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France's Clandestine Culture War
Secret societies in the news:
Mr Kunstmann belongs to les UX, a clandestine network that is on a mission to discover and exploit the city's neglected underworld. The urban explorers put on film shows in underground galleries, restore medieval crypts and break into monuments after dark to organise plays and readings. In the eyes of their supporters, they are the white knights of modern culture, renovating forgotten buildings and staging artistic events beyond the reach of a stifling civil service.
The authorities view them differently: as the dark side of the City of Light -- irresponsible, paranoid subversives whose actions could serve as a model for terrorists. A police unit has been trained to track les UX through the sewers, catacombs and old quarries that are their pathways under Paris. Prosecutors have been instructed to file charges whenever feasible.
The stand-off is symbolic of French society: a rigorous bureaucracy on the surface with a bizarre subculture below.
The following passage needs to be read with skepticism, but also with an appreciation for Kunstmann's Feuillade-worthy vision, whether or not it's entirely true:
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.
Before you assume that all of that is romantic mythmaking, consider this:
Last year the Untergunther [one of those branches] spent months hidden in the Panthéon, the Parisian mausoleum that holds France's greatest citizens, where they repaired a clock that had been left to rust. Slipping in at closing time every evening -- French television said that they had their own set of keys -- they set up a workshop hidden behind mock wooden crates at the top of the monument. The security guards never found it. The Untergunther used a professional clockmaker, Jean-Baptiste Viot, to mend the 150-year-old mechanism.
When the clock began working again, officials were horrified. The Centre for National Monuments confirmed that the clock had been repaired but said that the authority had begun legal action against the Untergunther. Under official investigation for breaking and entry, its members face a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a €15,000 (£10,500) fine.
"We could go down in legal history as the first people ever to be prosecuted for repairing a clock," said Mr Kunstmann.
Fortunately for the subterranean people of Paris, the prosecution failed.
[Via Infocult.]
thoreau|11.30.07 @ 11:42AM|#
Good with mechanical devices, and able to do as they please in
Paris without the French government being able to stop them?
Must be German.
Elemenope|11.30.07 @ 11:45AM|#
Jesus. Sounds like Silhouette from that old classic, Deus Ex. Wouldn't want to live in that world.
Episiarch|11.30.07 @ 11:47AM|#
Must be German.
Untergunther [one of those branches]
Sure seems that way. I'm sure they're only doing it to bag chicks,
though.
One group, which is all-female, specialises in
"infiltration"
I'll bet they do. ZING
|11.30.07 @ 11:47AM|#
And why, in the name of all that is good, are there two cats french kissing on my monitor this very instant.
Big Nanny|11.30.07 @ 11:48AM|#
We need to send our own "culture warrior" Bill O'reiley over there. He would straighten these people out.
|11.30.07 @ 11:51AM|#
Good with mechanical devices, and able to do as they please
in Paris without the French government being able to stop
them?
Must be German.
Or
these guys.
|11.30.07 @ 11:52AM|#
When I was young I used to approve whole hearted of such
pranksterism and might have even participated in an incident or two
but now that I am older I can't but see a certain narcissistic
arrogance in such actions.
Doing as ones pleases with the property of others, even collective
property, constitutes a form of aggression and dominance even if it
takes a puckish or beneficial form. The perpetuator effectively
states, "I know better than you what needs doing."
I mean, you wouldn't like to wake up unusually groggy one morning,
look down and see a row of stitches across your stomach and then
look up to see the smiling face of UX member who says, "I thought
you needed surgery."
On the other hand, these people seem no where near as destructive
as I would be if I had to live a dirigist state like France.
VM|11.30.07 @ 11:57AM|#
thoreau | November 30, 2007, 11:42am | #
Good with mechanical devices, and able to do as they please in Paris without the French government being able to stop them?
Must be German.
*sweeps up, shuts off lights. locks door. Doktor T wins the
internets.
|11.30.07 @ 12:04PM|#
Thank you France, for showing us the way. The closet
Libertarians there are demonstrating positive voluntary action. The
bureaucrats keep trying to catch them doing good things and they
keep fixing stuff.
