“Release in good standing”, “unilateral decision”, “brutal method”, or “stab in the back”… It has been more than two weeks since the co-authors of the Heron Tree and their supporters have not digested the announcement by the mayor of Nantes and president of the metropolis, Johanna Rolland, Thursday, September 15, during a press conference, to give up funding for their cultural project.
Carried by the company La Machine, creator of the Grand Elephant which has become one of the emblems of the city, this installation 35 meters high and 50 meters in diameter, taking the form of a steel tree with vegetated branches, was to take place on the site of the Miséry quarry, on the banks of the Loire. Formalized in July 2021, the monumental project – carried for twenty-two years by the founders of La Machine, Pierre Orefice and François Delarozière – was to be financed by the metropolis of Nantes, public partners (department, region, French State) and private companies, through an endowment fund.
After having supported the project for a long time, the socialist mayor changed her mind, judging that it no longer met the “context of social and ecological emergency” current. The chosen one highlights “the skid” its construction cost, in particular due to the increase in the cost of raw materials, which would represent an additional 15 million euros. According to the calculations of the metropolis, the merry-go-round sculpture was estimated at 80.4 million euros. A figure called into question by La Machine, for whom the increase in the overall price is “unexplained” and “fanciful”, ensuring that it remains at 52.4 million euros. Catherine Saudray, the legal director of the company, does not take off. If the ex-lawyer agrees that the price of steel is “very volatile”she notes that this was almost halved between July 2021 and September 2022, while the metropolis simultaneously claims a 56% increase.
According to the calculations of the metropolis, the sculpture was estimated at 80.4 million euros, against initially 52.4 million
Beyond the inflationary context, the complexity of the legal structure proved to be another point of disagreement. While the metropolis planned to grant a single contract to the company for the creation of a work of art, the prefecture would have requested at the end of August that the metropolis carry out several public contracts, causing an additional cost of 13 million euros. euros. “We are really in the idea of a dog that we would like to bite and which looks like he has rabies”Judge Catherine Saudray, who finds the financial, legal and political arguments “all fallacious”, and regrets not having been able to consult the letters from the Loire-Atlantique prefecture.
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