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#HWNDU – a play in four acts

hwndu

Oh dear lord I enjoyed that! Did you enjoy that? I’m quite sure you groovy dudes have been following this thing as closely as I have, but I could do with a recap, as I find the timeline confusing. Herewith:

He Will Not Divide Us was a performance art project dreamed up by child actor Shia Labeouf and professional dim bulb Jaden Smith (who disappeared from the drama quickly). It was launched on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017 and intended to run the full four (sic) years of Trump’s presidency. It was a camera mounted outside the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York, into which the general public was invited to stand and chant “he will not divide us” in a not at all creepy and stupid way. This was streamed to the internet live.

General public. Streamed to the internet live, 24/7. What could possibly go wrong?

ACT ONE: New York. And while some people stood in front of the camera performed as expected, the stream almost immediately went to shit. Messages featured a rich assortment of goombahs, hoodrats, generic white males, garden variety trolls and — critically, it would turn out — merry pranksters from 4chan’s /pol/. The stream had an audience and some people got internet famous.

Shia lost his nut, and by Day 6 had been arrested for assaulting a participant (ironically, someone on his side). Day 8, the NYPD erected a wall (I ’bout died of irony poisoning) — one of those crowd barrier things — and Museum staff let people trickle through and say their lines. By February 10, the Museum had had enough and shut it down. Total elapsed time: 21 days.

ACT TWO: New Mexico. Eight days later, it pops up in New Mexico at the El Rey Theater in Albuquerque, along a busy urban street. This time, the performance instantly went to shit. It was taken down again February 23rd after shots were fired in the area. Total elapsed time: 6 days.

ACT THREE: Tennessee. On March 8th, the project was ‘back’ at an ‘undisclosed location.’ This time it had morphed into something entirely different: a livestream of a flag that read HE WILL NOT DIVIDE US. The camera pointed up to the flag in an empty sky.

In less than 48 hours, /pol/ had traced it to a farm in Tennessee. Legend has it, they analyzed times of day, weather patterns, star maps and flight paths, then drove around the general area honking car horns and listening for them on the stream. In truth, they really did those things, but they had a huge leg-up when a fan spotted Labeouf in a diner in Greenville, TN and posted a selfie with him. On March 9, the flag was spotted IRL. Our heroes stole the flag and replaced it with a Pepe shirt and a MAGA hat. Total elapsed time: 2 days.

It gets muddled after that. There were reports of drones flying in the area and somebody accidentally setting fire to a field with a roman candle. There’s a blurry picture said to be a drone shot of Shia guarding the empty flagpole at night armed with a baseball bat. Local police eventually got tired of his calls (!) and shut it down, though what ‘it’ was by that time, who could say?

ACT FOUR: Liverpool. Liverpool? “Events have shown that America is simply not safe enough for this artwork to exist” said Labeouf. Pff! He thinks we don’t have autists in England? The flag was located on the rooftop of FACT UK (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), a five-story building in downtown Liverpool. I have to wonder if anyone warned FACT what was headed their way. Everyone watched the stream and held their breath.

In just over a day — this afternoon — the explorers reached the flag via the building next door. They found it heavily zip-tied to the pole, took some pictures with it and made their escape, but it was only a matter of time.

On police advice, FACT and LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner have removed the installation HEWILLNOTDIVIDE.US due to dangerous, illegal trespassing.
Mar. 23, 2017

Total elapsed time: 1 day and a bit.

Is it over? Probably. I hope not. I can’t see anyone willing to host it in a public space. I wonder if Elon Musk would take it up in his rocket ship? And if we would survive what /pol/ did next?

March 23, 2017 — 8:08 pm
Comments: 26