Montez violates the seals of the Temple of Fine Arts
Rome, 28 June 2013 – Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma As the school board meet to elect a new director to succeed Gerardo Lo Russo, Gio Montez intervenes with Azione n.1 – INIZIAZIONE, the first public act in his performative anthology Manifeste Azioni.
In the historic horseshoe-shaped courtyard at Via di Ripetta 222, a mechanical heart—described as an “immobile engine”—appears suddenly, anchoring the live performance. Surrounded by five actors, Montez violates the seals of the Academy and offers the heart to the new, yet-unnamed director as a gesture of transformation.
What unfolds is a spontaneous, high-energy action blending performance art, symbolic resistance, and collaborative creation. The performance culminates in a collective painting made with oil extracted from the engine itself. Police were called by the academic pro-tempore administrators, but upon arrival the police found the artists immersed in their practice and were compelled to recognise the act as legitimate artistic expression waiting for it to turn to an end before interveining.
The action Iniziazione marks the beginning of a new phase for contemporary art at the intersection of ritual, protest, and poetic action.
Initiation n. f. [from the late Latin initiatio -onis]
– 1. Act or series of acts and ceremonies by which one is admitted, or is admitted, to participation in mystery cults, to knowledge of occult doctrines, to be part of a society, a community, a group from which the non-initiated are excluded: rite, initiation rites; i. to Freemasonry; in ethnology and in the history of religions, a complex of practices and rites through which an individual or a group of individuals passes from one condition to another (for example, from the pubertal state to the adult state), or assumes particular powers and privileges: i. tribal, i. magical. More generally, admission to a sect, a secret society, a closed social group, and the like.
– 2. By extension, training, initiation to a discipline, an art, a technique, a specialized study, the exercise of a particular activity, a practice: i. to political life; i. to welfare activities; i. priestly, i. ascetic; he had had from his father his first i. to music (or painting, a taste for poetry, etc.); i. amorous, or even simply initiation, the first sexual experience.
*Enciclopedia Treccani
“Starting over from the beginning. Motionless Engine. Bright celestial spark. I remember the lit fuse that triggers the explosion. Automatism. Analogy. Rite. Pulsation of a fossil fuelled mechanical heart. Human torch, or rather glimmer in the dark. The human torch that clears the darkness. Missed sacrifice. Expectation therefore expectancy. Claim to truth. Verify. Pussy. Access. Portal. Conception. Advent!”
Gio Montez
Azione n°1 – Iniziazione
28/06/2013, Academy of fine arts, Rome
Director: Gio Montez
Actors: Gio Montez, Alessandro Di Fraia, Carlo Giordano, Giacomo Capogrossi, Francesco Perri.
Camera: Alessandro di Fraia
Sound Design: cc da Surrism Phonoethics
