Les UX
The UX is an underground organization of urban explorers who improve hidden corners of Paris. Their work includes an undercover effort to repair and restore the Panthéon's clock, building a cinema — complete with a bar and a restaurant — in a section of the Paris Catacombs underneath the Trocadéro, restoring medieval crypts, and staging plays and readings in monuments after dark. The group's membership is largely secret, but its spokespeople include Lazar Kunstmann.
History
With its start in September 1981, the founders of the group stole plans of the many underground passageways and tunnels for which Paris is famous. Using this information as a base, the group of anonymous artists and citizens have since restored much of Paris's underground infrastructure, including the Panthéon clock, which chimed for the first time in many years after its repair. The group is also responsible for over a dozen other projects, including those which the French government have not chosen to do or for which they lack funds.Organization
The organization is divided into teams: an all-female team specializing in infiltration, a team running an internal messaging system and coded radio network, a team providing a database, a team organizing underground shows, a team doing photography, a team who explore the catacombs and create sculptures, and a team undertaking restoration work with the help of architects and historians.Projects
In October 2007, the Untergunther team received attention for a project to clandestinely restore the famous clock in the Panthéon which had been out of commission since the 1960s. They were assisted by professional clockmaker Jean-Baptiste Viot, installing a workshop for him beneath the building's dome. The team were not caught, and upon completion they announced their work to the building's administrator, after which the Centre des Monuments Nationaux sought unsuccessfully to prosecute them.In September 2004, French police discovered an underground movie theatre run by La Mexicaine De Perforation. The makeshift theatre contained a movie screen, a well stocked bar, and a kitchen, and was protected by a security system that played a recorded sound of barking dogs. Movie titles ranging from 1950s classics to modern thrillers were also discovered. Electricity and a phone connection had been brought in from an unknown location. When the police returned for a formal investigation, the cinema had been dismantled and the power and phone lines cut — they found a note reading "Ne cherchez pas".
Official reaction
Parisian authorities oppose the group's actions and have started a police unit to track the group through the sewers and catacombs of Paris in an attempt to apprehend and charge its members.Charges were brought by the government against the four Untergunther restorers of the Pantheon clock. At trial, after 20 minutes' deliberation, the judge ruled in the defendants' favor. France has no laws against breaking into public monuments. One of the government's prosecutors referred to the charges as "stupid". One of the Untergunther restorers, Jean-Baptiste Viot, was later appointed as the official restorer of the clock in 2018, with his work during the Untergunther restoration cited as proof of his qualifications.