Learn to unlearn. The To Zion Contest explained by Danilo Lavorgna

Rain and wind caressed a few tents decisively, wet some sleeping bags but nothing irreparable, the first day of the To Zion Contest 2014 was smooth and so was the second.

Rocco Bruno gravitated reassuringly among the boys most intensely involved in the project who took care to explain, show and make themselves available to people who came from all over Italy to experience this experience up close.

Meals together on long pallets, speeches inside the large building and explanatory drawings, maps of the place and moments of conviviality. It is not clear where we are going, but there is the decision to draw lessons from the earth and learn to make it on our own. Beyond the ready answers, prefabricated, which are not enough anymore. "Get over it" is written on the shirt of the project participants.

The direct experimentation laboratories ranged from permaculture to the design of a pyrolytic, to less expensive and more efficient forms of heating, passing from sensible biology to constitution, up to small theatrical improvisations.

Among all, I approached a smart young man, Danilo Lavorgna, who, after a course of studies that resulted in two years of architecture left hanging, dedicated himself to work, any job, from the worker to the sector manager, up to achieve one's own economic autonomy. When he was in Milan to work in the advertising sector, he came into contact with the group started by Rocco Bruno who was at that time moving in the San Donato Milanese area.

He explains to me: "So I met Rocco and entering the group I shared the vision, I was integrated and in turn now I integrate new people who come and I try to bring on a plan of understanding what is a shared intuition, something that we has arrived and we gather at any moment in practical, functional action. "

About Zion, could we talk about a community?

The idea is not to be a community; we met, we did not follow a propaganda path and we were channeled, I would say we met again. It is questioned, without expectations. The child, to say, has no expectations, he is surprised by experimenting.

But then what is Zion?

Zion does not exist! It is a name for dressing, a name is needed according to the bureaucratic system, if you want to get inside this dimension you need a name, whether you want it or not. A group needs a name to be recognized, provided that we are individual elements that experience autonomy .

Think of the dependence on the support and support of parents, now think of the parent as a supermarket. Here, the question is: can I do without it and walk with my legs? Do I have the opportunity to practice that strength that allows me to move independently?

What is Zion's goal?

There is no goal, there is a question : the one I just told you.

Rocco Bruno has a very strong personality. What is it for you? A guide, a spiritual father?

Rocco is the adhesive. A glue bearing a signal that I was looking for and that has now become a unique question. There is no spiritual father. I do not know what the word father refers to, is it a force? We remain on the question.

Sometimes when I talk or communicate I find myself in front of people who would like answers, but this doesn't make me a father, I am not inclined to give answers, I prefer to create useful questions to shift attention to a more real level, an individual search .

And where do the answers come from?

The answers are the result of an experimental phase, for this reason they cannot simply be given but they must be lived, the question is what keeps me alive, having all the answers already without having experienced the processes could be comparable to being dead.

The group is growing, how do you "recognize" yourself, how do you "find yourself"?

I don't know what all this is, but I find the same intent in many people, it is as if I found myself in various measures, sometimes learning to observe and interact with nature, to analyze the biological sense of the body, sometimes in what I'm doing it here, because I was born ... the answer of the biological role ( food-territory-reproduction ) that we have been going through for centuries is redundant and is not what I am looking for.

Certainly, I know I wasn't born to make a career, specialize in something, sometimes I smile for the titles we had to give. I'm always more certain of the fact that it's not the container that counts but what's inside.

What have you learned since your energy is in Zion?

The best thing I've learned since I've been here is learning to learn. For example, to unlearn, take off the "stuffed" stuff transferred to us and which we later accepted as obvious, "it has always done so" is the verbal constant that tends to cancel the experimentation phase and that distances us from finding what is more useful in that moment of research.

Is there a little anger towards the so-called system or am I wrong?

There's a little anger, you say. If by anger we mean that emotional situation that drives us to go against something, I don't think there is.

There is certainly a firm intent, there is the will to do anything that allows me to experiment with answers and not simply to absorb them, the University that it proposes could be a valid tool in this sense. I feel I want to move towards a redefinition of work, no longer necessary for production, but functional for the real needs of the individual.

I like to think that we can live by not aiming to accumulate, because when you have no more points to agglomerate you can only rediscover.

In the video below, the promo of the event