Podcast
From controversy to maturity, Rodrigo Saturnino, or simply ROD, revisits, in this episode of O Tal Podcast, the defining moments of his career, including the track “It wasn’t discovery, it was slaughter”, and speaks bluntly about how he views advancing age. “What’s it like to look 50 years old? To be a big-bellied old man who gave up on life, gave everything away? I’ve never felt that way,” he explains, laughing. Discover her story here in the company of Georgina Angélica and Paula Cardoso
He left his parents’ house as a child to study in a bigger city, where he lived with his uncle and uncle until he started living alone, when he was just 14 years old. Today with five decades of history, Rodrigo Saturnino, or simply ROD, tells, in this episode of O Tal Podcast, how his first years of life are part of a trajectory “more common than it seems”. But if the past of the researcher and visual artist is echoed in other narratives from the interior of Brazil, the present is freed from other people’s expectations, and the future appears even freer. Unapologetically queer.
Rodrigo Saturno’s life story began around 7,600 kilometers from Lisbon, in the small town of Jequitibá, located in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais.
Since 2007 in Portugal, the guest of Georgina Angélica and Paula Cardoso has spent around 16 years in Portuguese academia – including master’s, doctoral and post-doctoral studies –, a trajectory marked by several investigations into the digital world.
It is from there that he has maintained, for almost two decades, his family affections, still today strongly rooted in his birthplace, which he affectionately describes as a “tiny little town”.
“Jequi, as we say, has 5 thousand inhabitants”, points out the researcher and visual artist, precociously accustomed to managing distances: “My sense of independence was very premature”.
Since he was 10 years old away from his parents’ house, where he moved to live with his uncles and “be able to receive a better education”, the co-founder of Coletivo Afrontosas and União Negras das Artes, reveals that although he began to pioneer his own path very early, he always had parental supervision.
In addition to revisiting, with assumed pride, some of the main stages of his career – which includes the creation of a track with the controversial phrase “It wasn’t discovery, it was killing” –, ROD addresses, in this conversation, how he is dealing with advancing age.
“Everyone says ‘you don’t look 50’. Then I ask: what does it mean to look 50? To be old, with a pot belly, who has given up on life, given everything?”
Contrary to possible expectations, the guest of this episode of O Tal Podcast adds that, at this stage, he feels “freer” from any pressure to fit into the behaviors associated with age.
Maybe there lies a queer way of being and being?
“Queer has this characteristic of being different. It’s something else, another universe, another reading of the world. It’s another explanation of things”, he argues, peremptory in the prediction that “the future is queer”.
In what sense?
“Queer is this confrontation, this contrast, this endless struggle, this attempt to disentangle expectations, to be 50 years old, but appear to be 20”, he explains, without ever losing sight of the multiple layers that run through him.
From the trials of immigration, which put integration and assimilation processes into shock, to expressions of racism in academia, in algorithms and other technologies, the conversation ends with a brief look at the lessons that remain from a past in religious studies.
“I have learned that spirituality does not have to be doctrine, it does not have to be liturgical. But it has to exist in this relationship with the invisible world.”
Listen to the full conversation here.
is a specialist in Education and Social Intervention. She works as an educator, trainer and speaker, with more than 20 years of experience in Portugal, England and Angola.
is the founder of the network and author of the series of children’s books ‘Força Africana’. She is also the presenter of the TV program “Rumos”, broadcast on RTP África.
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