There is plenty of spectacle at the summer Olympics, but one act may trump them all. A man is trapped in a giant bottle floating on the waters of Paris’s Canal Saint-Denis… but he sealed the massive container himself. Abraham Poincheval is a performance artist known for his extreme feats that test him both mentally and physically.
He once spent 13 days inside the belly of a stuffed bear at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in 2014. And this isn’t even his first time sealed in a bottle; in 2015 he traveled up the Rhône from Lyon to Switzerland while encased in a large bottle, enduring seven days on a five-by-three foot platform atop a 65 foot mast. He spent a week confined in a hollow rock at the Palais de Tokyo in 2017, and the next year he marched for 75 miles clad in over 65 pounds of armor.
This year, in tandem with the 2024 Paris Olympics, Poincheval has moored his glass cocoon on Paris’ busiest canal, just outside France’s national stadium. For his performance, entitled La Bouteille, or The Bottle, he has locked himself inside a transparent vessel measuring 19 feet long and just over six feet in diameter for 10 days. The artwork grapples with modern-day understanding of privacy and intimacy, or lack thereof. His is the analog iteration of the increasingly popular 24/7 livestream.
French artist Abraham Poincheval stands in a closed giant bottle on the Canal de l’Ourq with the Stade de France in background, at Saint-Denis, north of Paris on July 25, 2024. Photo: Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images.
From his temporary home on the canal, Poincheval will be exposed to every triumphant roar and heartbreaking cry of defeat from Olympic stadium-goers.
“My approach is to lead a life embarked in a kind of vessel, like a solo crossing in this object,” Abraham Poincheval explained to Le Parisien. “It’s a time suspended within these great moments of exaltation and extreme energy of the athletes, it’s a time suspended in opposition to the rhythm of the Olympics.”
Just like a person stranded on a desert island who might toss a desperate message in a bottle into the sea, the artist has surrounded himself with the bare necessities: food rations, water, first aid kits, and solar panels for some electricity.
Currently on display at the Fondation Louis Vuitton as part of the LVMH Olympiad is Walk on Clouds, 2019, another of the artist’s works. The project is a video of Poincheval suspended in the air by chords, floating above a canopy of clouds, creating a spectacle that is at once thrilling and dreamlike.
The giant bottle is sure to spark the curiosity of visitors and voyeurs at the Saint-Denis canal. “This installation is in a public space, where I’m continually interacting with passers-by and residents of a city undergoing transformation.” Poincheval said. “I’m open to conversations with anyone who wants to engage.”