Reminds me of the Ron Paul Revolution!
|11.30.07 @ 12:05PM|#
Doing as ones pleases with the property of others, even
collective property, constitutes a form of aggression and dominance
even if it takes a puckish or beneficial form. The perpetuator
effectively states, "I know better than you what needs
doing."
I'm glad we have the good folks in the government put a stop to
such people.
|11.30.07 @ 12:07PM|#
Oh yeah, and it's a stretch to equate fixing a clock with cutting someone's belly open.
|11.30.07 @ 12:15PM|#
A, ahem, friend of mine, let's call him Joey Joe Joe Junior
Shabadoo, used to participate in late night urban
explorations of the sewer system and abandoned buildings in a
certain pair of two cities in the northern and midwestern section
of a certain country located somewhere on the North American
continent. He tells me it was major fun.
And, Shannon, he also tells me that the prime directive was to look
and not to touch. Property damage was not acceptable. Ever. Sierra
Club ethics always applied.
There were a few times that the po-po frowned on such activity, I
am told, so Joey Joe Joe gradually lessened his involvement. Now
that he lives in a new city he is starting to feel the urge to poke
around in the dark corners of his new town now and then.
Morpheus|11.30.07 @ 12:15PM|#
Jesse Walker,
I've been wondering when you were going to report on this
phenomenon. It isn't new.
Shannon Love,
Much of the property that is used is never seen by the human eye.
Much of it consists of the former rock quarries that lay under much
of Paris. Eventually the quarries were buttressed so the city
wouldn't collapse, but a lot of space still exists under the
streets of Paris and no would be using one these areas for anything
otherwise.
Chucklehead|11.30.07 @ 12:18PM|#
Jesus. Sounds like Silhouette from that old classic, Deus
Ex. Wouldn't want to live in that world.
It's rather frightening to think of how far we've already come. The
Dept. of Homeland Security and the PATRIOT Act look like precursors
to UNATCO to me.
Syloson of Samos|11.30.07 @ 12:19PM|#
In other words, Paris has a honeycombed underground. There are official sewer tours of course.
|11.30.07 @ 12:21PM|#
The NYC underground is also pretty shockingly cool (and shockingly terrifying at the same time). I hear tales of a group of amphibious teenage martial artists who reside there.
Syloson of Samos|11.30.07 @ 12:22PM|#
One of the cool things that one can visit are the bunkers from WWII.
VM|11.30.07 @ 12:23PM|#
"Syloson of Samos | November 30, 2007, 12:19pm | #
In other words, Paris has a honeycombed underground. There are
official sewer tours of course."
very cool! You can also do "Third Man" tours of the underground
stuff in Vienna.
|11.30.07 @ 12:26PM|#
crimethink,
Oh yeah, and it's a stretch to equate fixing a clock with
cutting someone's belly open.
That the violation is minor is not the point. The point is that a
small group of individual abrogates to themselves the right to
decide what to do with the resources of others. Its exactly the
same mind set that leads people to believe they have the right and
knowledge necessary to take from Peter to give to Paul.
|11.30.07 @ 12:26PM|#
Randolph Carter,
All I know is that there's some freaks always ordering pizza to be
delivered to a manhole cover, and demanding to get it free because
it takes forever to find them. Assholes.
Syloson of Samos|11.30.07 @ 12:27PM|#
Shannon Love,
The point is that a small group of individual abrogates to
themselves the right to decide what to do with the resources of
others.
So, how exactly is an unvisited, forgotten underground space a
"resource of others?"
|11.30.07 @ 12:31PM|#
Morpheus,
...a lot of space still exists under the streets of Paris and
no would be using one these areas for anything
otherwise.
So you wouldn't mind if a major corporation decided on its own to
use the space for some safe purpose?
Like many political questions, this come down to finding the locus
of discretion i.e. which actual living breathing human being gets
to make a specific decision. Who decides how any resource, private
or collective gets used? Why do think the UX hold the locus instead
of bureaucrats? Would you trust any random person to make that
decision on their own? Who is responsible when someone inevitably
makes a mistake and causes problems?
DannyK|11.30.07 @ 12:34PM|#
[i]
The authorities view them differently: as the dark side of the City
of Light -- irresponsible, paranoid subversives whose actions could
serve as a model for terrorists.
[/i]
This is breathtaking -- what a wonderful way to extend the War on
Terror into everyday life! Is there anything that couldn't
potentially be criminalized with this argument?
Syloson of Samos|11.30.07 @ 12:35PM|#
Shannon Love,
So you wouldn't mind if a major corporation decided on its own
to use the space for some safe purpose?
No, not really. Do you even understand what Paris' underground
looks like? They wouldn't be using these spaces. I mean, from what
I've read on the subject it is stated that a lot of these
underground spaces take hours to journey to and they often 80, 100,
etc. feet underground. It is like spelunking the best I can
tell.
Billy Beck|11.30.07 @ 12:38PM|#
"I'm glad we have the good folks in the government put a
stop to such people."
No kiddin'. Otherwise, the damned tractors wouldn't rust away in
the collective fields where they belong.
Syloson of Samos|11.30.07 @ 12:39PM|#
Shannon Love,
What problems do you envision exactly? What problems have
occurred?
Syloson of Samos|11.30.07 @ 12:47PM|#
BTW, much of old Paris was torn down under the reign Napoleon III to make the city and its population more "legible." Scott discusses this in Seeing Like A State. Those wide avenues are both pretty and easy to police.
Jay D|11.30.07 @ 12:53PM|#
The bureaucrats keep trying to catch them doing good things
and they keep fixing stuff.
The A-Team! Only without the AK-47s.
|11.30.07 @ 12:56PM|#
I became confused when Shannon Love started talking about putting clocks into peoples stomachs!
Jay D|11.30.07 @ 1:01PM|#
Doing as ones pleases with the property of others, even
collective property, constitutes a form of aggression and dominance
even if it takes a puckish or beneficial form. The perpetuator
effectively states, "I know better than you what needs
doing."
It sounds like they do know better about what needs doing.
Righting one little wrong that came about because of the weight of
socialist neglect.
It would have been cool if Orwell had Winston and Julia doing
something like this in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Syloson of Samos|11.30.07 @ 1:15PM|#
Ayn Randian,
I do sincerely apologize for forgetting to rename myself after a
joke message on another topic.
You do realize that my nick is almost always attached to
my blog, right?
Syloson of Samos|11.30.07 @ 1:18PM|#
Ayn Randian,
Oh, and I will continue to choose new nicks from time to time as
the whim suits me. Last time I changed it was due to me re-reading
Herodotus.
VM|11.30.07 @ 1:27PM|#
Hay J Sub.
URKOBOLD noticed you. Not that you'll get any service from
WEIBSKOBOLD, but still :)
SofS: ah, yes. The "Malkovich from Dangerous Liasons": start with
one or two latin terms.
Cara Lutetia|11.30.07 @ 1:30PM|#
VM,
The book was pretty interesting. I've always liked the device of
using "letters" as a means to communicate a story (the epistolary
novel).
Bernd|11.30.07 @ 1:46PM|#
Well, if you go with a libertarian interpretation of natural
rights (I certainly do), they definitely have the right to do what
they do:
They are homesteading the goods and places in question simply by
using them while others have abandoned them.
In fact, it kinda makes me sad that the first question for many
people when somebody is doing something cool and creative with
abandoned spaces is whether they had "permission" to do it.
It reminds me of the old anecdote about the Austrian revolution of
1848 where the emperor, when told that the citizenry had erected
barricades, asked "Jo derfens denn des?" ("well, are they allowed
to do that?").
Utterly unthinkable that things should happen that are not
regulated by the government!
Paul|11.30.07 @ 1:46PM|#
When the clock began working again, officials were
horrified. The Centre for National Monuments confirmed that the
clock had been repaired but said that the authority had begun legal
action against the Untergunther.
Something tells me that when anything begins "working", in France,
officials are horrified.
Cara Lutetia|11.30.07 @ 1:47PM|#
Jay D,
Well, one of the things that some libertarians bemoan is the
government sponsorship, etc. of art in France.
Paul|11.30.07 @ 1:53PM|#
Doing as ones pleases with the property of others, even
collective property
I agree-- kind of. "Collective" property is public property-- and
when everyone owns it, nobody does.
"You can't be in here, this is public property!"
Paul|11.30.07 @ 2:04PM|#
BTW, much of old Paris was torn down under the reign
Napoleon III to make the city and its population more
"legible."
