O TOI QUE J’EUSSE AIMEE, O TOI QUI LE SAVAIS

In the art project O to que j’eusse aimee, o toi qui le savais, a nanolithography technique is used. The starting point is the theoretical concept of Walter Benjamin and his ideas of disappearing aura from his essay Artwork at the time when it can be technically reproduced (Das Kunstwerk and Zeitalter seiner Technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, 1935/1939). Nanolithography was made in cooperation with Laboratory F7: Department of Complex Matter at the Institute Jožeph Štefan in Ljubljana in the summer of 2009, with the head of the department prof. dr. Dragan Mihailović and physicist Boštjan Berčič.
At art project O que j’eusse aimee, o qui le savais the two fingerprints (my wife’s and mine) were used, which were scanned and zhen turned into a monochrome bitmap image for computer graphics (BMP). With BMP each dot / line is a trace to the screen consisted purely of zero (0) and ones (1). This graphics is printed with an electron microscope or an electron beam of light on a polymer that is applied on a silicon plate. Then the plate is washed in a solution (monomer) that removes surfaces that have not been exposed electron beam. The polymer was not steamed with gold, as is the usual procedure, but was continued to observe with an electron microscope which impacted the image with slowly deterioration.
The formative starting point that rearticulation in the nanolithography field is a painting Škofja Loka v snegu by the painter Ivan Grohar. The picture from 1905 is oil painting on canvas, dimension 87 x 99 cm. Today, the painting is part of a collection at the National Gallery in Ljubljana and is the property of the Modern Gallery. The painting is special for removing of spatial boundaries in an exceptional way and foggy outline lines of buildings around the main square. According to the testimony artist: Grohar wanted to capture the moment during the rainfall during the shooting slowly changing into snowfall. To soften the boundaries of the landscape Grohar used a painting spatula and flat finish colours, resulting in the disappearing of a space in painting.
A narrative starting point is a fictional story that seeks to connect such a feeling of silence Grohar’s image, a sense of presence and memory, as well as Benjamin’s notion of aura: “an unusual mix of space and time a unique outline of the distance, let it be so close. “(Benjamin: Kleine Gesichithte der Photographie, 1931). The story is in the original in English. For the language editing, I am grateful to the Jana Putrle Srdić and the Sunčan Patrick Stone, who corrected my awkwardness.

Title: O toi que j’eusse aimee, o toi qui le savais
Artist: Zoran Srdić Janežič

Exhibition: Open studio – Na preži,
Language editing: Sunčan Partick Stone, Jana Putrle Srdić
Making of nanolitography: Boštjan Berčič
Consulting and help: Dragan Mihailović
The nanolitography was possible with the help of F7: odsek za kompleksne snovi na Inštitutu Jožef Štefan v Ljubljani
First title: Snežni metež / izginjanja
Year: 2009
Production: Zavod za sodobne umetnosti in kulture Gulag
Editor: Jana Putrle Srdić
Print: Camera
300 copies
2018

The video from Youtube: