The Third Episode of the Trilogy that Remembers the work of Queer Performance Artist and Author is the one that asks his three closest people in different moments of his life to create a mosaic not only of Pedro Lemebel from the point of view of his lived life but of the relationship between authenticity and art in democratic Chile.Avoiding the always unfair biographical perspective and circumventing the extremely un-queer narrative that builds reality Manichean terms as a set of oppositions like martyrs versus the holly people, I start with a reflection on what I consider my biggest achievement to date which is the way those alleged champions of critical thought in Argentina after the Me Too and Ni Una Menos who have access to the resources of the State because oftheir ethnic social privilege accused me of having enough power to intimidate them and cancelled me. What does this have to do with Chile? In both cases, we can observe that there is a continuity instead of change between the Dictatorship and democracy. This is why those who participate in the video: Carmen Berenguer, Victor Hugo Robles (a.k.a. El Che de los Gays), Sergio Martinez and me suggest a new type of discourse that positions itself outside the solipsistic careerism that we have witnessed inside the progressive left which has ended in opening the way for the right to solidify its power.
The second episode of the Trilogy was my Interview with the Chilean journalist Oscar Contardo who had been preparing “Loca Fuerte”, almost simultaneously to my research on the art of the AIDS crisis with a chapter on Lemebel that went on a similar direction than his views but whose publication ended up disappointing for its moralisation of the margins, drugs and all that that defines the counter cultures.
And the first episode was another contested one that ended up with me seeing Joanna Repossi Garibaldis documentary from a different perspective. Her film “Lemebel” circumvented partisan politics and his friendship with Gladys Marin to instead allowing a space for him to say what he wanted to say and to present himself as he waned to be perceived. Her documentary coincided with the diagnosis of larynx cancer and registers the theatrical way he prepares his own death.
El Fantasma de Lemebel: Carmen Berenguer, Creadora de Las Yeguas del Apocalipsis Rompe el Silencio