Shia LaBeouf to Headline Bingefest, an Art Festival Devoted to Binge Watching
Shia LaBeouf, the noted American performance artist who stars in Hollywood blockbusters in his spare time, will debut his next work at a festival held at the Sydney Opera House in Australia to celebrate binge watching.
Yes, binge watching, that thing you do when you have no plans on a weekend and decide there is nothing more in the world you’d rather do than watch three seasons of that HBO show you never got around to is apparently now worthy of artistic celebration.
“24-hour TV marathons have become our new religion, and couches our shrines,” declares the festival’s website. “Because what could be better than total immersion and extended escapism with a world of snacks? Enter BingeFest – track pants welcome, (read: encouraged).”
LaBeouf makes for an obvious headliner. The actor began staging performance art in collaboration with artist Nastja Säde Rönkkö and Luke Turner in 2014, and in one of the more notable exercises he live-streamed himself watching, well, binging every single movie he’s ever appeared in at a New York City theater.
The new performance promises to be a “participatory performance artwork” that will take place over two nights of the December festival. No other details were released, but we’re sure you’ll hear about it all over Twitter when the work actually takes place. We can only hope that it in some way involves binge watching Even Stevens.
Incidentally, LaBeouf’s latest movie American Honey, is something of a comeback for the star, and expands to wide release this weekend.
Of course, LaBeouf, Rönkkö and Turner’s work won’t be the only thing the festival has to offer.
Dancer Amrita Hepi will host something called a “Beyoncé vs RiRi Dance Class” in which she teaches festival goers dance moves to songs by the dueling divas. Because who hasn’t spent a night binging on a popstar’s complete offerings on Vevo and inevitably bedroom dancing to their favorite hits?
There is also something called “The Harambe Memorial Service” hosted by comedian Dan Ilic. It won’t be as much of an actual wake, as it will be a panel discussion of this year in meta internet memes.
There will also be viewing of all 144 episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, panel discussions with television writers, a room filled with dozens of video game systems all running Street Fighter, an appearance by Serial’s Julia Snyder, and, of course, something called “The Internet Cat Video Festival.” This, mind you, is all taking place at Australia’s most significant performing arts venue.
The whole event will take place over two days on December 17th and 18th. Tickets are sold on an individual event basis, but tickets don’t seem to be available specifically to LaBeouf’s performance. That is scheduled to run from midnight to 6 a.m. on the first day, and then again from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m. the next day.
