Group of French artist-hackers prowls Paris at night, restoring neglected artifacts - Polidicks

By Jon Lackman [img]http://stag.wired.com/magazine/wp-content/images/20-02/ff_ux_f.jpg[/img] [quote]Thirty years ago, in the dead of night, a group of six Parisian teenagers pulled off what would prove to be a fateful theft. They met up at a small cafè near the Eiffel Tower to review their plans—again—before heading out into the dark. Lifting a grate from the street, they descended a ladder to a tunnel, an unlit concrete passageway carrying a cable off into the void. They followed the cable to its source: the basement of the ministry of telecommunications. Horizontal bars blocked their way, but the skinny teens all managed to wedge themselves through and ascend to the building’s ground floor. There they found three key rings in the security office and a logbook indicating that the guards were on their rounds. But the guards were nowhere to be seen. The six interlopers combed the building for hours, encountering no one, until they found what they were looking for at the bottom of a desk drawer—maps of the ministry’s citywide network of tunnels. They took one copy of each map, then returned the keys to the security office. Heaving the ministry’s grand front door ajar, they peeked outside; no police, no passersby, no problem. They exited onto the empty Avenue de Sègur and walked home as the sun rose. The mission had been so easy that one of the youths, Natacha, seriously asked herself if she had dreamed it. No, she concluded: “In a dream, it would have been more complicated.” 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 “Urban eXperiment.” 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. What has made much of this work possible is UX’s mastery, established 30 years ago and refined since, of the city’s network of underground passageways—hundreds of miles of interconnected telecom, electricity, and water tunnels, sewers, catacombs, subways, and centuries-old quarries. Like computer hackers who crack digital networks and surreptitiously take control of key machines, members of UX carry out clandestine missions throughout Paris’ supposedly secure underground tunnels and rooms. The group routinely uses the tunnels to access restoration sites and stage film festivals, for example, in the disused basements of government buildings. UX’s 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’s 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’s 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. Eight years ago, the French government didn’t know UX existed. When their exploits first trickled out into the press, the group’s members were deemed by some to be dangerous outlaws, thieves, even potential inspiration for terrorists. Still, a few officials can’t conceal their admiration. Mention UX to Sylvie Gautron of the Paris police—her specialty is monitoring the city’s old quarries—and she breaks into a wide smile. In an era when ubiquitous GPS and microprecise mapping threaten to squeeze all the mystery from our great world cities, UX seems to know, and indeed to own, a whole other, deeper, hidden layer of Paris. It claims the entire city, above- and belowground, as its canvas; its members say they can access every last government building, every narrow telecom tunnel. Does Gautron believe this? “It’s possible,” she says. “Everything they do is very intense.” Continued in link[/quote] [url=http://www.wired.com/magazine/2012/01/ff_ux/all/1]SOURCE[/url]

reminds me a bit of silhouette from DX

What an awesome group, I wish there was more cool mysterious shit left in the world like the underground network beneath Paris.

Are they still going around restoring things without permission or is this some kind of publicity stunt? I mean they have pictures of them and everything.

The death penalty is too kind for these scumbags. Restoring artwork is one of the worst thing I can think of that a criminal would do. I understand rape, murder, treason. But this? Fucking disgusts me.

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;34390362]The death penalty is too kind for these scumbags. Restoring artwork is one of the worst thing I can think of that a criminal would do. I understand rape, murder, treason. But this? Fucking disgusts me.[/QUOTE] what in the bleeding fuck are you going on about lmao dont tell me that youre placing the value of physical objects like this higher over living people

Now that, is passion.

[QUOTE=Ownederd;34390397]what in the bleeding fuck are you going on about lmao dont tell me that youre placing the value of physical objects like this higher over living people[/QUOTE] It's sobotnik, let him be.

[QUOTE=Ownederd;34390397]what in the bleeding fuck are you going on about lmao dont tell me that youre placing the value of physical objects like this higher over living people[/QUOTE] You probably are a gay communist who wants to destroy the nuclear family and convert people to homosexuality. Don't trick me you dirty bastard, Jesus told me to see through your lies.

Did they restore any paintings of French girls?

This is fucking [B]AWESOME[/B].

