Geheime restauraties door hackers

Via Long Now kwam ik terecht bij een artikel in Wired over de Parijse groep "hackers/restaurateurs" Urban eXperiment (UX):

UX is sort of like an artist’s collective, but far from being avant-garde—confronting audiences by pushing the boundaries of the new—its only audience is itself. More surprising still, its work is often radically conservative, intemperate in its devotion to the old. Through meticulous infiltration, UX members have carried out shocking acts of cultural preservation and repair, with an ethos of “restoring those invisible parts of our patrimony that the government has abandoned or doesn’t have the means to maintain.” The group claims to have conducted 15 such covert restorations, often in centuries-old spaces, all over Paris.

Een van de meesterstukjes van verschillende leden van de groep, die zich Untergunther noemen, zie je hierboven: de restauratie van de oude klok uit het Panthéon.

In November 2005, the Untergunther infiltrated the Pantheon of Paris and, with the help of the professional clockmakerJean-Baptiste Viot, started to restore the abandoned monumental 1850 Wagner clock before its irreversible state of defacement.
Once this restoration achieved, in October 2006, the Untergunther decided to meet Bernard Jeannot, the administrator of the Pantheon, in order to show him this work and to connect the clock to the bells.
After an enthusiastic welcome, Mister Jeannot suddenly changed his mind and decided to keep the silence on this clandestine restoration, frightened that this fantastic action was the proof of the incapacity of the French National Heritage administration, Monum, to preserve the heritage it is in charge of.
On the night of the 24th december 2006, the Untergunther came back to the Pantheon and fixed the bells to the clock which just rang for Christmas and a few days after because Mister Jeannot decided that this result of a clandestine restoration of an abandoned part of the French heritage was intolerable and had to stop.

Als ik het goed snap, werkt de klok alweer niet meer. De beheerder van het Panthéon schijnt een klokkenmaker te hebben ingehuurd om de klok weer te demonteren! Deze weigerde dit en heeft toen alleen het kroonrad losgehaald uit het echappement. Een paar dagen later heeft Untergunther dat kroonrad blijkbaar meegenomen, in de hoop dat de toekomstige beheerders het een keer terug komen vragen om de klok weer te laten lopen.

Voor deze restauratie had de groep trouwens een "workshop" ingericht in de koepel van het Panthéon. Weer uit Wired:

The workshop was outfitted with eight overstuffed armchairs, a table, bookshelves, a minibar, and red velvet drapes to moderate the ambient temperature. “Every element had been conceived to fold up into wooden crates, like the ones visible throughout the monument,” Kunstmann says. In the dead of night, they climbed endless stairs, hauling up the lumber, drills, saws, clock repair equipment, and everything else required. They updated the workshop’s outdated electrical wiring. They spent 4,000 euros on materials, in all, out of their own pockets. On the terrace outside they set up a vegetable garden.

 Quelle merveille!