Fourty-five minutes.
The “interview” slot for Le Parisien hardly fits in his agenda.
Not that of a minister.
But of an explorer between two expeditions.
The adventurer's rest will wait.
Fortunately, Christian Clot is not sleeping.
Or very little.
His days overlap with his sleepless nights.
Enough to nibble on extra minutes to write the book of his last mission in a cave, put together a documentary, coordinate a team of scientists, answer journalists… The Franco-Swiss runs after time.
Or maybe it's the other way around?
Behind the door of his apartment-office in the 19th arrondissement, we find a broad smile amid a graying three-day-old beard and an all-Helvetian phlegm.
Parc de la Villette and its back-to-the-future infrastructure are just a stone's throw away.
"We are living a turning point in the human experience"
Jeans, socks and fleece flocked to his name - chef or astronaut style - Christian Clot poses for the express photoshoot.
Travel stories, maps pinned to the walls, African masks and other souvenirs from distant lands clutter the narrow living room.
On a corner of the fireplace, his grandfather's ice ax stands proudly, a nod to his native mountains.
The pictures are boxed.
There is barely half an hour left to recount 49 years of a hectic existence.
The minutes go by.
But do they go by as quickly when you have no time reference?
Christian Clot tried to answer it between March and April.
For 40 days, the expedition leader locked himself with 14 other participants in a cave in Ariège.
Voluntary confinement - once is not customary - to better understand our perception of time in crisis situations.
All with the support of around forty researchers - neurobiologists, psychiatrists, ethologists, geneticists, etc.
- which will take several months to analyze the data collected on sleep and biological rhythms.
To read also 48 hours with the confined without watch of the cave: "What day is it already?"
Could there be an echo with a not so distant past? Any resemblance to real or existing facts… is not accidental. The idea of the “Deep Time” mission - deep time in English - was born with the Covid. "From the second confinement, many people have totally lost track of time and began to feel more and more mental fatigue," unrolls our pioneer, legs crossed on his red chair. The gap between the time they perceived and the real time gradually widened. Part of the coping mechanism, however, is successfully synchronizing the two. "
Christian Clot knows something about it. He is even an expert in the field. Over the kilometers, the rider has specialized in crisis management and in adapting to changes. Until 2014, he set up the Institute for Research on Human Adaptation, where this autodidact made dozens of scientists work together on his missions.
Recently, the health crisis has confirmed beliefs that are already well rooted.
His gray-green gaze follows his hands, which cross and uncross.
“Since 2008-2009, we have seen a turning point in the human experience that has never been seen before.
Three systemic changes - which have already happened separately - are all happening at the same time: a climate change, a technological change, and a societal change with a gigantic population increase.
"He hammers it with his slightly dragging intonations:" The world is changing, we must prepare for it.
"
Read also VIDEO.
They come out after 40 days confined in a cave for an experiment
"The more violent it is, the more I calm down"
The hyperactive backpacker leaves the nuclear shelter and tin cans method to survivalists and other collapse enthusiasts. "Thinking that everything is going to collapse is already giving up, he warns between two glances at his phone which vibrates in rhythm. It's up to us to roll up our sleeves. We are always in a crisis reaction system, but never in anticipation. He uses his soles in the most extreme environments to better understand the functioning of the brain and human psychology in these moments of intense stress.
"This is what differentiates the adventure that we do for ourselves, to surpass ourselves, from the exploration that we do to understand something and be useful to other humans", slips the one who is also vice- President of the Society of French Explorers, where we find Thomas Pesquet or Nicolas Hulot among 250 members.
Mélusine Mallender, his former companion, was able to observe it. “Christian is a researcher at heart, an enthusiast, develops this adventurer on a motorcycle, who is also one of his right-hand men. There is in him a desire for meaning. "And beyond his enormous field experience, he has real scientific hypotheses," says Stéphane Besnard, the scientific coordinator of Deep Time, physiologist, neurophysiologist and doctor at the Caen University Hospital. He largely has a thesis level in science. Putting healthy people in complicated environments allows us to collect data that we might not have otherwise. "
Between 2020 and 2021, Christian Clot was to embark a group of 20 participants - all from civil society - in 4 30-day crossings of the most extreme environments on the planet, from -60 ° C in Siberia to +60 ° C from Iran. Then the health crisis and its planes tackled on the ground passed by there. He and his team “put their own theories into practice”: they adapted. And have mounted Deep Time, with the hope of pushing back the “4 times 30” to 2022.