S of S, as I understand the history, France's much vaunted wide
avenues were created so that troops could move easily and put down
insurrections. Maybe you could illuminate further.
|11.30.07 @ 2:25PM|#
Ok, it sounds pretty cool, but... what happens if (read: when)
someone gets hurt while "infiltrating" some museum, tomb, what have
you?
And the municipality gets sued?
And the taxpayers pick up the bill?
God, I sound old...
Rhywun|11.30.07 @ 3:15PM|#
They are homesteading the goods and places in question
simply by using them while others have abandoned them.
Hm. The example right above (the Panthéon) reads more like
"breaking and entering" to me.
Bernd|11.30.07 @ 4:29PM|#
tk: So, nobody should do anything for which a screwed up system
(as opposed to the people doing potentially dangerous things in the
first place) makes others pay?
Oh boy, better stay at home lying down.
|11.30.07 @ 5:46PM|#
Bernd -
Ah... See, if people were truly responsible for their own actions,
and held themselves accountable for their own stupidity, no
worries.
The world would be a better place.
Maybe I'm just a cynic (I live in Philly, so sue me), but somehow I
cannot help but see some Romantic-era would be Byron staging a
"happening" in the abandoned station situation in the Ben Franklin
Bridge and getting himself and his friends electrocuted, and then
the city getting sued for $100 mil.
And the last time I checked, the French seem to be even less of the
"I am accountable and personally responsible" type.
But that is just my opinion.
Like I said, I'm from Philly...
MattXIV|11.30.07 @ 5:49PM|#
I don't really mind the urban exploration end of this, but while I appreciate the sentiment behind it, the restoration projects may end up inadvertently damaging things (particularly if interrupted in progress by the police) and trespassing that involves compromising the security systems of the buildings may have unintended side effects (extra copies of the keys floating around and shut down alarm systems may allow those with less noble motives to gain access). Of course, the policy of throwing the book at them even when they don't do any harm (justified of course by vague appeals to possible terrorist threats) seems unnecessarily heavy handed.
|11.30.07 @ 6:29PM|#
Paul:
I happen to be reading (almost finished) Andrew Hussey's Paris: The
Secret History and he has a large section devoted to Hausman, who
was largely responsible for the demolition of old Paris and the
construction of the grand boulevards under Napoleon III. And yes, a
lot of the redesign was done with policing and public order in
mind. Prior to Hausman's redesign - which lots of Parisians
thought, and still think, ruined large portions of the city - Paris
was a vast crazy quilt of meandering streets and byways - the
really old parts of the city, like the islands in the Seine and the
neighorboods closest to the river, had grown organically for 800
years - they didn't have a lot of urban planning in the 16 century,
for instance - and so when the citizenry took to the streets and
manned the barricades, the army and police had a hard time getting
around. Razing a lot of those neighborhoods, putting up big uniform
apartment buildings and wide straight avenues did a lot to help the
armed forces maintain control after that. I need to go back and
read the part about the Commune of the 1870s - it broke out in the
older parts of the city but I think the general carnage inflicted
by the army on the Communards took place in the redesigned
portions. I could be wrong.
To give Hausman credit, he did modernize the sewers. English
visitors to Paris in the early 19th century were appalled at the
raw sewage running through the streets of the best
neigborhoods.
The book has made me long to see Paris. Just the buildings, mind
you - I'm still not that interested in meeting the inhabitants. But
maybe that's because I just finished the portion that covers World
War II.
Jackson Kuhl|11.30.07 @ 8:42PM|#
Julia Solis, author of
New York Underground, wrote a recent
story for Nat Geo Adventure about her expedition into
subterranean Paris.
Ruin/urban exploration is fairly common here in the States too, and
as de stijl pointed out, the serious ones operate under a "take
only photos, leave only footprints" ethic. Here's a fun photo site, and of course
there's always the Weird NJ guys. Hardly
the sort expected to perform pro bono appendectomies.
The clock story is a perfect example of why, moral objections to
taxation aside, I think government bodies are poor choices to
curate antiquities: they often refuse to adequately fund their
maintenance. Generally I see better results when properties and
items are cared for by private groups such as historical societies.
I suspect this is because their sources of income are more diverse
and not as susceptible to the whims of politicians who often assume
responsibilities they're later unwilling to budget for.
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