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Modern art: Frenchman to spend a week inside a rock then hatch chicks

A French artist is set to be entombed inside a rock for a week, then use his body heat to hatch a dozen eggs.

Published: 22 February 2017 08:57 CET
Modern art: Frenchman to spend a week inside a rock then hatch chicks
Abraham Poincheval. Photo: AFP
Like many young fathers, Abraham Poincheval has very little time to himself to ponder life's big questions.
   
So on Wednesday the French artist will be entombed for a week inside a 12-tonne limestone boulder in a modern art museum in Paris. 
 
“I think of it as an inner journey to find out what the world is,” said Poincheval, who has hollowed out a hole in the rock just big enough for himself to fit inside.
   
If he survives his time as the rock's “beating heart”, the 44-year-old will then sit on a dozen eggs until they hatch.
   
“It is the first time I will have worked with living things,” the artist told AFP.
 
 
Poincheval is no stranger to often bizarre and hair-raising performances.
   
He once spent a fortnight inside a stuffed bear, was buried under a rock for eight days and navigated France's Rhone river inside a giant corked bottle.
 
   
He has also 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 also played at being a human mole, and crossed France on foot in a straight line with a friend.
 
'Mystical journey'
 
But curator Jean de Loisy, of the Palais de Tokyo museum where Poincheval's “Stone” and “Egg” performances are being held, insisted that his work should not be regarded as stunts but as a series of mystical journeys.
   
Instead they are profound meditations on “inner exploration, on modifying the self and of living in other realms beyond our own,” De Loisy said.
   
The artist told AFP that he 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 in the rock for air and cables for a heart monitor and emergency telephone line.
   
Poincheval said all he will have to eat during his entombment will be a little dried meat and cartons of soup and other liquids.
   
The only mystery is how he will go to the toilet, with the artist becoming uncharacteristically evasive when pressed on the subject.
   
Loneliness should not be a problem, he said. When he was buried under a rock outside a gallery in the southern city of Marseille, former prisoners who had survived solitary confinement came to keep him company and a “young girl talked to me about the violin she had just bought for three hours”.
 
Walking on clouds 
 
In fact, so many people came to “talk to the stone” that security guards had to be stationed around the rock at night so he could get some sleep.
   
The real wrench this time may be having to leave the rock after the week, Poincheval admitted.
   
After previous performances, the end has always been what he called “delicate”, marked by a “day in the dumps… and a lot of turbulence inside.
 
It takes several weeks to get back to normal,” he told AFP.
   
His next performance “Egg” will begin on March 29, with Poincheval sitting on a dozen eggs for between three and four weeks until they hatch.
   
He will eat a special diet rich in ginger so he can keep the eggs at a minimum of 37 degrees Celsius (98 degrees Fahrenheit), with only a half an hour break every 24 hours to keep him from cracking.
   
The chicks that hatch “will go and live with my parents”, Poincheval added.
   
But his ambitions do not end there.
   
His big dream is to “walk on the clouds. I have been working on it for five years, but it is not quite there yet,” he add.
 
By the AFP's Antoine Froidefond and Fiachra Gibbons

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ART

African-born director’s new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

One of the rare African-born figures to head a German cultural institution, Bonaventure Ndikung is aiming to highlight post-colonial multiculturalism at a Berlin arts centre with its roots in Western hegemony.

Published: 8 July 2023 10:13 CEST
African-born director's new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

The “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” (House of World Cultures), or HKW, was built by the Americans in 1956 during the Cold War for propaganda purposes, at a time when Germany was still divided.

New director Ndikung said it had been located “strategically” so that people on the other side of the Berlin Wall, in the then-communist East, could see it.

This was “representing freedom” but “from the Western perspective”, the 46-year-old told AFP.

Now Ndikung, born in Cameroon before coming to study in Germany 26 years ago, wants to transform it into a place filled with “different cultures of the world”.

The centre, by the river Spree, is known locally as the “pregnant oyster” due to its sweeping, curved roof. It does not have its own collections but is home to exhibition rooms and a 1,000-seat auditorium.

It reopened in June after renovations, and Ndikung’s first project “Quilombismo” fits in with his aims of expanding the centre’s offerings.

The exhibition takes its name from the Brazilian term “Quilombo”, referring to the communities formed in the 17th century by African slaves, who fled to remote parts of the South American country.

Throughout the summer, there will also be performances, concerts, films, discussions and an exhibition of contemporary art from post-colonial societies across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

‘Rethink the space’

“We have been trying to… rethink the space. We invited artists to paint walls… even the floor,” Ndikung said.

And part of the “Quilombismo” exhibition can be found glued to the floor -African braids laced together, a symbol of liberation for black people, which was created by Zimbabwean artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti.

According to Ndikung, African slaves on plantations sometimes plaited their hair in certain ways as a kind of coded message to those seeking to escape, showing them which direction to head.

READ ALSO: Germany hands back looted artefacts to Nigeria

His quest for aestheticism is reflected in his appearance: with a colourful suit and headgear, as well as huge rings on his fingers, he rarely goes unnoticed.

During his interview with AFP, Ndikung was wearing a green scarf and cap, a blue-ish jacket and big, sky-blue shoes.

With a doctorate in medical biology, he used to work as an engineer before devoting himself to art.

In 2010, he founded the Savvy Gallery in Berlin, bringing together art from the West and elsewhere, and in 2017 was one of the curators of Documenta, a prestigious contemporary art event in the German city of Kassel.

Convinced of the belief that history “has been written by a particular type of people, mostly white and men,” Ndikung has had all the rooms in the HKW renamed after women.

These are figures who have “done something important in the advancement of the world” but were “erased” from history, he added. Among them is Frenchwoman Paulette Nardal, born in Martinique in 1896.

She helped inspire the creation of the “negritude” movement, which aimed to develop black literary consciousness, and was the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Reassessing history

Ndikung’s appointment at the HKW comes as awareness grows in Germany about its colonial past, which has long been overshadowed by the atrocities committed during the era of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.

Berlin has in recent years started returning looted objects to African countries which it occupied in the early 20th century — Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon.

“It’s long overdue,” said Ndikung.

He was born in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, into an anglophone family.

The country is majority francophone but also home to an anglophone minority and has faced deadly unrest in English-speaking areas, where armed insurgents are fighting to establish an independent homeland.

One of his dreams is to open a museum in Cameroon “bringing together historical and contemporary objects” from different countries, he said.

He would love to locate it in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s restive Northwest region.

“But there is a war in Bamenda, so I can’t,” he says.

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