“I was thoroughly mentally prepared and so was Dark Mofo,” Mr Parr said after a public forum in Hobart on Tuesday afternoon.

“I was determined to go the distance.”

Mr Parr, 73, told of the incredible noise from semi-trailers driving over the box he was buried in and of people jumping on the roadway in the early hours of the morning.

“Some ferals jumped on the box, it was a bit like them playing chicken on a railway bridge on their way home,” he said.

“They were jumping up and down and it was quite unnerving.

“But it was better than most art criticism.

“We had a fixed camera in the box and it will be a very interesting soundtrack because it came in waves.

“As the lights changed it was suddenly very silent and the next moment it was  completely unpredictable and very noisy.”

He spent many hours walking in the box that measured only 4.5m by 1.7m and was 2.2m high and settled on 72 hours underground because he wanted people to feel anxious so they would notice his work.

He managed to sleep and was in good health and spirits when he spoke of his experience to the media.

Mr Parr said he was not surprised that there had been criticism by some Tasmanians of his work entitled “Underneath the Bitumen the Artist” which was part  of MONA’s annual winter festival Dark Mofo.

“Art always invites that philistine response,” he said.

Mr Parr was pleased there was an Aboriginal contingent when he emerged on Sunday night.

“I felt immediately very buoyed and confident really,” he said.

“I was cold and I was thinking of getting inside the Mercury building and going home and having a small meal.”

Mr Parr came up with the idea for his performance in Italy in 2011 and originally intended it would highlight the atrocities committed under the Nazis in Germany.

His work represented people across the world who had suffered including Tasmanian Aborigines who had been killed.

He denied he had been paid $100,000 for his work which he chose to perform in Tasmania because he said what happened in Port Arthur was “pure torture.”

Mr Parr said having a disability meant he felt different.

“I’m different, I’ve got one arm,” he said. “Having a disability you get used to feeling different and the feelings of isolation.”

The amiable artist said he feared for humanity’s future.

“I think we’re on a rather desperate trajectory because we’ve many problems,” Mr Parr said.

“Climate change is an issue that has concerned me for 20 years and we’re unable to do anything substantive really about it.

“We’re storing up immense problems for future generations.”

The anxiety of the artist’s disappearance was the point of the entombment.

After he emerged, the container was filled with concrete to fuse the chamber and its contents preserved as a time capsule for future generations.

“You could have filled it with Tasmanian Aboriginals,” he said.

More than 200 people attended the forum where he spoke publicly for the first time about his work with many turned away because of a lack of seating.

The Examiner