5.752.414.468 2020-2021

In 5.752.414.468, the subject is dispute No. ARB12/12 of ICSID (International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, organization of the World Bank Group) between Vattenfall (a Swedish energy company) and the Federal Republic of Germany. After the nuclear accident in Fukushima, the German government passed a 13th amendment to the Atomic Energy Act in order to phase out nuclear energy more quickly.

Vattenfall, which operates several nuclear power plants in Germany, filed a claim with ICSID against this policy decision, seeking €5.752414468 billion in damages. The first ten-day hearing of the case was streamed live. This format, intended as a “transparency promise” was the first time an ICSID hearing was made available to the public.

For her video work 5,752,414,468 Gabriela Löffel used excerpts from the opening and closing arguments of this hearing as raw material. She then gave this text material to a casting office for further processing as a script and commissioned the director Ulrike Müller to cast actors for the three main characters of the trial, a judge and two lawyers.

5.752.414.468 consists of the recordings of this casting as well as audio excerpts of the original trial. Gabriela Löffel uses elements of the filmmaking process to emphasize or deepen the content of the negotiations. Casting, as an essential yet invisible part of film production, serves here to fan out and deconstruct the original text in an operating room of fiction, providing a glimpse inside what is being said. And the casting and filming location, the Tempodrom in Berlin, also reflects the content themes in its form. The unfinished problems of nuclear energy and the balance of power of international investment treaties are also reflected in the extended running time of the installation of 1h55.

In March 2021, in out-of-court negotiations with Vattenfall and other groups, the German government agreed to pay damages, in particular, payments of 1.425 billion euros to Vattenfall, as well as 880 million euros to RWE, 80 million to EnBW and 42.5 million to E.ON/Preussen Elektra. The arbitration court formally ended the proceedings on November 9, 2021.

Texte de Inga Seidler
Exposition «Monitoring», Kasseler Dokumentarfilm- und Videofest, Kassel 2022

« Ces enregistrements du casting ainsi que des extraits des voix originales des protagonistes de la procédure au CIRDI constituent l’installation vidéo à trois canaux 5.752.414.468.

La problématique de l’énergie nucléaire, non résolue, ainsi que les rapports de force inscrits dans les accords d’investissement internationaux sous-tendent la durée choisie de l’installation, 1h55. Cette longueur fait écho à l’idée de la poursuite d’un processus sans fin, qui reste aussi ouvert sous la forme du casting, suspendu sans trouver son accomplissement dans la réalisation d’un film de fiction. »

Extrait du texte de Gabriela Löffel

Credits :
Directrice de casting: Ulrike Müller
Metteuse en scène: Irene von Alberti
Casting caméra: Rocio Diaz, Karl Schirnhofer
Acteurs-trices : Friederike Kempter, Kristian Wanzl Nekrasov, Andy Murray, Neda Rahmanian, Richard Gonlag, Andreas Nickl
Franziska Machens, Jenny Schily, John Keogh

Lieu de tournage:
Tempodrom, Berlin, Allemagne

Écoutez l’entretien de Gabriela Löffel par Alice Henkes pour SRF Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen.

REPÉRAGES ET PROCESSUS

Consultez la chronologie de la procédure originale et détails du cas No. ARB/12/12 sur le site de l’ICSID (International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes):