Secret society goes clockpunk: les UX surfaces

The French underground group who staged film festivals in Paris catacombs (2004) is back.  This time they staged a daring... horological rescue mission.  They snuck into the Panthéon repeatedly, for one year, building a secret workshop, all in order to fix a glorious 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.

French authorities were not amused, and have only recently lost in court.

The semisecret UnterGunther group, who pulled this off, is but one segment of a larger, more ambitious, secret society.  What is les UX?

Mr Kunstmann said that les UX had 150 or so members divided into about ten branches.One group, which is all-female, specialises in “infiltration” – getting into museums after hours, finding a way through underground electric or gas networks and shutting down alarms. Another runs an internal message system and a coded, digital radio network accessible only to members.

A third group provides a database, a fourth organises subterranean shows and a fifth takes photographs of them. Mr Kunstmann refused to talk about the other groups.

Awesome.  Novelistic.  The sort of thing ARGs could evolve into.  Hakim Bey meets Bourbaki (and follow those links, if you don't know 'em).

(via BoingBoing et les autres amis)

Comments

[sophie1911]

Anyone know how I could get in touch with these guys?

[Bryan Alexander]

I don't know, sophie of the year 1911, but would love to.