Performance artist Abraham Poincheval captured the global art community in 2017 when he spent an entire week inside of a rock.
The Frenchman's endurance piece called 'Pierre' (Stone) involved being sealed inside a giant limestone rock at the Palais de Tokyo contemporary art museum in Paris.
While aimed to explore tolerance, perception of time and isolation, it also meant living inside a cramped cavity alongside his own bodily waste.
The 12-tonne rock was carved out internally to match the exact shape of Poincheval’s body, leaving just enough space for him to sit upright.
Advert
Although he had very little movement inside the rock, there were small compartments containing water, soup, and dried meat, so he could carry out the experiment in full.
Three days in, he told The Guardian: “People seem to be very touched. They come and talk into the crack, read poetry to me, or tell me about their nightmares or their dreams.
“They are not so much talking to me, I think, as to the stone. I am very happy that the stone has got into their heads.”
On not being able to know what time of the day it is, he added: “I have some idea of time relative to the museum hours. I hear different sounds. But otherwise I have no sense of day or night.
“I can sleep but it is very hard. It is very strange, I don’t know whether I am sleeping well or not.”
After taking his first gulp of fresh air a week later, Poincheval told reporters: "I'm a little dazed, which I imagine is totally normal after one week living in a rock.
"I thank it very much," he said, referring to the rock, "for having been so enthusiastic about welcoming me."
Emerging from the rock, Poincheval admitted that 'it's this strange feeling of a floating world, an incredible floating in this mineral capsule'.
"Yes, there are very strong moments of getting dizzy, where the world is shaking monstrously," he continued.
"It's a moment of happiness, it's a gift, but at the same time one must stay clear-headed. There are very strong moments where you lose yourself, where suddenly you don't know anymore where you are."
Poincheval is known for extreme art performances and spent nearly two weeks living inside the hollowed body of a stuffed bear at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris in 2014.
He survived on worms and beetles to mimic the animal’s diet.
In 2021, he spent a week inside a sculpture of himself, designed to look like a man sitting on a block.
“I had designed it a little too small,” he admitted to The Guardian.
Anish Vij