turner, and LaBeouf told the Guardian. "It comes from this idea that we are all artists really, and we are all expressing ourselves more than ever across Twitter and social media. The Central Saint Martins students seemed to get that intuitively."
So, it seems, have creative types and funny people all over the place, and now we have a full-fledged meme, mostly using the very animated motivational speech LaBeouf gives, with arms flexed low in a Hulk-like crouch, shouting, "Just do it!"
Some of our favorites so far include a mashup with the Teletubbies:
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There's this long-lost scene from The Avengers, proving he's come a long way from Even Stevens:
Who could fail to be inspired by LaBeouf's TED Talk?
If you need to calm down, after all that, take in this acoustic song version:
We are most disappointed in you film auteurs for not yet making good stuff out of the butter meditation.