French artist is entombed inside rock for a week

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French artist is entombed inside rock for a week
French artist Abraham Poincheval performs 'Pierre' (Stone), at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris

Paris - The 44-year-old had hollowed out a hole in the rock just big enough for him to sit

By AFP

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Published: Wed 22 Feb 2017, 9:48 PM

Last updated: Thu 23 Feb 2017, 12:02 AM

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.
"We did a little test yesterday and it was absolutely incredible. It felt like like I was being carried off on a raft," the artist said.
"One of the big challenges will be to hold onto reality."
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.
"We found a way of slipping the toilet container underneath me that works almost to the millimetre," Poincheval said.
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".
His reading material is certainly not light. He has packed the Polish philosopher Zygmunt Bauman's classic text Liquid Modernity and a new novel by French author Celine Minard, Le Grand Jeu (The Great Game), about a women who cuts herself off from modern life in a hi-tech mountain refuge. 
 
 


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