Restoration ninjas

Here's a fascinating article from Wired: The New French Hacker-Artist Underground, about a secretive group that sneaks into cultural sites in Paris and carries out "shocking acts of cultural preservation and repair." It raises some very interesting questions about cultural patrimony and whose responsibility it is - this group claims they do what they do because the "government has abandoned or doesn’t have the means to maintain" many cultural sites and artifacts that no longer receive any attention. Meanwhile, of course, they have been sued by the government once it learned about some of their projects. Is it better to let historically-valuable objects degrade while they're being kept "safe" by the state? Or is it better for individuals to break in at night via poorly-secured tunnels and carry out their own restoration projects? Both are very bizarre approaches to cultural patrimony. But I have to say, I love the idea of this organization having "subgroups specializing in cartography, infiltration, tunneling, masonry, internal communications, archiving, restoration, and cultural programming." They sound better organized than some of the institutions set up to carry out the tasks these people have decided to undertake themselves.