Cultural guerilla entrepreneurs restore Parisian clock
A group of underground “cultural guerillas” broke into the Panthéon in Paris and restored its clock. The allowed themselves to be locked in one night, found an unattended entrance, and set up shop in Autumn, 2005. It took the group, who call themselves Untergunther, one year to restore the famous clock.
The hardest part of the scheme was carrying up the planks used to make chairs and tables to furnish the Untergunther’s cosy squat cum workshop, which has sweeping views over Paris.
The group managed to connect the hideaway to the electricity grid and install a computer connected to the net.
After they’d completed their work, they told the administrator, who lost his job when the brass worried too much about the breach in security (and not enough about the positive atmosphere he’d created for citizen participation).
“We would like to be able to replace the state in the areas it is incompetent,” said Klausmann [the group's leader]. “But our means are limited and we can only do a fraction of what needs to be done. There’s so much to do in Paris that we won’t manage in our lifetime.”
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