In 2016, the artist Nikhil Chopra invited me for a residency in an experimental platform he created with other artists in Goa, India. 

There I realized the performance installation Hold back the earth, as an attempt to influence the landscape and stem the predicted catastrophes. 

Several cubic meters of sand distributed in the four corners of the room model fictitious landscapes on which I act by moving different accessories, mirrors, concrete irons, cubes, fans, causing landslides, floods, sandstorms, which I then try to contain.  Each gesture modifies the topography of the place. I record at each stage the variation of the earth's level by projecting paint on a paper stuck to the wall, I plot the drift of the continents on fictitious maps, and I take extracts of the horizon in test tubes. I close the performance by digging a burrow in the sand in which I huddle. 

 

The contour lines on tracing paper, the maps, and the horizon samples serve as documentation of the upheavals and as works of art that witness the transformations of the territory. 

If none of these gestures has any real scientific value, they illustrate the combination of natural and human forces in the making of the environment, the fluidity of the landscape, its fragility, and perhaps also our powerlessness to contain cataclysms.