The actor Shia LaBeouf is occupying a lift in Oxford with two other performance artists for 24 hours as part of his latest project.
LaBeouf and his art collaborators Nastja Säde Rönkkö and Luke Turner will also address the Oxford Union on Friday evening.
The union said the trio will be occupying the elevator at EC Oxford, an English language course centre in Gloucester Green, for a 24-hour stint ending at 9am on Saturday. They will leave the elevator for their talk but will return afterwards.
A live audio and video feed will be broadcast inside the union debating chamber for the duration of the event, which is called #ELEVATE. It is also being streamed on YouTube.
“Visitors will be able to join LaBeouf, Rönkkö and Turner inside the elevator during this time, and are invited to address the artists, the debating chamber, and the internet, so that their collective voices may form an extended, expansive and egalitarian Oxford Union address,” the union said.
The performance and access to the debating chamber will be free and open to the public for the 24 hours. According to the BBC, LaBeouf told students in the lift that he was invited by the union’s president when he was involved in an art piece in Liverpool last year, which involved him setting up his own call centre.
LaBeouf said: “Stuart the president said ‘Do you want to stand in the same spot as Malcolm X?’ Who [...] am I to argue with that?”
The actor said he was expecting students entering the lift to give a “performance of monologues”. Reports say he has been asked a range of questions including “what’s your favourite Saturday?” and has played a game of “snog, marry, avoid”.
LaBeouf, from Los Angeles, has worked with Rönkkö, from Finland, and Turner, from the UK, for the past two years. The trio worked on the 2015 piece #ALLMYMOVIES, during which LaBeouf livestreamed himself watching every one of his films back to back for three days.
In a 2014 artwork called #IAMSORRY, LaBeouf wore a paper bag bearing the message “I am not famous any more” over his head. He also sat in a room in a Los Angeles art gallery where members of the public could walk in and interact with him.
That project proved controversial after it was reported that a woman raped the actor during the performance. Following the claims, Rönkkö and Turner said they had intervened as soon as they became aware of the incident.