The Damien Fontaine scenographer and his producer are suspected of having received privileged information to modify their project and thus be chosen for the animation of the Fourvière hill at the 2018 edition.
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The shadow of hanging favoritism on the Lyon light festival. A preliminary inquiry, to which Le Monde had access, reveals discrete dealings during the public contract award, suggesting the biased choice of an artist, at the expense of another. These maneuvers would have occurred during the 2018 edition of the famous illuminations of the capital of Gaul.
The Damien Fontaine, 46-year-old scenographer, and its producer, Sébastien Salvagnac, 53, are suspected of having substantially modified their project to win the batch reserved for the animation of the emblematic Fourvière hill, benefiting from privileged information. The two men could be pursued for “complicity or concealism of favoritism”, according to the judicial customs synthesis report, delivered to the Lyon Public Prosecutor on September 3rd, and addressed, at the beginning of November, to the protagonists of the case.
After two years of investigations disrupted by COVID-19 and municipal elections, auditions and a discreet search at City Hall in December 2019, investigators also pin a project manager of the City of Lyon , for “violation of the rules related to procurement procedures”. The latter would have punctually participated in the litigious exchanges, according to the report consulted by Le Monde.
The case is started from the city’s call for tenders in March 2018. The Festival of Lights is scheduled for 8 December. The batch of Fourvière deals with an envelope of the order of 200,000 euros including TTC, on an overall budget of 3.5 million, half of which is funded by private partners. Two projects are then in competition. For its eighth participation, Damien Fontaine, award-winning director, designs a show called “3 rd type2″, with a steering balloon projecting “retroffuturist visions” on the hill.
disturbing similarities with another project
Another artist, the plastic Milosh Luczynski proposes, meanwhile, a projection entitled “Reflections”, consisting of fragmented diamond-shaped images. The creation prolongs the permanent work of the Franco-Polish artist, named Pattern, composed of videos of life scenes of nature and cities around the world. He is finally dismissed. But discover with stupor that the title “reflections” and the elements of language, drawn from his file, have been transposed into Mr. Fontaine’s project. Faced with the confused explanations of the city, a complaint is filed, and the investigation launched in July 2019.
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