French artist is entombed in rock for a week
PARIS: A French artist was entombed on Wednesday inside a 12-tonne boulder for a week, saying: “I think I can take it.”
With the world’s press looking on, the two halves of the limestone rock were closed on Abraham Poincheval by workmen in a Paris modern art museum.
The 44-year-old had hollowed out a hole in the rock just big enough for him to sit, with a niche to hold supplies of water, soup and dried meat.
If he survives the ordeal, the artist will then attempt to hatch a dozen eggs by sitting on them for weeks on end.
Just before he stepped inside the rock at the Palais de Tokyo Museum, Poincheval said that claustrophobia was the least of his worries.
“We are already locked into our own bodies,” he said. Instead he was more anxious about stopping his mind running riot during his confinement.
Poincheval had earlier been cagey on the rock’s toilet facilities.
But as the clock ticked down he came clean, admitting he would have to sit on a small container and pee into his water bottles once he had drunk them.
He was stoic about living with his excrement. “The stone will absorb some of the smell,” he said. “I think I can take it.”
The artist has spent months mentally and physically preparing himself for the practicalities of life inside the rock, where he will sit up with his arms outstretched.
Holes have been bored for air and cables for a heart monitor and an emergency video link.
His only other comforts are a cushion and a couple of books “for helping to pass the time, although I don’t think I will be able to read all the time.”
Poincheval is no stranger to bizarre and hairraising performances.
He once spent a fortnight inside a stuffed bear eating worms and beetles, was buried under a rock for eight days and navigated France’s Rhone River inside a giant plastic corked bottle.
He has crossed the Alps in a barrel and last year spent a week on top of a 20-metre (65-foot) pole outside a Paris train station like the stylite saints of the early Christian church.
He has also played at being a human mole, and crossed France on foot in a straight line with a friend.