A French artist has been taken out of a 12 tonne block of limestone he lived in for a week.

Abraham Poincheval is a performance artist who was sealed into the stone in a hole made from his own body on February 22, and let out on March 1.

Visitors were able to speak to him through a crack in the rock, and he also spoke to journalists while he was entombed, describing that he felt "completely at ease" despite not knowing what time of day it was.

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."

Poincheval had holes punched into the rock so that he could breathe properly.

He ate dried meat and soup as well as other liquids, and his waste had to be stored around him in bottles and containers for the duration of the performance.

The artist also had an emergency phone line in the rock with him.

Poincheval is not new to this kind of performance art.

In 2014 spent two weeks sewn up inside a stuffed bear, subsisting only on worms and beetles.

He has been buried under a rock for eight days, and last year spent a week on top of a 65 foot pole in Paris.

He has also spent 20 days living underground as a human mole, crossed the Alps in a barrel, and navigated the Rhone river inside a giant plastic corked bottle.

His next piece of work will see him attempting to hatch a dozen eggs by sitting on them for weeks.