Dr Linda Fibiger recently joined artists, anthropologists and scientists from 11 European countries for a kick-off meeting of the TRACES project, which will explore the challenges and opportunities inherent in transmitting contentious cultural heritages in contemporary Europe. (Published 25 May 2016) HTML Image The project name is shortened to TRACES, but its full name is 'Transmitting Contentious Cultural Heritages with the Arts'. As part of TRACES, the Creative Co-Production ‘Dead Images’ (CCP4) engages with the complex and contentious legacy of collections of human skulls kept by museums, universities and other public institutions in Europe. These osteological archives, now mostly withdrawn from public view, were amassed during the 19th and first few decades of the 20th century, when a comparative analysis of crania was central to the scientific study of individuals and populations that was, in many ways, foundational to the emergence of modern anthropology. To feed these studies, skulls were procured by all manner of means, including and especially being looted from the graves of indigenous peoples at the margins of European Empires. The focus of this project is a cabinet displaying around 8000 skulls, part of collection of roughly 40000 kept by the Anthropology Department of the Natural History Museum in Vienna. Through a series of artistic and anthropological engagements with this and similar collections, the members of CCP4 – Tal Adler and Anna Szöke (Humboldt University of Berlin), Maria Teschler-Nicola (Vienna Museum of Natural History), Linda Fibiger, Joan Smith and John Harries (University of Edinburgh) – intend to explore the philosophical, aesthetic, historical and scientific implications of these problematic gatherings of human remains that endure, mostly out of sight, within the public culture of Europe. This exploration will be directed towards, and sensitive to, the complex and often ambivalent significance of these archives of humans skulls to scientific communities, to national publics and to indigenous peoples who seek the recovery of ancestral remains within a postcolonial politic of recognition and redress. This article was published on 2024-06-19
HTML Image The project name is shortened to TRACES, but its full name is 'Transmitting Contentious Cultural Heritages with the Arts'. As part of TRACES, the Creative Co-Production ‘Dead Images’ (CCP4) engages with the complex and contentious legacy of collections of human skulls kept by museums, universities and other public institutions in Europe. These osteological archives, now mostly withdrawn from public view, were amassed during the 19th and first few decades of the 20th century, when a comparative analysis of crania was central to the scientific study of individuals and populations that was, in many ways, foundational to the emergence of modern anthropology. To feed these studies, skulls were procured by all manner of means, including and especially being looted from the graves of indigenous peoples at the margins of European Empires. The focus of this project is a cabinet displaying around 8000 skulls, part of collection of roughly 40000 kept by the Anthropology Department of the Natural History Museum in Vienna. Through a series of artistic and anthropological engagements with this and similar collections, the members of CCP4 – Tal Adler and Anna Szöke (Humboldt University of Berlin), Maria Teschler-Nicola (Vienna Museum of Natural History), Linda Fibiger, Joan Smith and John Harries (University of Edinburgh) – intend to explore the philosophical, aesthetic, historical and scientific implications of these problematic gatherings of human remains that endure, mostly out of sight, within the public culture of Europe. This exploration will be directed towards, and sensitive to, the complex and often ambivalent significance of these archives of humans skulls to scientific communities, to national publics and to indigenous peoples who seek the recovery of ancestral remains within a postcolonial politic of recognition and redress.
