Trapani – On 25 July 2020, at the Museo Civico G. Perricone in Trapani, Gio Montez presented Action No. 19 – “Isolazione – Atto II”, a durational site-specific intervention conceived in conjunction with the formal handover of the modular anamorphic installation NONèTERNIT to the contemporary art collection of A.C. “La Salerniana”, directed by Michele Cossyro and presided over by Marco Nicodemo.
The action took place within the broader context of the SIAE and MiC-funded project under the “Per Chi Crea 2018” programme, promoted by the Municipality of Trapani, thus marking the arrival of NONèTERNIT in its institutional home in Trapani.
In the editorial revision of the project’s “reasoned anthology”, the original title “Isolazione – Act II” has been retrospectively redefined by Gio Montez as Action No. 19 – Segregation, acknowledging its temporal proximity to the end of the COVID-19 lockdown period. This re-naming shifts the semantic field from isolation as an individual condition to segregation as a collective and socially imposed state, reflecting a broader reading of post-pandemic society and its spatial and relational constraints.
Due to residual public health restrictions on gatherings, the installation was not assembled inside the museum but was instead constructed in the form of a symbolic “ship” in the external courtyard of the Palazzo della Vicaria, allowing visitors to approach the work while maintaining safety protocols. The gesture marked the “arrival” of NONèTERNIT in Trapani as a metaphorical landing, transforming the courtyard into a temporary port of disembarkation.
For the occasion, Gio Montez invited the performative collective associated with the ongoing project “Arrivano i Romani” to resume their interrupted journey following the lockdown period. Twelve performers, dressed in white and wearing protective masks, enacted a silent landing in the city: they remained motionless, distanced from one another, embodying a collective condition of suspended sociality. Among those present were Mons. Liborio Palmeri and artist Francesco Impellizzeri, alongside members of the local artistic community.
Actors: Gio Montez, Violet’Or, Luciano Fabale, Laura Gai, Giuseppe Grasso, Michael Landau, Anna Wacker, Helena Velena, Mari Falabella, Lorenzo Hadjigeorgiou, Irene Innocenzi
Waterspouts: Ernesto Del Campo, Giovanni Carriglio
The performance functioned as both reflection and critique of the social distortions produced during the COVID-19 pandemic, translating lived experience into a staged condition of controlled presence and enforced separation. Through this action, Montez reaffirmed his practice of arte d’azione as a social and cognitive device—capable of reconfiguring public space, collective memory, and the perception of contemporary ritual.
Action No. 19 – Segregation thus stands as a transitional moment in the NONèTERNIT cycle: a work simultaneously arriving, assembling, and being withheld—mirroring the fragile threshold between access and restriction, community and segregation.