Guerilla Conservators!
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"Undercover restorers fix Panthéon clock
Perhaps what the conservation world needs is to spice up its image. In Paris, according to a report in the Guardian, ‘cultural guerrillas’ broke into the Panthéon, established a secret workshop and, working under the supervision of professional clockmaker Jean-Baptiste Viot, spent a year taking apart and repairing the building’s clock, which had last worked sometime in the 1960s.
Far from being thanked, the four members of the underground ‘cultural guerrilla’ movement known as the Untergunther – a group of intrepid ‘illegal conservators’, dedicated to restoring France’s cultural heritage – were prosecuted for breaking into a national monument. They were acquitted on Friday, but the building’s administrator lost his job.
‘When we had finished the repairs, we had a big debate on whether we should let the Panthéon’s officials know or not’, said Lazar Klausmann, a spokesperson for the Untergunther. ‘We decided to tell them in the end so that they would know to wind the clock up so it would still work.’
‘We would like to be able to replace the State in those areas where it is incompetent’, said Klausmann, ‘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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