He Will Not Divide Us, Shia LaBeouf’s artistic protest against the Trump presidency, has been shut down again, just one day after moving to its latest location in Liverpool.
On Wednesday. the city’s Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (Fact) centre announced that they would be displaying the project, which currently takes the form of a live stream of a white flag featuring the words: “He will not divide us.” The announcement came after the actor’s artistic group LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner said that it was not safe to display the artwork in the US.
However, one day later the gallery released a statement on Twitter that said the installation had been shut down on police advice due to “dangerous, illegal trespassing”.
Merseyside police said in a statement to the BBC that officers were called to the area following reports that a group of men “were believed to be trying to get to a flag on the roof of the [Fact] building”.
An onlooker told the Liverpool Echo that the trespassers were unable to remove the flag from its flagpole as it was attached by cables.
The trespassers were thought to be members of /pol/, an alt-right discussion board on the imageboard website 4chan that has been actively involved in disrupting the project since its launch. “No matter where Shia LaBeouf puts the HWNDU flag next, one of our own will get it again. /pol/ has boots on the ground in every country,” a message from the group’s Twitter account posted on Thursday read.
He Will Not Divide Us has been plagued by disruption since it was unveiled at the New York’s Museum of the Moving Image on 20 January, the day of Trump’s inauguration. The project, which is intended to run for the duration of the Trump presidency originally took the form of a livestream of people chanting, “He will not divide us”, but the museum was forced to shut it down after less than a month due to it becoming a “flashpoint for violence”.
The project was then moved to a cinema in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but was removed following reports of gunshots near the venue. In March, it was moved to an undisclosed location, where it took the form of a flag emblazoned with the project’s title, but alt-right activists defaced the exhibition.