The Visual Arts and Writing

Lumpérica was originally published in 1983 by the small Chilean publishing house Ornitorrinco. The period during which Eltit wrote Lumpérica (1976–83) marked the time of her involvement with CADA (Colectivo de Acciones de Arte), and it is this novel which is most influenced by Eltit's artistic and political activism, both in CADA and through her concurrent elaboration of individual video-performances. Indeed, Richard has described Lumpérica as more of a performance than a novel because of its appropriation of other, non-literary techniques, a point also made by Robert Neustadt.

In an interview given in 1985, Eltit states that she does not compartmentalize her visual and literary practices, which illustrates that her creative writing at this time responded to and extended the concerns posed in her performative work. The front cover of the first edition of the novel portrays a video-still of the projection of Eltit's face onto walls opposite a brothel, in and around which she carried out her individual performance, ‘Maipú’, in 1983. Part of this performance consisted of reading an unpublished excerpt of Lumpérica inside the brothel, the aim of which, Eltit has stated, was momentarily to replace the daily flow of sexual exchange for one of cultural exchange. The audience for this reading consisted of the resident prostitutes; the men, women and children of the impoverished neighbourhood; and a small group of Eltit's artistic collaborators. Lumpérica, viewed by critics as the most hermetic of Eltit's novels, was thus read to a mainly uneducated yet extremely respectful audience, whose reaction Eltit has described as one of ‘astonishment’.

Reading Lumpérica in a brothel, thus breaking all formal, literary protocols, can be seen as an instance of Eltit's questioning of the ‘domestication’ of the novel in Chile. Yet this reading also constituted a personal quest for Eltit, as she has commented: ‘yo necesitaba otra experiencia en vivo […] con el libro […] necesitaba acercarme a ciertas cosas que eran marginal, al cuerpo “otro” […] ese “otro” que yo buscaba conformar literariamente […] después lo saldé teóricamente.’ Perhaps the most striking example of Eltit's aim to approach the material reality of the corpus of the marginal ‘other’ that forms the fulcrum of her literary work is her video-performance ‘El beso’, in which she kisses a nonplussed and filthy male vagrant in an attempt to deconstruct the Hollywood kiss.