The Pantheon’s clock has been stopped since the 1960s. The little story says that it had been sabotaged by the one who was responsible for it, tired of having to go up regularly. The years then the decades parade and administrators, employees or visitors get used to the immobility of the needles. We no longer pay attention to this emblematic work of hybridization between engineering and artistic kinetics. The time, money, the meanders of the administration: everything contributes to the mechanical clock of the Pantheon of Paris, installed around 1850 by the French watchmaker Bernard Henri Wagner, or frozen Ad Vitam.
During the four decades following sabotage, no grain of sand in the cogs of habit and disinterest disturbs this lack of dynamics. At the end of 2005, as if by magic, the monumental system is recovering. The clock works again and reports to everyone that it has become mistress of time.
A double -bottom enigma
Only here, no one knows precisely since when this beautiful mechanics woke up and especially by which strange alchemy the whole has regained its full health.
The administrator in office at the time of the facts, Bernard Jeannot, and his assistant, Pascal Monnet, made no order or tender intended for the repair of the Wagner clock. The staff do not know anything either. However, the repair of such a collector’s room requires an exceptional level of competence which is not within the reach of the first watchmaker. Whoever has carried out this work are experts whose names are known or faces and even less the motivations.
The philosophy of the Urban Experiment: occupy the underused public spaces, far from any request for authorization, deemed contrary to the spirit of initiative.
So who are they and why did they do it? The enigma remains whole and has a double background. In reality, no one realizes the resurrection of the clock, until the officials of this open heart operation appear in the flesh and bone ahead of Bernard Jeannot and Pascal Monnet. So here are the Untergunther in the management office. The group belongs to a larger set, called Urban Experiment (UX), which brings together collectives such as the Mexican of perforation (organizer of clandestine film screenings) or House Mouse (specializing in infiltration and neutralization of surveillance systems).
A France Culture program broadcast in the late 2000s (not available in podcast) had highlighted the light signals that these different groups – not composed of the same individuals – then exchanged in the Parisian night, during simultaneous clandestine operations. Their philosophy: occupy the underused public spaces, far from any request for authorization, deemed contrary to the spirit of initiative.
“We have rehabilitated the clock … of the Pantheon”
That day, in the office of the administrators of the Pantheon, Lazar Kunstmann, Lanso, Natacha and Jean-Baptiste reveal the extent of the work carried out clandestinely in the nose and the beard of all. The dialogue between the institution and the benevolent pirates, reported in the book Culture in illegals – UX From Lazar Kunstmann, illustrates two worlds which telescop.
“We were sitting in front of the administrator, Mr. Bernard Jeannot, but also of his subordinate pusillanime, Mr. Pascal Monnet. (…) I spoke:
– Here is Lanso, head of the Les Untergunther group, and Natacha Serguine who assists him. Under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Viot (I appointed Jean-Baptiste Viot), they proceeded to restore and restore the clock.
Far from clarifying things, my words had seemed to further strengthen the misunderstanding of our interlocutors. Even the secretary had stopped typing.
-Uh … The Pantheon’s clock, I used, for fear of having been precise enough.
– Aaah…, said Bernard Jeannot. (…) But… uh… how?
-With their own means, I replied.
– Finally … I meant, when?
– Throughout the past year.
– Ah good? But finally I … I was not at all aware.
– This is normal Mr. Jeannot, if this restoration was done in a professional manner … It was also done in a strictly clandestine way.
– You mean … at night?
-Uh … not essentially, but yes, among others at night, I said, checking that Lanso and Jean-Baptiste approved.
-But maybe you would like to see the clock in question?
-Ah well yes, he said, suddenly more curious than tense. Where is she?
-Lanso and Jean-Baptiste will lead you there, I said when I get up. ”
“We are not here to trial a clock restoration”
The case ended up in court in 2006 and 2007, after one of the complaints filed by the Center des monuments nationaux, which pleads for the recognition of a vague involuntary degradation of the Untergunther in the emblematic monument of the nation. Dumbfounded, the magistrates of the Paris Criminal Court do not really understand what the members of this strange brotherhood do at the helm.
” – The President: There is something I don’t understand. I see on the minutes, that you have added locks and padlocks on certain doors … What?
-Because they closed badly, I replied. We didn’t want to see anyone going into the pantheon during the period of our site.
President Éric Meunier obviously used the same technique as theater actors to avoid a perfectly inappropriate laugh (during an audience for example): biting their tongue very strong. ”
“The question posed is that of legitimacy. In other words, who is really legitimate to restore what degrades by effect of inaction? ”
Then the prosecutor Anne Benejean spoke. Quoting an article she had read in Times, she enjoined the Untergunther of “Stop playing white knights from heritage in distress”. These words did not mention much to the Untergunther, because they had never perceived their action from this angle.
Finally, Anne Benejean concludes her requisitions in these terms: “But hey … As you pointed out, Mr. President, we are not there to trial a clock restoration, but for a storage story, to which I personally understand nothing. I am a little ashamed that the prosecution – the prosecution is a bit of me – was stupidly agreed to continue on “facts” so abstract. Consequently, I ask for the release. “
A dozen years after the illegal repair of 2005 and 2006, the national monuments center, which ultimately does not have the tenacious resentment, finally completes the restoration … With the help of Jean-Baptiste Viot, watchmaker and member of the Untergunther.
Happy end: in 2006 the Utergunther urban experimentation group clandestinely restored the clock of the Pantheon.
12 years later, despite the trial he had brought them, the CMN called on (among others) to finish catering.https: //t.co/ve1qymw6zr pic.twitter.com/wsg0nywehp– Pierre Ropert (@trazou) December 10, 2018
Legitimacy and transmission
Ultimately, Jean-Baptiste Viot, Lazar Kunstmann, Lanso and the others revealed the restoration of the clock to the administrators, who had forgotten it so that the heritage of all does not remain confined in the sometimes defaulting memories of some.
There may be the real Untergunther project, as Lazar Kunstmann explained to us. “This type of operation is not intended to produce what was not yet called buzz. Even if the playful dimension is actually present, which explains that the assembly of the clandestine workshop in the Pantheon was more time-consuming than restoration itself, the question that is asked is that of legitimacy. In other words, who is really legitimate to restore what is degraded by effect of inaction? In the Mitan of the 1980s, the group’s watchmaker, Jean-Baptiste Viot, already thinks that we are, insofar as by this action (and others), we act of transmission. (…) Furthermore, this transmission has never stopped, still today, the network that we form with the other groups of European urban experimenters endeavors to disseminate this knowledge, certainly a little special but salutary. ”
“If we have decided to inform the institution, once our work is finished, it is precisely so that the restoration gives rise to regular maintenance.”
Mexican perforation or untergunther are to date the most famous names in urban experimentation projects, both in France and abroad. However, if we refer to the decrypts of Lazar Kunstmann, it is likely that operations similar to those of the Pantheon clock were carried out at low noise without having been (still) revealed.
“If we have decided to inform the institution, once our work is finished, it is precisely for the restoration to give rise to regular maintenanceinsists Lazar Kunstmann. That said, it also happens that some of our projects are never “claimed”. In this case, all these efforts do not gratitude to their authors. ”
The extraordinary history of the Untergunther project opens up new fields of possibilities. With teams of this caliber, the truth is not only elsewhere, it is exhilarating and above all it remains open. Is the capital always the scene of other restorations, repairs or clandestine uses of cultural places? Let us pass every day in front of a part of the heritage of which we owe the return to life to the fathers, mothers or children of these clandestine passengers of culture? If Paris is magic, then bets are launched.
