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Shia LaBeouf isn’t really retiring from public life, despite social media comments that he tweeted in mid-January after being maligned in the media for the unauthorized use of material penned by Dan Clowes for his own short film.

It turns out he was just messing around with a concept first introduced by Joaquin Phoenix in 2009. LaBeouf claims his recent bizarre behavior was just performance art.

He came up with the idea with the help of artist Luke Turner, screenwriter David Ayer, and poet Kenneth Goldsmith and decided to come clean earlier this week on Twitter.

In a lengthy document that he posted as an image, he wrote: “Performance art has been a way of appealing directly to a large public, as well as shocking audiences into reassessing their own notions of art and its relation to culture. My twitter “@thecampaignbook” is meta-modernist performance art. A Performative redress is all a public apology really is.”

“All art is either plagiarism or revolution & to be revolutionary in art today, is to be reactionary. In the midst of being embroiled in acts of intended plagiarism, the world caught me & I reacted. The show began. I became completely absorbed, oblivious to things around me. I found that this absorption is what I was doing, freed my unconscious and released my authentic creative imagination.”

“Risking my public representative’s skin to prove my platitudes, I embarked on a journey full of the informed naivety of a magical realism. My actions here are only as interesting as the conversations that come about as a result of them. The fact that they were started at all is a positive thing. Thank you. I’m sorry. Shia”

Phoenix announced in 2009 that he was quitting acting to become a rap singer. He grew a beard and took on a reclusive look and remained in character during a number of television interviews. He revealed the hoax the following year with the release a documentary film.

Photos: WENN