Shia LaBeouf's #IAM SORRY: art is often violent, but nothing can excuse rape

Performance art is a difficult genre that often exploits physical threat, as shown by artists from Marina Abramović to Yoko Ono

The actor Shia LaBeouf has told of being raped while performing his work #IAMSORRY at a Los Angeles art gallery. Was this a case of performance art creating an atmosphere in which anything, including crime, can happen?

Ever since the first ancestral performance happenings in the early 20th century, this dynamic and unpredictable form of art has been associated with violence and danger. From riotous Futurist evenings and the chaos of notorious avant-garde premieres such as that of The Rite of Spring in Paris in 1913, to surrealists insulting priests on the street, the moment when art becomes a kind of drama has often been a moment of physical threat.

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