New York, 11 septembre 2001 : choc hystérique, choc historique ? Une question de point de vue dans Untitled de Fiorenza Menini

Abstract

Through the study of Fiorenza Menini’s art film Untitled, this article wishes to analyze how, on the very day after the attacks on the World Trade Center on the 11^th of September, 2001, other ways of homage and testimony were able to appear within the hysterical world of instantaneousness. As a transmitter, the artist utilizes indeed the field of the real in order to have a chance to give it a place inside the history shared by his/her contemporaries. The work of remembrance, on remembrance, lies thus at the core of his/her mission. He/she is the one who can decipher and incorporate the event in the history of a collective memory. Following this trend, our analysis tries to show that Fiorenza Menini, in the way she confronts her viewer with the event in itself, forces him/her to single it out up to its re-inscription in a real chronology. The event can thus be commemorated as a shared, historical memory, far from its hysterical representation in the media. Untitled would then expose us to this memorial ethics through its re-presentation of the event, in total opposition with the other representations of it in the immediate after-shock.