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One of my claims to fame is that me and a bunch of folks bombarded him with cigarettes when he announced onstage, during the "smoker with attitude" tour, that he had given up. He was the only one in the theatre that knew he was dying of cancer at the time. 

I've always wondered how hard that pill was to swallow given his "I'm a non-smoker" bit.

Of course... I'm fortunate in that while Bill Hicks, George Carlin and Lewis Black all started long before my time, I was exposed to them early enough that they pretty heavily influenced who I am today. Love all those guys.

I took some and suddenly realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.

Didn't like it much. Prefer pot, it makes me giggle at shit that aint that funny.

Was your experience reported on the nightly news?

Yes, this is Wikipedia, but it's really, really hard to find specific information about the performance due to the internetabloids clickbaiting this story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shia_LaBeouf#Performance_art

LaBeouf, Rönkkö and Turner staged a six day performance in a Los Angeles gallery entitled #IAMSORRY, in which LaBeouf sat wearing a tuxedo and the paper bag, silently crying in front of visitors.[69][71] Attendees were allowed to enter one at a time, and invited to choose an item from a table of "implements" to take in with them, including a Transformers toy, an Indiana Jones whip, a bottle of Jack Daniel's, a pair of pliers, a ukulele, a bowl full of hateful tweets directed at LaBeouf, and a copy of Clowes's book The Death-Ray.[72][73] Time columnist Joel Stein, who spent three days waiting in line to see the performance, observed that LaBeouf "was immensely present," and that "he was whatever was projected upon him,"[74] while Kate Knibbs of The Daily Dot found the experience "genuinely disturbing", and "felt like I was further dehumanizing someone whose humanity I'd discounted."[75] The Daily Beast's Andrew Romano opined that "there was more going on in those few seconds than in a lot of contemporary art. LaBeouf's look-at-me Internet penance ritual had become an actual moment between actual people."[73]

Compare with, not The Artist is Present, but Rhythm 0:

To test the limits of the relationship between performer and audience, Abramović developed one of her most challenging (and best-known) performances. She assigned a passive role to herself, with the public being the force which would act on her. Abramović placed on a table 72 objects that people were allowed to use (a sign informed them) in any way that they chose. Some of these were objects that could give pleasure, while others could be wielded to inflict pain, or to harm her. Among them were a rose, a feather, honey, a whip, olive oil, scissors, a scalpel, a gun and a single bullet. For six hours the artist allowed the audience members to manipulate her body and actions.

Initially, members of the audience reacted with caution and modesty, but as time passed (and the artist remained passive) people began to act more aggressively. As Abramović described it later: "What I learned was that... if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you." ... "I felt really violated: they cut up my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the audience. Everyone ran away, to escape an actual confrontation."[7]

As I said above, I have an irrational bias against Shia, but he seems to have genuinely embraced the spirit and purpose behind modern performance art, in which both viewer and viewed are actively engaged in the process, with each informing the other.  The normal way we use the word "Art" really loses it's meaning when brought to levels such as this; it becomes existential, in the dictionary definition, rather than the philosophical, where the performance is tied to the artist's existence.

So in terms of the OP question, for the artist to call an end to the performance would be almost unthinkable.

That is terrifying; the art piece and the fact that she left a gun and a bullet on the table. I mean, was the gun set not to go off? What if someone had actually pulled the trigger? Holy shit.

I'm really glad Shia came forward with this, because it'll be very interesting to see how it plays out. The only actual time I've seen a story of female-on-male rape was an episode of Law and Order which... come to think of it, was probably based on a real case, but who knows when that particular case was.

Also really glad (not glad) to see that victim blamers aren't sexist!

Hi, I'm lavkian.

I'll try not to post only once or twice and disappear, but I make no promises. I'm a English teacher living abroad, so please don't hold me to any high standards.