One man is determined to put an age old saying to the test by conducting a two day search for a needle in a haystack.

Sven Sachsalber, an Italian performance artist, begins his challenge today in Paris' Palais de Tokyo.

Sachsalber's previous work includes eating a poisonous mushroom, spending 24 hours with a cow in a room and cutting down a tree by hand. 

The gallery's website gives the following introduction to his work:

"Sachsalber is always the protagonist in his work in which the performative and the sculptural play a key element. Often funny, often serious and sometimes both, his work contains a universal poetic element."

What's next? Firing a shotgun into a barrel of fish? Killing two magpies with a single stone?