Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Three November-December 2024
Aotearoa Poets and Writers Special Edition
Diaspronauts by Raymond Sagapolutele.
Diaspronauts
So here we drift.
Allow me to contextualise.
When I worked for a print shop nearly a decade ago, I made myself a business card. I had all the usual details on the back: my name, phone number, and email address. On the front, I had the image of an astronaut and the words, ‘When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. Now I’m all grown up, and I have a picture of one on my business card. Living the dream.’
I loved that business card; I wish I had some left, but they were little pieces of a dream I sent into the universe, hoping they might make someone smile and possibly call about photography work.
I have been thinking about that card a fair amount lately, and my design choice to include an astronaut. Within that place of consideration, I wondered about that space (no pun intended) that existed between my childhood dream and the adult realisation that I may not be an astronaut, but I AM living the dream.
The vā, the relational space as per Samoan academic Albert Wendt’s musings in his 1996 essay ‘Tatauing the Post Colonial Body’, has been the core document for many Moana diaspora researchers looking to explain their place in the world via this concept framed around two little letters. Vā. In my diasporic musings on my own identity, my journey as an artist, academic and Samoan outsider on the lands of our cousins here in Aotearoa, I had never considered a metaphorical concept of that particular post-colonial body. Still, this dream of being an astronaut, of being an explorer into unknown vā space, floated in the back of my mind like wisps of smoke.
This new land was gifted to my generation of diasporic explorers by our parents but coded into our historical DNA as generations removed from those original explorers centuries earlier who navigated the great Moana Nui A Kiwa. Our gift was one, that if protocol was followed, deferred to our cousins and affirmed our allyship to our cousins, the Tangata Whenua of Aotearoa. Framed in the contemporary, we are astronaut guests for a day and from every day after, our role is to pick up a tea towel and help out in the kitchen.
Astronauts in the diaspora navigate liminal space, the vā that could be a compositional tool in photography, according to my Master’s writing in 2018. This space is immune to the effects of time, unlike those of us who drift in its great emptiness, so full of potential knowledge.
Diaspronauts. Living the dream.
© Raymond Sagapolutele
Raymond Sagapolutele is an Aotearoa-born Sāmoan artist with ties to the villages of Fatuvalu in Savai’i and Saoluafata in Upolu, Samoa. His photographic practice focuses on his heritage as a diasporic Sāmoan with cultural ties to the history of the Pacific and the lands within Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. In his hands, the camera gains a voice and forms an oratory that connects to the cherished Samoan tradition of Fagogo (storytelling). Sagapolutele believes in the value of passing on his skills as a lens-based artist and visual art creative. He is currently engaged as a lecturer in photography with AUT and mentors artists from the Pasifika community. The goal is to grow the ability to produce an authentic visual arts voice from the Pasifika community that represents all aspects of his community.