MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

In May 2016, the art collective LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner tweeted out coordinates via their twitter account (@thecampaignbook) and began the #TAKEMEANYWHERE project, which invited an audience to find the trio at those coordinates and, as the project says, take them anywhere. Over the next thirty days the trio traveled more than 10,000 miles with around 70 participants driving them around the country. This road trip through America explored community, connection, friendship, celebrity, trust, and intimacy, both online and offline. Using the internet and social media as tools to create and sustain the performance, #TAKEMEANYWHERE is a project that continues to thrive through enduring and growing connections. At the beginning of the project the trio created a Facebook messenger group and added the participants along the way. This group of diverse individuals from across the country continues to remain active more than two years after the initial project. This paper will focus on the #TAKEMEANYWHERE project while also providing a brief discussion of the trio's metamodern performance art, which explores empathy, emotion, humanity, social interaction, and community through digital and physical networks. Unlike performance art that takes place primarily in a physical location, the works of LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner are unique in their use of the internet to both establish connections during the performances and to sustain them afterwards. #TAKEMEANYWHERE explores the optimistic potential of using technology to create meaningful and enduring relationships through the shared experience of performance art.