Luigi Vitali

What rules still need to be broken? What boundaries still need to be pushed? What to fight against? What to be rebellious for?

The will of rebellion often turns into an empty thought and an empty gesture when the driven purpose from which it generates is too vague to give any sense of a new direction. Subverting rules and pushing boundaries are the natural consequences of having a vision to fight for. But when it is the mere aim of rebellion, will and reason disappear.

Today rebellion canʼt really be practiced without deeply reevaluating and redefining a new vision. We are often confused about what to do because the will to leave behind our old mindset is not always followed with the ability to formulate a new one. Rebellion is a matter for youth. Itʼs a force that can be radicalised with the aim of a new sense of direction. And it can only start there, in the heart of youth; the only place where it is still possible to define a new perception of our role in society, and the relationship we have with power.

But how should youth rebel against power when the power we are fighting against is indefinable? Power is becoming more and more intangible, no longer located in physical spaces like fortresses, palaces, banks, offices or any other location. Power is turning invisible, vaporising its forms in equations, algorithms, and financial abstractions, becoming a part of us, of our language, our understanding, our relationships, of everything we do or we desire.

We are often confused about what to fight against because power is deeply rooted inside of us, from the way we consume, to the way we think about ourselves. Thatʼs the challenge of todayʼs youth: trying to find a different direction against all of this. If rebellion requires exposing the enemy, then the first target we have to point at would be ourselves. It has to be the self. Since within ourselves lies the distorted connections, the programming, and the dysfunctional dynamics that we should be rebelling against.

We believe it is the self, the only place of the insurgence, the place to conquer, to detoxify, and where to elaborate a more accurate and sustainable understanding of reality. A meaningful act of rebellion today can not leave aside the purpose of redefining ourselves; the relationship between ourselves and the other, between ourselves and the whole.

There are no rules, there are no boundaries. Rebellion is about rebuilding visions and directions from the dust of what is already fallen or fated to collapse.


Words & Photograph by
Luigi Vitali