About this Episode
An acknowledgment of the many voices, mentors, collaborators, family members—and characters—who shaped this research journey.
This video is the third of three postscripts to Scripting for Agency: An Artistic Enquiry into Selfhood, Character and Agency in the Age of AI.
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
Tara Brabazon's YouTube Channel
About this Episode
This video documents the artistic practice component of the PhD thesis Scripting for Agency, comprising 10 video and audio performance works—including monologues, dialogues, AI voiceovers and a collaborative video essay made with artist Nina Davies. Below you can find links to view each work in full, or a playlist of the entire practice submission.
This video is one of three postscripts to Scripting for Agency: An Artistic Enquiry into Selfhood, Character and Agency in the Age of AI.
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
Artworks
Work 1: Revolutionary (2020)
Work 2: Suburbia (2021)
Work 3: The Man on the Ceiling (2021)
Work 4: The Trickle Traitor Effect (2021)
Work 5: Homo Horizontalis (2021)
Work 6: Coaxing the Lofty Other (2021)
Work 7: Politics of Inner Self (2020)
Work 8: Hospital of Happiness (2019)
Work 9: Fictional Politician (2019)
Work 10: Individual Relic (2021)
Full Playlist of Artworks: https://bit.ly/sfa-art
About this Episode
Originally conceived as the prologue to the thesis, this epilogue reflects on the early, uncertain moments of adopting a “research character.” We follow the narrator’s hesitant steps into academic voice, exploring the role of genre, institutional architecture, literary influence and inherited voices in shaping the self that writes. Touching on Zadie Smith, Virginia Woolf and Erik Satie, this personal meditation becomes a broader inquiry into how we enter new worlds—and what we leave behind in doing so.
This video is one of three postscripts to Scripting for Agency: An Artistic Enquiry into Selfhood, Character and Agency in the Age of AI.
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
- Calvino, Italo. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller. London: Vintage, 1998.
- Frow, John. “On Personhood in Public Places.” Public Culture Research Unit, University of Melbourne. Transcript. https://www.academia.edu/2562822/On_P....
- Hesse, Hermann. The Glass Bead Game. Translated by Richard and Clara Winston. London: Vintage, 2000.
- Lethem, Jonathan. The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc. London: Random House, 2012.
- Milgram, Stanley. “Behavioral Study of Obedience.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67, no. 4 (1963): 371–78.
- Satie, Erik. A Mammal’s Notebook. Edited by Ornella Volta. Translated by Antony Melville. London: Atlas Press, 2017.
- Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Edited by Sandra Clark and Pamela Mason. London: Bloomsbury, 2015.
- Shaw, George Bernard. Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts. Charleston, S.C.: BiblioLife, 2009.
- Smith, Zadie. “Speaking in Tongues.” The New York Review of Books, 26 February 2009. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2009....
- Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
- Zimbardo, Philip G. “On Rethinking the Psychology of Tyranny: The BBC Prison Study.” British Journal of Social Psychology 45, no. 1 (2006): 47–53.
- “LA Law.” Created by Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher. NBC. Aired 15 September 1986 to 19 May 1994.
- Piper, Adrian. “What, exactly, is the Idea of Artistic Research?” Lecture presented at Post Digital Cultures Symposium, Lausanne, 4–5 December 2019. YouTube video.
- Hiller, Susan. “Art Talk: Susan Hiller in Conversation with René Morales.” Pérez Art Museum Miami. Uploaded 27 March 2017. YouTube video.
About this Series
Drawing on the central distinction between character and the human being, this concluding chapter reflects on the human being as a universal character-playing machine—overqualified for society, yet continually reduced to the streamlined “social agent.” We revisit key ideas introduced across the series, including character as a behavioural attractor, frame switching as a creative method and a politics of inner self.
What do we gain by seeing character not as essence but as software—mutable, expressive, and plural? And what are the social and artistic implications of cultivating personal diversity, alongside social diversity? This closing video offers a vocabulary and aesthetic framework for reimagining the self—not as a fixed identity, but as a site of ongoing negotiation between freedom and coherence, diversity and sociality.
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
- Dennett, Daniel. The Intentional Stance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987.
- Ranković, Katarina. “Introspective Performance Experiment.” _Scripting for Agency_, 2022. https://katarinarankovic.art/scriptin....
- Ranković, Katarina. “Thought Shift Performance Experiment.” _Scripting for Agency_, 2022. https://katarinarankovic.art/scriptin....
- Ranković, Katarina. "Politics of Inner Self", 2020.
About this Episode
In this final video of Chapter 6, we ask: What is at stake when we mistake the social agent for the human being? Drawing on thought experiments and contemporary discourse on diversity, this episode explores how human character variability is already being managed—socially, politically, aesthetically—and speculates on how that management might be reimagined. If character variability is fundamental to the human being, should personal diversity be protected and cultivated just like social diversity? And what happens when we extend the politics of diversity inward, to the individual self?