This quadruple experience, Christian Clot has already carried out solo in 2016-2017. But his “extraordinary psychic and physical endurance” - described by those around him - does not make him a representative guinea pig. "It's the whole point of taking non-specialists," he agrees. There are adaptation experiments being carried out within the International Space Station, but we know that a Thomas Pesquet will not react like everyone else. "
Christian Clot is of the same caliber.
“I can get mad because I dropped a pen.
But conversely, the more violent and harsh, the more I calm down.
Mélusine Mallender still remembers the day when he broke a tooth when he fell from his kayak in Patagonia.
“He said, 'I'm going to make a clove paw.
And we continued.
A glance towards a corner of the gray Parisian sky which stands out behind the window and the explorer becomes a philosopher.
Stoic even.
“As I have no control over the event, I will look for solutions within my reach.
"
"We were greeted like aliens"
This is what he did at 4 years old.
That afternoon, he escapes the vigilance of his accountant mother and his engineer father.
And found himself spending a whole night in the forest bordering the family house, planted in the middle of the Joux valley and its watchmaking industries.
School and "his ready-made knowledge" bored him.
Nature and the mountains serve as his classroom.
On weekends, he gets on his moped to compete in athletics with the Swiss junior national team.
Before stopping abruptly "disgusted by the doping cases".
End of the vocation of athlete.
Explorer then?
“I didn't have that word in mind.
Although I always wanted to be outside and learn things.
But at the end of the 1980s, times were tough for the blond heads who dream of virgin lands.
“There was this idea that there was nothing more to discover.
"
The teenager finally finds something to explore and create thanks to the theater.
He climbs on the boards for the first time in high school.
" A revelation.
He immediately created a troupe, became a director and enrolled at the national conservatory of dramatic art in Lausanne.
Then arrives in Paris where he is an actor and stuntman for six months of the year.
He spends the other six climbing summits all over the world, a bit bored with this routine based on planes and base camps.
Until one day he realizes that there is no map of western Nepal.
Bag on his back, he sets off to explore this area with a friend.
“We ended up arriving in valleys where people had never seen white people.
The whole village was lining up to play with the zipper on our tent.
It was an absolute encounter!
"
Paris, FranceTuesday May 25, 2021Christian Clot, explorer, has just led the "Deep Time" mission, a 40-day experience in a cave in Ariège 400 meters underground with 14 other volunteersExplorerAventurerPerformanceSciences LP / Olivier Arandel
"I started to observe people"
And a click for the traveler. “There was no longer any question of being told that there was nothing more to discover. It was there that I decided to become an explorer. He scans the maps for unexplored places. And will meet scientists to offer them a deal: "I'm going to go to places that are difficult to access." Teach me how to measure and I'll bring you the info. "
At the same time, he took part in several humanitarian missions, in Rwanda after the genocide or in Indonesia, devastated by the 2004 tsunami. He faced human suffering and astonishment. “Little by little I began to observe people and try to understand what they were going through. I wrote everything down in notebooks. Christian Clot is trained on the job. In the hard sciences as in the human sciences. "He has a real finesse in the perception of the psychology of the other, praises Tiphaine, psychomotor therapist and member of the Deep Time expedition. He likes to tickle us and get us out of our comfort zone. "
He too had to adapt to the “grind” of returns, a victim of the explorer syndrome in need of adrenaline.
“When we come back, we have the impression that everyday life is bland.
We have the feeling that everything sucks, too slow.
As if we were watching a movie in slow motion.
"
Then he ended up changing “paradigm”.
“I wondered why in Nepal or elsewhere, I was fascinated by the people I met.
Whereas once at home, I was no longer interested in them.
"Christian Clot learned" to be on an expedition all the time ".
In Paris, in a cave in Ariège or on a ridge in the Andes.
The light is declining in the living room.
The phone vibrates again, like a final call to order.
The forty-five minutes stretched into two hours.
Time has flown.
No worries, Christian Clot will undoubtedly be able to catch up with him.