What could possibly be wrong with pointing out overlooked or neglected public services and spaces by improving them? Isn’t that the summit of responsibility: to go out, act and change society actively? Does it influence our perception of such actions when people operate outside our legal system in carrying them out? Maybe it is too dissident to imagine a society which greatly benefits from highly illegal but well-executed actions.

Here are a few examples of projects carried out illegally in the public sphere but were nevertheless designed to make a difference:

- UnterGunther is a Swiss-French urban explorers team whose main activity is to restore invisible parts of public heritage in total clandestinity. They infiltrated the Pantheon in Paris and started, with the help of professional clockmaker Jean-Baptiste Viot, to restore the abandoned monumental 1850 Wagner clock. By secretly organizing workshops, the clock is now operational again after years of bureaucratic neglect.

In a recent interview the subversive potential of their acts is being discussed: “We are the counterpoint to an era where everything is slow and complicated. It’s very difficult to get anything done through official channels. If you want to do it, you have to be clandestine.”

- Dressed as city state employees, an artist collective in LA named Guerilla Public Service, decided to install a better series of signs to aid drivers to their destination and ease traffic blockage. Their actions effect positive change, they want “to prove the integrity of the arts, its place in culture and why civilization needs it.”

- Also: remember our post about guerilla gardening, the idea to garden in public urban spaces, armed with trowels, plants, and vision: here and here.

I find it fascinating to see how society fails in dealing with these sudden ruptures in its own bureaucratic, over-regulated and mal-functioning structure. The projects point towards the benefit of the subversive improvement of everyday life: the things we notice, don’t notice and what we take for granted.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Movements, The Commons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.