[QUOTE=Ownederd;34390397]what in the bleeding fuck are you going on about lmao dont tell me that youre placing the value of physical objects like this higher over living people[/QUOTE] are you serious

[QUOTE=Ownederd;34390397]what in the bleeding fuck are you going on about lmao dont tell me that youre placing the value of physical objects like this higher over living people[/QUOTE]You're not the brightest crayon in the shed, are you?

[QUOTE=Ownederd;34390397]what in the bleeding fuck are you going on about lmao dont tell me that youre placing the value of physical objects like this higher over living people[/QUOTE] *Whoosh*

[QUOTE=Ownederd;34390397]what in the bleeding fuck are you going on about lmao dont tell me that youre placing the value of physical objects like this higher over living people[/QUOTE] Christ man you are denser then a glass of mercury. You must be quite the speaker in a group of guys telling jokes. And if you come off with that loltrolled shit then it only concludes what I said above. On-topic, these guys are nuts. It's so awesome and dangerous that I want to try it out, in fact, old tunnels 4 km from me. Never checked 'em and the grates are damaged. Should be good

[QUOTE=Ownederd;34390397]what in the bleeding fuck are you going on about lmao dont tell me that youre placing the value of physical objects like this higher over living people[/QUOTE] Candidates for the most retarded post of the year begin appearing early this time. [editline]25th January 2012[/editline] And yeah, these Frenchies are rad as hell.

So it's basically urban exploration, only instead of leaving things decayed and broken, they run in and fix shit up? I happen to like the aesthetics of decaying, forgotten things........

[QUOTE=MendozaMan;34390958]Christ man you are denser then a glass of mercury. You must be quite the speaker in a group of guys telling jokes. And if you come off with that loltrolled shit then it only concludes what I said above. On-topic, these guys are nuts. It's so awesome and dangerous that I want to try it out, in fact, old tunnels 4 km from me. Never checked 'em and the grates are damaged. Should be good[/QUOTE] ok i kinda fail to see me not getting a half-assed joke translates to me being dumb, and since it's Sobotnik, yea lets joke about killing ppl.... guys... witty n deep!!! XD

[QUOTE=Ownederd;34391115]ok i kinda fail to see me getting a half-assed joke translates to me being dumb, and since it's Sobotnik, yea lets joke about killing ppl.... guys... witty n deep!!! XD[/QUOTE] I think we already found our winner for worst post of 2012.

[QUOTE=Ownederd;34391115]ok i kinda fail to see me getting a half-assed joke translates to me being dumb, and since it's Sobotnik, yea lets joke about killing ppl.... guys... witty n deep!!! XD[/QUOTE] it was such an obvious joke.

I'd love to walk beneath paris in a dark tunnel with only a headlamp and some basic gear. These guys are badasses.

[QUOTE=Uncle Bourbon;34391190]it was such an obvious joke.[/QUOTE] when you saw the first iteration of the post before he edited it you would kinda think otherwise still, shitty joke that doesn't even warrant a chuckle, especially concerning its subject matter

This story is a very inspiring one. It is to bad that so many administrators of French museums and the like are apparently incompetent.

FUCKING FRENCH Why do they have to be so fucking cool, and talented, and [I]French.[/I] It's bullshit I tell you.

[QUOTE=Ownederd;34391210]when you saw the first iteration of the post before he edited it you would kinda think otherwise still, shitty joke that doesn't even warrant a chuckle, especially concerning its subject matter[/QUOTE] Just accept that you didn't get a joke the majority of people did It's okay You're just slow

[QUOTE=Trumple;34391490]Just accept that you didn't get a joke the majority of people did It's okay You're just slow[/QUOTE] maybe you should also learn that humor is purely subjective, and not objective = i speak my opinion and so forth and it is no more than that being accusational doesnt help much either

[QUOTE=Atlascore;34390726]Holy fucking shit, why are there so few people on the internet that can understand a joke?[/QUOTE] Autism

This is a hell of a read

[QUOTE=StormHammer;34390317]What an awesome group, I wish there was more cool mysterious shit left in the world like the underground network beneath Paris.[/QUOTE] There is a second city underneath HongKong. It was intended as a bunker for 100 k people in WW2 but afterwads they used it for housing and at best times up to 500 k people kived in there until recently when they were all driven out for the Olympic Games.

[QUOTE=ExplodingGuy;34390738]You're not the brightest crayon in the shed, are you?[/QUOTE] In almost every post I see from you, you make some sort of joke. :v: