Voyage en terres intérieures : écriture multimodale du moi dans Les Paysages atomiques (2017) de Fiorenza Menin

This article studies the multimodal writing of the self at work in Les Paysages atomiques, a video film entirely composed of photographs made in 2017 by the French artist Fiorenza Floraline Menini. It takes its title from a series of eponymous photographs taken by the artist between 1992 and 2008 to document the clouds of atomic forms that appear on her route as revelatory of her inner landscape. For the film, these photos are photographed alongside the notebooks Menini was writing at the time she made her series, and these still images - the series of Paysages atomiques and the photographs of photos and notebooks – are set in motion by a video editing software. The artist’s voice-over accompanies the unfolding of the images through the reading of a long text with poetic accents, mixing extracts from contemporary notebooks of the atomic landscapes, comments on the photos, and reflections on the photography. Projecting itself into the different levels of the multimodal narrative (photos, texts, audio, video), the fragmented self finds a form that allows it to grasp and tell itself, which also gives its subject a value of otherness. We analyse the revealing power of the multimodal narrative, the initiatory character of the multidimensional journey, and the allobiographic dimension of the filmic device.