Share Festival, the Italian exhibition of contemporary tech art and science, with the Artistic Direction of Bruce Sterling announces the opening of the call. The theme of the Share Prize XII edition is:

GHOSTS

Are we the living ghosts of dead ancestors, of the otherness of the past, its invisible shadows? Or is the past the ghost of ourselves, present, alive and visible? Do we speak to our ghosts, consciously, every day, through art, mind and the material world, or do the ghosts act, fiercely driving us to the unavoidable but creative path of continuity? Science has its paranormal aspects, when the invisible powers that shape our world become visible to us: bacteria, the DNA within our cells, electricity… Our computation and our neural networks aspire to the telepathic and the telekinetic… Art and science join hands to expand our senses and illuminate the unseen and the unknown. Electronic art is at the core of that relationship: so technical and yet so ethereal, untouchable, invisible, virtual… Pushing the borders of unearthly, the sensible and the nonsensible, nothingness or epiphany… Ghosts have been always popular, and the dead for outnumber than the living. Literature and movies teem with ghosts, and in classic cinema, the actors, screenwriters and directors who parade across our screens are all long-dead. A cultural tradition means that the dead are still living. Those we once loved never leave us; they expand within us as we grow. The gifts we receive from the dead are the world’s only genuine gifts. The dead are, by definition, those who give to us without reward. Their gifts to us are valuable tools for understanding and healing. In Share Festival’s history we have had many artists, friends, precursors , spiritual ancestors, who left their ghostly traces and voices, whom we want to evoke and cherish with this call. Ghosts can be angels or demons, Hamlet’s vengeful ghost or secretive ghost writers. They can be male or female or transgender. They can be a political heritage we must never forget, or personal demons we must keep at a distance. Ghosts can be famous or anonymous, seers or spies. Turin is well-known as the esoteric capital of black and white magic, and Share Festival thrives in Turin. This year we will unleash and reveal our ghosts, mysterious, wild, unpredictable. The invisible will become visible, the phantoms will be realized. This year at Share Festival we invite the planet’s ghosts to a seat of honor at our seance table.

Jasmina Tesanovic, Share Prize curator

The international Jury, composed by:

ANDREA GRIVA, vice Presidente School of Entrepreneurship & Innovation

LIA, Austrian artist, pioneer of software and net art

DOMENICO QUARANTA, contemporary art critic and curator

JASMINA TESANOVIC, Share Prize XII edition curator

BRUCE STERLING, Share Festival XIV edition artistic director

Has selected six candidates for the award, who will be invited to take part in the exhibition: