Scripting for Agency

Katarina Ranković
  • 0,0 (0)
  • ARTES
  • DUAS VEZES/SEMANA

Scripting for Agency: An Artistic Enquiry into Selfhood, Character and Agency in the Age of AI is a lecture series based on Katarina Ranković’s practice-based PhD in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. Combining philosophy, performance, creative writing, and AI theory, the series explores how our understanding of the self shapes our personal lives, our politics, and our relationship to intelligent technologies. New episodes every Sunday and Thursday until 14.12.25. YouTube series: https://bit.ly/sfa-series Thesis PDF: https://bit.ly/sfa-pdf Thesis art: https://bit.ly/sfa-art

  1. HÁ 13 H

    5.1a Politics of Inner Self: A Description of the Performance Experiment

    About this Episode In this first episode of Chapter 5 in Scripting for Agency, we dive into a performance experiment that stages an internal dialogue between two distinct characters—both played by the artist. What begins as a performance exercise quickly reveals a power dynamic between dominant and subordinate aspects of the self. Through this improvised conversation, the video explores questions of character hierarchy, expressive scarcity and the ethics of inner multiplicity. Can multiple selves coexist equitably? And what does it mean to manage the soul-space of the self? In this video, theory, performance and philosophy converge in an improvised seance of identity and agency. While this section describes the performance experiment, Section 5.1b will discuss its implications. About this Series Scripting for Agency: An Artistic Enquiry into Selfhood, Character and Agency in the Age of AI is a video lecture series based on Dr Katarina Ranković’s practice-based PhD in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. Combining philosophy, performance, creative writing, and AI theory, the series explores how our understanding of the self shapes our personal lives, our politics, and our relationship to intelligent technologies.Links Series Playlist: https://bit.ly/sfa-seriesPhD thesis (PDF format): https://bit.ly/sfa-pdf Thesis artworks: https://bit.ly/sfa-art Politics of Inner Self References - Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. - Goffman, Erving. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. London: Penguin, 1990.

    21min

  2. HÁ 4 DIAS

    5.0 Classes of Character and a Politics of Inner Self

    About this Episode In this opening to Chapter 5, we explore Elif Shafak’s “choir of discordant voices” as a model for understanding the self—not as a unified whole, but as a dynamic society of competing characters. Drawing on Shafak’s metaphor of inner governance, this episode introduces the idea that not all characters within us are equal, and that their interplay reflects social and cultural hierarchies. We begin with a performance experiment that first revealed the unequal status of characters in Katarina's own practice, and use this to propose a new framework: a politics of inner self. This theory offers a way to think critically about identity, authorship, and the internal distribution of agency. Who gets to speak? Who gets silenced? And which character gets to even think up this thesis? About this Series Scripting for Agency: An Artistic Enquiry into Selfhood, Character and Agency in the Age of AI is a video lecture series based on Dr Katarina Ranković’s practice-based PhD in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. Combining philosophy, performance, creative writing, and AI theory, the series explores how our understanding of the self shapes our personal lives, our politics, and our relationship to intelligent technologies. Links Series Playlist: https://bit.ly/sfa-series PhD thesis (PDF format): https://bit.ly/sfa-pdf Thesis artworks: https://bit.ly/sfa-art References - Butler, Samuel. The Note-Books of Samuel Butler. Edited by Henry Festing Jones. London: A. C. Fifield, 1912. - Shafak, Elif. Black Milk: On Motherhood and Writing. London: Penguin, 2013. - Warner, Marina. Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-First Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

    5min

  3. 6 DE NOV.

    4.3 On Curiosity and Being a Medium

    About this Episode In this final video of Chapter 4, we explore the role of curiosity as the central force behind character performance as a method of discovery. Drawing on analogies of spiritual mediumship, we contrast traditional acting with a performance practice that suspends control in favour of soul-searching and character attunement. This episode asks how authentic character expression can emerge when we hold space for the unknown—treating character not as something projected, but as something conjured. About this Series Scripting for Agency: An Artistic Enquiry into Selfhood, Character and Agency in the Age of AI is a video lecture series based on Dr Katarina Ranković’s practice-based PhD in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. Combining philosophy, performance, creative writing, and AI theory, the series explores how our understanding of the self shapes our personal lives, our politics, and our relationship to intelligent technologies. Links Series Playlist: https://bit.ly/sfa-series PhD thesis (PDF format): https://bit.ly/sfa-pdf Thesis artworks: https://bit.ly/sfa-art

    10min

  4. 2 DE NOV.

    4.2 Character as Climate: Modelling Selfhood Through Behavioural Patterns

    About this Episode What if our personality isn’t composed of a set of fixed traits, but is more like a weather system—dynamic, patterned, and ever-evolving? In this video, we move from thinking of character as a frame to imagining it as a climate: a behavioural attractor that governs the shape of our thoughts and actions over time. Drawing analogies from meteorology and dynamical systems theory, this episode explores how patterns of selfhood emerge, shift, and even change completely—raising questions about identity, transformation, and the limits of what can be thought from within given characters. This is the third of four episodes in Chapter 4 of the thesis, Scripting for Agency, setting the stage for a deeper understanding of how characters emerge, shift, and are socially regulated. About this Series Scripting for Agency: An Artistic Enquiry into Selfhood, Character and Agency in the Age of AI is a video lecture series based on Dr Katarina Ranković’s practice-based PhD in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. Combining philosophy, performance, creative writing, and AI theory, the series explores how our understanding of the self shapes our personal lives, our politics, and our relationship to intelligent technologies.Links Series Playlist: https://bit.ly/sfa-series PhD thesis (PDF format): https://bit.ly/sfa-pdf Thesis artworks: https://bit.ly/sfa-art Thought Shift Performance Experiment References - Hong, Ying-Yi, et al. “Multicultural Minds: A Dynamic Constructivist Approach to Culture and Cognition.” American Psychologist 55, no. 7 (2000): 709–20. - John Lewis. “Roots of Ensemble Forecasting.” Monthly Weather Review 133, no. 7 (2005): 1865–87. https://doi.org/10.1175/MWR2949.1. - Pirandello, Luigi. One, No One and One Hundred Thousand. Translated by William Weaver. New York: Marsilio, 1990. - Ranković, Miloš. “Meteoric Theory of Art.” Lecture. London: 2014. - Ranković, Katarina. “Thought Shift Performance Experiment.” 2022. - Schumacher, Joel, dir. Falling Down. United States: Warner Bros., 1993. - Nichols, Mike, dir. Regarding Henry. United States: Paramount Pictures, 1991.

    14min

  5. 30 DE OUT.

    4.1b Character as Frame: Consistency, Authenticity & Social Expectation

    About this Episode What happens when we shift the way we act, speak, or even think depending on who we’re with? In this video, we explore frame switching—a psychological and social phenomenon where individuals adopt different “selves” across cultural and social contexts. Drawing on research from cultural psychology, sociology, and performance studies, this episode examines how authenticity, consistency, and social expectation shape our identities. Through the lens of cultural theory and lived experience, the video asks: Is inconsistency really inauthentic? Or is it simply the cost of navigating a complex social world? This is the second of four episodes in Chapter 4 of the thesis, Scripting for Agency, setting the stage for a deeper understanding of how characters emerge, shift, and are socially regulated. About this Series Scripting for Agency: An Artistic Enquiry into Selfhood, Character and Agency in the Age of AI is a video lecture series based on Dr Katarina Ranković’s practice-based PhD in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. Combining philosophy, performance, creative writing, and AI theory, the series explores how our understanding of the self shapes our personal lives, our politics, and our relationship to intelligent technologies. Links Series Playlist: https://bit.ly/sfa-series PhD thesis (PDF format): https://bit.ly/sfa-pdf Thesis artworks: https://bit.ly/sfa-art Thought Shift Performance Experiment References - Boucher, Helen C. “The Dialectical Self-Concept II: Cross-Role and Within-Role Consistency, Well-Being, Self-Certainty, and Authenticity.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 42, no. 7 (2011): 1251–71. - Chiu, Chi-Yue, Ying-Yi Hong, and Carol S. Dweck. “Lay Dispositionism and Implicit Theories of Personality.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73, no. 1 (1997): 19–30. - Dehghani, Morteza, et al. “The Subtlety of Sound.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 34, no. 3 (2015): 231–50. - Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. Great Britain: Amazon, 2020. - Fisher, Mark. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Winchester: Zero Books, 2009. - Francis, Kathryn B., et al. “Simulating Moral Actions: An Investigation of Personal Force in Virtual Moral Dilemmas.” Scientific Reports 7, 13954 (2017). - Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin Books, 1990. - Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. United Kingdom: Harvill Secker, 2014. - Hochschild, Arlie Russell. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 2012. - Hong, Ying-Yi, et al. “Multicultural Minds: A Dynamic Constructivist Approach to Culture and Cognition.” American Psychologist 55, no. 7 (2000): 709–20. - Linville, Patricia W. “Self-Complexity and Affective Extremity: Don’t Put All of Your Eggs in One Cognitive Basket.” Social Cognition 3, no. 1 (1985): 94–120. - Lu, Yongbiao, et al. “Surface Acting or Deep Acting, Who Need More Effortful? A Study on Emotional Labor Using Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 13 (10 May 2019). doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2019.00151. - OpenAI. “DALLE-2.” https://openai.com/dall-e-2/. - Pirandello, Luigi. One, No One and One Hundred Thousand. Translated by William Weaver. New York: Marsilio Publishers, 1990. - Rakić, Tamara, Melanie C. Steffens, and Amélie Mummendey. “Blinded by the Accent! The Minor Role of Looks in Ethnic Categorization.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 100, no. 1 (2011): 16–29. - West, Keon, Asia Eaton, and Angela R. Robinson. “More Than the Sum of Its Parts: A Transformative Theory of Biculturalism.” Journal of Social Issues 74, no. 4 (2018): 963–90. - West, Keon, Asia Eaton, and Angela R. Robinson. “The Potential Cost of Cultural Fit: Frame Switching Undermines Perceived Authenticity and Likeability.” Frontiers in Psychology 9 (2018): 2622. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02622.

