{"id":13766,"date":"2012-02-28T09:03:37","date_gmt":"2012-02-28T14:03:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=13766"},"modified":"2018-01-11T16:09:54","modified_gmt":"2018-01-11T21:09:54","slug":"hacker-artist-group-ux-roves-under-paris-streets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/02\/28\/hacker-artist-group-ux-roves-under-paris-streets\/","title":{"rendered":"Hacker-Artist group UX roves under Paris streets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A fascinating article in <em>Wired<\/em> talks about a French group that does the opposite of vandalism &mdash; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/magazine\/2012\/01\/ff_ux\/all\/1\" target=\"_blank\">unauthorized repairs<\/a> to neglected historical <em>objets d&#8217;art<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>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 \u201cUrban eXperiment.\u201d UX is sort of like an artist\u2019s collective, but far from being avant-garde &mdash; confronting audiences by pushing the boundaries of the new &mdash; 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 \u201crestoring those invisible parts of our patrimony that the government has abandoned or doesn\u2019t have the means to maintain.\u201d The group claims to have conducted 15 such covert restorations, often in centuries-old spaces, all over Paris.<\/p>\n<p>What has made much of this work possible is UX\u2019s mastery, established 30 years ago and refined since, of the city\u2019s network of underground passageways &mdash; 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\u2019 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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>H\/T to <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/CuthSpies\/statuses\/174358531238141952\" target=\"_blank\">CuthSpies<\/a> for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A fascinating article in Wired talks about a French group that does the opposite of vandalism &mdash; unauthorized repairs to neglected historical objets d&#8217;art: 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 \u201cUrban eXperiment.\u201d UX is sort of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,1117,7,28],"tags":[102,786],"class_list":["post-13766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-france","category-history","category-media","tag-art","tag-paris"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3A2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13767,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13766\/revisions\/13767"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}