Presumably figuring that New Mexico’s famous dry heat would scare off any milk-drinking neo-Nazis, Shia LaBeouf and his artistic compatriots Nastja Säde Rönkkö and Luke Turner have announced that they’re moving the “He Will Not Divide Us” anti-Trump art project from New York City to Albuquerque, New Mexico. This comes from Variety, which says the announcement came with a “strongly-worded” condemnation of the installation’s old home, the Museum Of The Moving Image.
For those who don’t recall, the installation was simply a white wall with a webcam and the words “He will not divide us,” and the idea was that people would spend the next four years walking up to the camera and saying those words as a symbol of our nation’s desire for unity. Unfortunately, assholes saw the camera as an opportunity to spew hateful bullshit away from their Pepe avatars for once, and shortly after LaBeouf himself was arrested for scratching some presumed neo-Nazi in the face, the installation was shut down.
In the statement, LaBeouf and his colleagues said that they “voiced serious concerns” to the museum about the hate speech that was happening at the site of their project, but their requests for help “were not even acknowledged, let alone acted upon.” So, after determining that New York’s Museum Of The Moving Image was “not fit to speak of [their] intent as artists,” LeBeouf and the others packed up and moved to Albuquerque. As of this weekend, “He Will Not Divide Us” project has found its new home at the city’s El Rey Theater, and it has resumed broadcasting at its official website.
As of Sunday morning, nobody is currently screaming racial epithets into the camera, but one of the guys hanging around is trying to explain to passersby about why he voted for Donald Trump (“fuck political correctness” seems be the gist, but he understands why people “aren’t happy” about the wall) while other people explain their issues with Trump to the camera and repeat the “he will not divide us” mantra. In other words, it’s actually kind of working.