    36min

  6. 26 DE OUT.

    4.1a Character as Frame: Code-Switching and the Contextual Person

    About this Episode In this episode, we delve into the idea of character as a frame, drawing from cultural psychology, linguistics, and personal narrative. Exploring the phenomenon of frame switching—how individuals seamlessly shift between social personas depending on cultural context—this video challenges essentialist views of identity. We discuss concepts like code-switching, cultural priming, and contextual personality, unpacking what happens when our selves are triggered, adapted, or performed based on the company we keep. What are the social costs and benefits to character inconsistency? Links Series Playlist: https://bit.ly/sfa-series PhD thesis (PDF format): https://bit.ly/sfa-pdf Thesis artworks: https://bit.ly/sfa-art References - Bhatia, Sunil. “Rethinking Culture and Identity in Psychology: Towards a Transnational Cultural Psychology.” Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 27–28, no. 2–1 (2007): 301–21. - Cheng, Chi-Ying, Fiona Lee, and Veronica Benet. “Assimilation and Contrast Effects in Cultural Frame Switching Bicultural Identity Integration and Valence of Cultural Cues.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 37 (2006): 742–60. - Cheng, Chi-Yue, and Shirley Y. Y. Cheng. “Toward a Social Psychology of Culture and Globalization: Some Social Cognitive Consequences of Activating Two Cultures Simultaneously.” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 1, no. 1 (2007): 84–100. - Chen, Sylvia Xiaohua, and Michael Harris Bond. “Two Languages, Two Personalities? Examining Language Effects on the Expression of Personality in a Bilingual Context.” Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin 36, no. 11 (2010): 1514–28. - Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin, 1990. - Higgins, E. Tory. “Knowledge Activation: Accessibility, Applicability and Salience.” In Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles, ed. by E. Tory Higgins and Arie W. Kruglanski, 133–68. New York: Guilford Press, 1996. - Hong, Ying-Yi, et al. “Multicultural Minds: A Dynamic Constructivist Approach to Culture and Cognition.” The American Psychologist 55, no. 7 (2000): 709–20. - Kay, Paul, and Willett Kempton. “What Is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?” American Anthropologist 86, no. 1 (1984): 65–79. - Myers-Scotton, Carol. “Common and Uncommon Ground: Social and Structural Factors in Codeswitching.” Language in Society 22, no. 4 (1993): 475–503. - Ramírez-Esparza, Nairán, et al. “Do Bilinguals Have Two Personalities? A Special Case of Cultural Frame Switching.” Journal of Research in Personality 40, no. 2 (2006): 99–120. - Sheldon, Kennon M., et al. “Trait Self and True Self: Cross-Role Variation in the Big-Five Personality Traits and Its Relations With Psychological Authenticity and Subjective Well-Being.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73, no. 6 (1997): 1380–93. - Sui, Jie, Ying Zhu, and Chi-yue Chiu. “Bicultural Mind, Self-construal, and Self- and Mother-reference Effects: Consequences of Cultural Priming on Recognition Memory.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 43, no. 5 (2007): 818–24. - Tamer, Youssef. “Language Choice & Code Switching.” L’université Ibn Zohr. Uploaded 14 December 2014. - Van Oudenhoven, Jan Pieter, and Veronica Benet-Martínez. “In Search of a Cultural Home: From Acculturation to Frame-switching and Intercultural Competencies.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 46 (2015): 47–54. - West, Alexandria L., et al. “More Than the Sum of Its Parts: A Transformative Theory of Biculturalism.” Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology 48, no. 7 (2017): 963–90. - West, Alexandria L., et al. “The Potential Cost of Cultural Fit.” Frontiers in Psychology (2018). - Hough, Lauren. “A Lesbian Walks into a Bathroom: A Lesson on Code Switching.” TEDx Talks. - Grehoua, Lucrece. “Code-Switching.” BBC Radio 4, 30 August 2020. - Riley, Boots. Sorry to Bother You. United States: Mirror Releasing; Focus Features; Universal Pictures, 2018.