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
- Alcoff, Linda. “The Problem of Speaking for Others.” Cultural Critique 20, no. 20 (1991): 5–32.
- Cloke, Hannah. “Failure of Imagination.” New Scientist, 26 February 2022, 25.
- Dennett, Daniel. Freedom Evolves. Harlow: Penguin, 2004.
- Kaminski, Isabella. “Laws of Nature: Could UK Rivers Be Given the Same Rights as People?” The Guardian, 17 July 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/environme....
- Mediaplanet. “A Mediaplanet Campaign Focused on Diversity in STEM.” New Scientist, 11 December 2021. https://issuu.com/mediaplanetuk/docs/....
- UK Parliament. Human Rights Act 1998. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/....
About this Episode
In this continuation of Chapter 6, we explore Miloš Ranković's concept of vertical disciplining—the process by which complexity at one level is flattened to enable complexity to emerge at another level. Building on the distinction between the human being and the social agent, this episode examines how social complexity is achieved through the attenuation of behavioural diversity, and how the individual is socially conditioned to become a predictable “interface” within a larger communal system. Drawing on holography, Dennett’s intentional stance, and Miloš Ranković’s concept of “the bulk and the conspicuous,” we ask: is the flattening of the human being into the social agent a necessary sacrifice? Or is there a cost to this compression of self?
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
- Dennett, Daniel. Freedom Evolves. Harlow: Penguin, 2004.- Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.
- Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin Books, 1990.
- Koestler, Arthur, and John R. Smythies. Beyond Reductionism: New Perspectives in the Life Sciences. Boston: Beacon Press, 1971.
- Myers, Frederic. Cited in Marina Warner. Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-First Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
- Ranković, Miloš. “Frozen Complexity.” In Thinking Through Art: Reflections on Art as Research, edited by Katy Macleod and Lin Holdridge, 160–64. Oxon: Routledge, 2006.
- Ranković, Miloš. “The Bulk and the Conspicuous: A Turn on Žižek’s Plea.” Unpublished paper (2009). https://www.academia.edu/23519401/The....
- Ranković, Miloš. "‘Something like thinking, that is, intervenes:’ ‘The spectral spiritualisation that is atwork in any tekhnē.’” Unpublished paper, 2011. https://www.academia.edu/5879590/
- Woolf, Virginia. Mrs Dalloway. London: Penguin, 2007.
About this Episode
In this episode, we unpack the distinction between the social agent—the consistent character we present to others—and the human being: the universal character-playing machine that runs it. The video explores how society encourages character consistency while masking our underlying capacity for behavioural diversity. Drawing on Erving Goffman's phrase—"the bureaucratisation of spirit"—we consider how social roles become fixed, how character predictability facilitates social cooperation and how personal diversity is often sacrificed in favour of social coherence. What do we stand to lose and gain when we accept the habitual conflation of the social agent with the human being?
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, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. London: Routledge, 2011.
- de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. London: Vintage Books, 2011.
- Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin, 1990.
- Ranković, Miloš. “Something like thinking, that is, intervenes.” Academia.edu. https://www.academia.edu/5879590/_Som....
- Santayana, George. Cited in Erving Goffman, _The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life_. London: Penguin, 1990.
- Shakespeare, William. _As You Like It_. Edited by H. J. Oliver. London: Penguin, 2015.
About this Episode
In this introductory video for Chapter 6, The Holographic Human: A Romance of Many Dimensions, we begin a speculative exploration into what it means to be a character-playing human being, beyond the limits of social identity. Drawing inspiration from Edwin A. Abbott’s Flatland and holography, this episode lays the groundwork for a deeper distinction between the social agent and the human being. What happens when we mistake a flattened social identity for the full complexity of self? How might a holographic model of the human being invite new ways of understanding character, selfhood, and personal multiplicity?
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
Tallulah Bankhead Performance Sketch
References
- Abbott, Edwin A. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. London: Penguin, 1998.
- Thorpe, Jerry. “The Celebrity Next Door.” The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, Season 1, Episode 2. CBS, 3 December 1957. Image source: https://papermoonloveslucy.tumblr.com...
About this Episode
What does it mean to do research “in character”? In this concluding episode of Chapter 5, we explore how different internal personas—like the academic, the runner, the cynic, or the dreamer—might shape the kind of knowledge we produce. Extending the well-known concept of research positionality beyond the social agent, this video asks: what if the diversity of self within a single human being could enrich academic inquiry, just like diversity across a community does?
Through a critical reflection on authorship, epistemology and performance practice, this video proposes that acknowledging and even inviting inner character diversity could improve the rigour and scope of research.
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
- Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Translated by Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001.
- Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.
- Crawford, Kate, and Trevor Paglen. “Excavating AI: The Politics of Images in Machine Learning Training Sets.” September 19, 2019. https://excavating.ai.
- de Lange, Catherine. “Know Yourself.” New Scientist, May 21, 2022, 42–45.
- Graeber, David, and David Wengrow. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. London: Allen Lane, 2021.
- Gross, Rachel E. Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage. New York: W. W. Norton, 2022.
- Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575–99.
- Ranković, Miloš and Slavica. “Art in the Time of Contractions.” MIDIRS Midwifery Digest 24, no. 4 (December 2014): 536–38.
- Warner, Marina. Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-First Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
About this Episode
This episode explores how the character adopted during a process of research or writing unconsciously influences the kind of knowledge that that process can produce. The video asks: Who is really doing the writing in academic contexts? And how does the character of scholarly rigour sometimes produce unintended outcomes?
This chapter continues the exploration of a “politics of inner self,” highlighting the momentum and blind spots that even supposedly neutral character frames can carry. Performance, art, authorship and critique intersect here in a candid analysis of the forces shaping knowledge production.
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
- Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
- Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin, 1990.
- Hayles, N. Katherine. My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
- Ranković, Katarina. “The Shape of a Thinking Thing.” In Goldsmiths PhD Art Publication, edited by Marie-Alix Isdahl, Dani Smith and Nina Wakeford. Independently published in an edition of 500, 2021.
- Samanani, Farhan. How to Live with Each Other: An Anthropologist’s Notes on Sharing a Divided World. London: Profile Books, 2022.
- Wolfram, Stephen. A New Kind of Science. Champaign, IL: Wolfram Media, 2002.
About this Episode
In this video, we explore the classification of character types through the lens of performative research, culminating in a new distinction: tethered versus tangential characters. How do different characters within us get assigned power, expression time, or even social legitimacy? From early taxonomies like “fictional vs real” to “dominant vs subordinate,” this episode investigates how we unconsciously manage our inner diversity—and what happens when one character dares to speak back.
Through an experimental letter written by a rarely-expressed character to her more dominant counterpart, we witness a confrontation with the very politics of selfhood. What does it mean for a character to be tethered to social expectations, while others are allowed to emerge freely, if briefly, in artistic space?
This episode is a continuation of Chapter 5: Classes of Character and a Politics of Inner Self from the Scripting for Agency series.
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
- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, ed. J. W. Burrow (London: Penguin, 1985).
- Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race (London: Bloomsbury, 2018).
- Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (London: Vintage, 2011).
- David L. Stern, “The Genetic Causes of Convergent Evolution,” Nature Reviews Genetics 14 (2013): 751–64. doi:10.1038/nrg3483.
- Ros Gray and Shela Sheikh, “The Coloniality of Planting: Legacies of Racism and Slavery in the Practice of Botany,” _The Architectural Review_, 27 January 2021. https://www.architectural-review.com/....
- Chief Seattle, “Chief Seattle’s Speech,” Suquamish Tribe website. https://suquamish.nsn.us/home/about-u....
About this Episode
In this video, the second half of a dialogic performance experiment unfolds as two distinct characters—both played by the same person—reflect on what it means to share a single consciousness. We explore comparisons to chair work therapy, internal dialogues, dissociative identity and performance art to deepen the notion of a “politics of inner self.” What does it mean when one version of you dominates the stage of selfhood? Can character role play serve as a philosophical or therapeutic tool? Join us as we interrogate the ethics, complexities and possibilities of inner multiplicity.
While Episode 5.1a described the performance experiment, this section discusses 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-series
PhD thesis (PDF format): https://bit.ly/sfa-pdf
Thesis artworks: https://bit.ly/sfa-art
References
- Clarkson, Petrūska. Gestalt Counselling in Action. London: Sage, 2004.
- Dennett, Daniel. Freedom Evolves. Harlow: Penguin, 2004.
- Falconer, Morgan. “Group Dynamics: Andrea Fraser Interviewed by Morgan Falconer.” Art Monthly, no. 464 (2023): 1–4.
- Fraser, Andrea. This Meeting is Being Recorded. Video. 2021.
- Graeber, David, and David Wengrow. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. London: Allen Lane, 2021.
- Kellogg, Scott. Transformational Chairwork: Using Psychotherapeutic Dialogues in Clinical Practice. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
- Kurzweil, Ray. The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. London: Penguin, 1999.
- Linville, Patricia W. “Self-Complexity and Affective Extremity: Don’t Put All of Your Eggs in One Cognitive Basket.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52, no. 4 (1987): 663–76.
- Passmore, Jonathan, and Tracy Sinclair. “Gestalt Approach and Chairwork.” In _Becoming a Coach_, 133–38. Cham: Springer, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-531....
- Phillips, Robert, and Truddi Chase. “Oprah Interviews a Woman with 92 Personalities.” The Oprah Winfrey Show. Aired 21 May 1990. King World.
- Terbeck, Sylvia. Informal communication, 2022.
- WebMD. “Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder).” Medically reviewed by Smitha Bhandari. Last modified 22 January 2022. https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/d....
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.