Today the passage from "intellectual" to "imaginary" property is challenging traditional notions of ownership and personhood. It is the theft of the soul which in both, analog and digital modes, turns images into property or vice versa: property into imageness.

The Museum of the Stealing of Souls is devoted to histories of the invention, appropriation and reconfiguration of the subject by photography. The museum holds a fast growing collection organized in seven departments. The exhibits on show are reflecting alleged histories of soul-theft and surveillance, soullessness and alienation, immaterial production and precariousness -- loosely based on the question: Where can a soul live its life instead of saving it?

The Museum of the Stealing of Souls (MoSS) has opened its doors to the public on July 19th, 2008. It is hosted by manifesta7 and operates as one of the mini-museums of the exhibition in Trento curated by Anselm Franke and Hila Peleg. The Museum of the Stealing of Souls is located in the second floor of Palazzo delle Poste, Via Santa Trinita 27, I-39100 Trento, Italy.

1. There is a well-known myth according to which indigenous people believe that when a camera takes a picture of them, it captures a part of them, if not stealing their soul. This has been repeated often enough, by the pioneers of ethnographic photography as well as in online forums by today’s amateur photographers; so-called natives have been credited with this belief in every part of the world and across time. Like many other popular assumptions from the field of ethnography, the idea of the theft of a soul by image has become a commonplace, free from critical reflection and questioning.