    33min

  7. 23 DE OUT.

    4.0 Character, Frames and Climates

    About this Episode In this opening video for Chapter 4 of Scripting for Agency, we delve into the evolving concept of character—moving beyond the idea of character as software into more dynamic models drawn from cultural psychology and meteorology. Building on earlier discussions of character as a transmissible pattern, this episode introduces the idea of character as both frame and climate. Drawing on tools like phase portraits and research into frame switching, we begin to see character not just as a fixed identity but as a fluctuating behavioural landscape that can be experimentally explored and manipulated—especially within performance. This chapter sets the stage for a deeper understanding of how characters emerge, shift, and are socially regulated, and questions why character consistency is so often privileged in social life. About this Series Scripting for Agency: An Artistic Enquiry into Selfhood, Character and Agency in the Age of AI is a video lecture series based on Dr Katarina Ranković’s practice-based PhD in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. Combining philosophy, performance, creative writing, and AI theory, the series explores how our understanding of the self shapes our personal lives, our politics, and our relationship to intelligent technologies. Links Series Playlist: https://bit.ly/sfa-series PhD thesis (PDF format): https://bit.ly/sfa-pdf Thesis artworks: https://bit.ly/sfa-art

    3min

  8. 19 DE OUT.

    3.4 Scripting for Agency: Substrate Neutrality & the Mechanics of Self

    About this Episode Can a script produce an agent? In this closing to Chapter 3: Code and Expression, we explore how scripting—understood as the dual mechanism of code and expression—may contribute to the emergence of agency. From genetic and computational systems to artistic and performative contexts, this video traces how scripts operate across different material substrates to generate autonomous-seeming behaviour. We revisit concepts like substrate neutrality, the relationship without a touch, and character as a transferable script, and reflect on what it means to write or perform an agent—biological, artificial, or fictional. This is the concluding episode of four in Chapter 3 of the thesis, Scripting for Agency, exploring the question: can a self be written—or, "encoded and decoded"? About this Series Scripting for Agency: An Artistic Enquiry into Selfhood, Character and Agency in the Age of AI is a video lecture series based on Dr Katarina Ranković’s practice-based PhD in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. Combining philosophy, performance, creative writing, and AI theory, the series explores how our understanding of the self shapes our personal lives, our politics, and our relationship to intelligent technologies.Links Series Playlist: https://bit.ly/sfa-series PhD thesis (PDF format): https://bit.ly/sfa-pdf Thesis artworks: https://bit.ly/sfa-art References - Cairns-Smith, A. Graham. Seven Clues to the Origin of Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. - Dennett, Daniel C. Freedom Evolves. Harlow: Penguin, 2004. - Derrida, Jacques. Margins of Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.

    5min
Ver tudo (33)

Trailer

Sobre

Scripting for Agency: An Artistic Enquiry into Selfhood, Character and Agency in the Age of AI is a lecture series based on Katarina Ranković’s practice-based PhD in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. Combining philosophy, performance, creative writing, and AI theory, the series explores how our understanding of the self shapes our personal lives, our politics, and our relationship to intelligent technologies. New episodes every Sunday and Thursday until 14.12.25. YouTube series: https://bit.ly/sfa-series Thesis PDF: https://bit.ly/sfa-pdf Thesis art: https://bit.ly/sfa-art

Informações

  • Criado por
    Katarina Ranković
  • Anos de atividade
    2 mil
  • Episódios
    33
  • Classificação
    Livre
  • Copyright
    © Katarina Ranković
  • Site do podcast
    Scripting for Agency