{"id":3762,"date":"2012-01-24T13:19:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-24T13:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/2012\/01\/24\/still-deeply-enchanted-by-this-tribe\/"},"modified":"2012-01-24T13:19:00","modified_gmt":"2012-01-24T13:19:00","slug":"still-deeply-enchanted-by-this-tribe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/2012\/01\/24\/still-deeply-enchanted-by-this-tribe\/","title":{"rendered":"still deeply enchanted by this tribe"},"content":{"rendered":"

WIRED has a really nice new piece<\/a> (with photos and a video of some of the clock restoration!) on one of my favourite inspiring secret-art collectives, UX, the dreamy Parisian group that specializes in fantastical heritage restorations and interstitial spaces:<\/p>\n


\nA mysterious band of hacker-artists is prowling the network of tunnels below Paris,
\nsecretly refurbishing the city’s neglected treasures.<\/i><\/center><\/p>\n

Thirty years ago, in the dead of night, a group of six Parisian teenagers pulled off what would prove to be a fateful theft.<\/a> <\/p>\n

[…] This stealthy undertaking was not an act of robbery or espionage but rather a crucial operation in what would become an association called UX, for \u201cUrban eXperiment.\u201d UX is sort of like an artist\u2019s collective, but far from being avant-garde\u2014confronting audiences by pushing the boundaries of the new\u2014its 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 \u201crestoring those invisible parts of our patrimony that the government has abandoned or doesn\u2019t have the means to maintain.\u201d The group claims to have conducted 15 such covert restorations, often in centuries-old spaces, all over Paris.<\/p>\n

[…] UX\u2019s most sensational caper (to be revealed so far, at least) was completed in 2006. A cadre spent months infiltrating the Pantheon, the grand structure in Paris that houses the remains of France\u2019s most cherished citizens. Eight restorers built their own secret workshop in a storeroom, which they wired for electricity and Internet access and outfitted with armchairs, tools, a fridge, and a hot plate. During the course of a year, they painstakingly restored the Pantheon\u2019s 19th- century clock, which had not chimed since the 1960s. Those in the neighborhood must have been shocked to hear the clock sound for the first time in decades: the hour, the half hour, the quarter hour. <\/p>\n

[…] One summer, the group mounted a film festival devoted to the theme of \u201curban deserts\u201d\u2014the forgotten and underutilized spaces in a city. They naturally decided the ideal venue for such a festival would be in just such an abandoned site. They chose a room beneath the Palais de Chaillot they\u2019d long known of and enjoyed unlimited access to. The building was then home to Paris\u2019 famous Cin\u00e8math\u00e8que Fran\u00e8aise, making it doubly appropriate. They set up a bar, a dining room, a series of salons, and a small screening room that accommodated 20 viewers, and they held festivals there every summer for years. \u201cEvery neighborhood cinema should look like that,\u201d Kunstmann says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WIRED has a really nice new piece (with photos and a video of some of the clock restoration!) on one of my favourite inspiring secret-art collectives, UX, the dreamy Parisian group that specializes in fantastical heritage restorations and interstitial spaces: A mysterious band of hacker-artists is prowling the network of tunnels below Paris, secretly refurbishing … Continue reading “still deeply enchanted by this tribe”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[865,40,785,253,495,993,8,1147],"class_list":["post-3762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-activism","tag-art","tag-cinema","tag-europe","tag-exploring","tag-inspiration","tag-love","tag-truth-beauty-bombs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3762\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}