The scholarly e-monograph Odlivanje smrti (Casting of Death) is based on a collaboration developed by the Domestic Research Society and the Institute of Contemporary History as part of their research under the same title between 2017 and 2019. It presents the results of the first systematic study of death masks in Slovenian public collections. It took place in the framework of the TRACES – Transmitting Contentious Cultural Heritages with the Arts: From Intervention to Co-Production research project, funded by the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme of the European Union. In its application to the European Commission, the project promised participation of artists, who would “identify new directions for cultural institutions and museums to effectively transmit contentious cultural heritage and contribute to evolving European identities”. ¹ This brief definition of the project’s objective already encompasses three problem strands that contextualised the work of Slovenian research team and strongly influenced its course. This publication reflects and also critically highlights them.

The first problem, built into the design of the European research project, is the preconceived belief in the social power of the artist’s agency. This leads to the second, methodological-production problem strand, which relates to the development and establishment of an alternative model of collaborative practice, grounded in multidisciplinary character and the equality of positions of enunciation. The third problem of the TRACES project is its hegemonic post-colonial discourse, “embodied” in the notion of contentious cultural heritage, which has not been defined in advance.² Although the individual contributions in this publication deal primarily with research of death masks in public collections held by Slovenian institutions such as museums, libraries, institutes, etc., the authors do not shy away from the questions, contradictions and epistemological problems that the above-mentioned problem strands of the umbrella project have introduced into their work.

The international consortium developed five so-called creative co-productions in parallel within the TRACES project. It is an “experimental model for collaborative artistic work with the overall aim to pursue significant and sustainable change in heritage institutions and beyond”.³ This model is intended to ensure that artists, scientists and cultural heritage providers work together on an equal footing from the outset. Creative co-production is conceived as a multidisciplinary and long-term collaborative model that presupposes non-hierarchical relationships, joint budget management, self-reflection and external observation. Blaž Bajič^[os.] discusses how the latter took place in practice in his text entitled Casting of Death: An Ethnography of Passing from Something to Nothing. The structure, composition, operation and scope of the Ljubljana-based creative co-production are illustrated in the infographic below:

The local research focused on death masks in Slovenian public collections. It turned out that information on the number of preserved death masks and the identities of the individuals depicted was not yet available to the public. The data collection was undertaken within the framework of the Research Infrastructure of Slovenian Historiography programme, which proved to be a methodological innovation within the overall European research project, and also ensured the permanent preservation of the results of the Casting of Death research after its completion. The largest part of this monograph is devoted to a discussion of the database developed by the Domestic Research Society and the Institute of Contemporary History (contribution by Andrej Pančur^[os.] and his two co-authors). Effectively, the collection remains a publicly accessible open platform, available for further use and development, which Katja Meden^[os.] writes about as a guaranteed “afterlife of death masks”.

A series of contributions that address the database as a research tool is followed by a critical discussion of the field work of creative co-production. Jani Pirnat^[os.] focuses on the issues of photography in field research (Fieldwork Photography: The Artist/Researcher as Amateur Photographer) and the acquisition of photographs for public release, including permanent preservation. In the next contribution, Marko Jenko^[os.] follows Daniel Arasse^[os.], who compares photography to a particular portrait technique, an invention of the French Revolution (Cut! And Here’s Your Portrait). This segment concludes with Bajič^[os.]’s study of a concrete case – the death mask of Friedrich Nietzsche^[os.] from the Krško City Museum (Dawn of the Idols).

This is followed by a series of contributions related to the exhibition Casting of Death (Match Gallery, 2017). Alenka Pirman^[os.] contributed a critical auto-ethnographic analysis Artistic Upgrade or Impossible Attempt to Harness the Spectacle, followed by the already mentioned Bajič^[os.]’s ethnography of creative co-production. The series concludes with Jenko^[os.]’s study True Lies. Based on Bernard Tillier^[os.], it deals with the alleged death mask of the drowned woman from the Seine, which was also featured in the exhibition. In the appendix Marion Hamm^[os.]’s concurrent field notes from her visit to the Casting of Death exhibition in Ljubljana is also published.

The last set of contributions is devoted to the interpretation of the phenomenon of death masks in light of contentious cultural heritage. Janez Polajnar^[os.], on the basis of the data collected, interprets death masks from Slovenian public collections as part of the national cultural monument infrastructure (The Face of the “Genius”: Death Masks as Part of the Process of Canonisation of Cultural Saints), while Karin Schneider^[os.] and Marko Jenko^[os.] discuss concrete examples of images of the Shoah to address the now classic museological dilemma of the (in)appropriateness of display and public reproduction. This section concludes with Bajič^[os.]’s critical analysis of the impact of hegemonic post-colonial discourse on Slovenian creative co-production within the TRACES project (What We Talk About When We Talk About Contentious Heritage).

The monograph is rich in appendices. The first set of published material highlights the former media exposure of death masks of prominent public figures (three examples from 1929 and 1943) and the methodological challenges of studio photography for museum purposes (an interview with documentary photographer Matevž Paternoster^[os.]). A special place is reserved for original material presenting the still-existing, contemporary practice of casting of death masks (an interview with the sculptor Viktor Gojkovič^[os.] and a report on a visit to Sely de Brea^[os.], the widow of the artist Ive Šubic).

The Casting of Death research was concluded in 2019. Data on new death masks in the public collections of Slovenian cultural and scientific institutions are no longer systematically collected, although their transition from the private to the public sphere continues. The research has shown that the exploitative value of death masks for communal interests did not diminish, but rather that revision, relocation, and perhaps even newly produced copies of older positives are more relevant today.