‘Dragging the Past’ – A Screening Presented by Konstantinos Panapakidis

‘Dragging the Past’ is a film documentary that narrates the adventures of a drag troupe based in Koukles Club, Athens, Greece and their longing for acceptance and recognition in front of a mixed audience. The documentary presents clips from the club’s most successful drag acts, intertwined with interviews from performers talking about drag as a process and shows the competitive moments of interaction between the performers and the audience. The film presents a night in the club. As the night unfolds, performers enter a process of competing with each other about who will give the best performance on stage, and this is how the story begins. 

The main research thread of the film is an exploration of contemporary formations of gender and sexuality through the study of drag performance. Following a sociological analysis of articulations of the self, from both performers and audiences I will be able to investigate productions of the self through the process of viewing, engaging, and performing in a drag show, and also to examine the ways in which subjects negotiate their gender during this process. Through this talk I will illuminate the deployment of drag narratives, by both drag performers and members of the audience, as tools to create a desired self, always in relation to the other. This research thread will allow me also to discuss particular kind of subjectivities who perform gender in relation to the other, while engaged in the process of competition and embodiment (incarnation), while also interrupting and disrupting the other.