Shows
Scripting for Agency3.4 Scripting for Agency: Substrate Neutrality & the Mechanics of SelfAbout this EpisodeCan 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...
2025-10-1905 minScripting for Agency3.3 Scripted and SpontaneousAbout this EpisodeWhat does it really mean to act “spontaneously”? In this episode, we challenge the common belief that spontaneity correlates with authenticity—and that scripting undermines agency. From gender identity and social performance to jazz improvisation and machine learning, this lecture explores how our actions, even the seemingly unscripted ones, are shaped by deep cultural repertoires. Drawing on Judith Butler, Erving Goffman, Daniel Dennett, and personal performance practice, we examine the potential false dichotomy between being scripted and being free.This is the third of four episodes in Chapter 3 of the thesis, Scripting for Ag...
2025-10-1620 minScripting for Agency3.2 Prescription and AutonomyAbout this EpisodeCan something scripted ever be truly free? In this episode, we explore the philosophical tension between determinism and autonomy by asking what it really means to act freely within a system governed by rules. Drawing on Daniel Dennett’s compatibilism, cellular automata like John Conway’s Game of Life and the aesthetics of glitch, we examine whether agency can emerge from scripts—biological, computational, or cultural.Along the way, we challenge common assumptions about spontaneity, control, skill, and error, and reflect on whether scripting might be not a limitation of agency, but its ve...
2025-10-1224 min
Scripting for Agency3.1 Inheritance and LegacyAbout this EpisodeIn this episode, we consider how both human beings and fictional characters are shaped by forces of inheritance and leave behind legacies. Through a reflection on Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being and an original performance piece (A Ritual Resuscitation of Eternal Lovers), this video explores how character is not born from essence but emerges from scripts—cultural, literary, and behavioural. What does it mean to be haunted by characters we could have been? Can fictional agents be said to live? And what do we share, ontologically, with the ghosts of literature?This...
2025-10-0908 minScripting for Agency3.0 Code and Expression: Art, Agency and the Programmable SelfAbout this EpisodeWhat if your personality could be scripted like a computer program? In this opening video of Chapter 3, we explore the human being as a programmable machine capable of playing out “character”—understood here as a kind of transferable behavioural code. Drawing from computing, biology, theatre, and aesthetics, this episode introduces a theory of character as a dual mechanism made up of code and expression. From ghostly dualisms to scripting fictional agents, we begin to unpack how character governs our actions—and how art can be used to reprogram the self.About...
2025-10-0507 minScripting for Agency2.3 A String Theory of SelfAbout this SeriesIn this episode, we explore a new model of selfhood: the line. Building on earlier discussions of the self as vessel and as distributed, this chapter proposes that the self might be understood as a medium, akin to a guitar string or a wave field, that resonates with and expresses viral patterns of character. Drawing from physics, drawing, and memetics, this video reframes agency and personhood through the aesthetics and logic of resonance, contagion, and impressionability.This is the third of three episodes in Chapter 2 of the thesis, Scripting for Agency, exploring the shapes...
2025-10-0214 minScripting for Agency2.2 The Distributed SelfAbout this EpisodeIn this episode, we explore the distributed self—a model of personhood that challenges the idea of the self as a centralised essence contained within the body. Drawing on thinkers such as Daniel Dennett, Marilyn Strathern, and Virginia Woolf, the video proposes that the self may instead be constituted across objects, others, places, and time.We follow Virginia Woolf's protagonist Mrs Dalloway through the streets of London as she experiences herself as “everywhere”, and consider how this reframing of selfhood may shift our understanding of death, loneliness, and authorship. The distributed self is not only a...
2025-09-2108 minScripting for Agency2.1 The VesselAbout this EpisodeIn this episode, we explore one of the most persistent intuitive models of the self: the vessel. Drawing on anthropology and neuroscience, the video examines why the idea of a soul or self as something “contained within” the body remains so widespread—and what problems this shape creates when trying to understand agency.We encounter the “homunculus effect,” investigate infinite regress, and consider alternatives to the idea of a centralised core self. While critiquing the limits of the vessel model, we also examine its affordances—such as how hiddenness contributes to our perception of agency, and...
2025-09-1826 minScripting for Agency2.0 The Shape of a Thinking ThingAbout this EpisodeIn this introductory video to Chapter 2 of Scripting for Agency, we explore the question: What is the shape of a thinking thing? Drawing comparisons to scientific models, such as have existed for atoms or the Earth, this episode highlights how intuitive diagrams and conceptual “shapes” influence the way we think about selves, agents, and identity. Through historical examples, contemporary thought, and an original drawing study on lay theories of selfhood, this section sets the stage for a deeper investigation into models of the self—starting with the vessel, then the distributed self, and finally, a stri...
2025-09-1410 minScripting for Agency1.4 Mirror Gazing: Becoming a QuestionAbout this EpisodeIn this final section of Chapter 1, we delve into the uncanny act of prolonged mirror gazing as a method of self-estrangement. What begins as a reassuring glance becomes a disquieting encounter—where the self, once assumed stable, starts to unravel into something indeterminate. Drawing from personal performance practice, Luigi Pirandello, Bertolt Brecht, and phenomenology, this video explores how looking at oneself can shift the self from being an answer into becoming a question. What does it mean to see oneself as a machine of potential, rather than a fixed identity?About this Se...
2025-09-1140 minScripting for Agency1.3c Accommodating Others: Interiors and ExteriorsAbout this EpisodeIn this episode, we explore how agency, authorship, and creativity have long been imagined in spatial terms—from ancient poets and muses to modern artists like Cézanne and Cindy Sherman. Drawing on philosophical, anthropological, and artistic accounts, this chapter unpacks the surprisingly persistent idea that the self must be "emptied" before it can be filled. Is agency something we possess—or something that possesses us?About this SeriesScripting 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 practi...
2025-09-0711 minScripting for Agency1.3b Accommodating Others: Being a MediumAbout this EpisodeWhat happens when the artist steps aside and lets something—or someone—else speak through them? In this video, we continue exploring the metaphor of the artist as a medium—someone who becomes a channel for external agency, impression, or character. Drawing on examples from Cézanne’s rhythmic brushwork, T.S. Eliot’s impersonal theory of poetry and Cindy Sherman’s photographic self-transformations, this chapter unpacks the ambiguity between passivity and agency in art-making. Can a self disappear into its influences? And what does this mean for how we understand authorship, creativity, and identity?About this Series...
2025-09-0426 minScripting for Agency1.3a Accommodating Others: The Artist as MediumAbout this EpisodeIn this episode, we explore the metaphor of the artist as a medium: a channel for other voices, forces, and intentions. Drawing from historical, spiritual, and artistic lineages, the video asks what it means to make space for otherness in art, and how we might conceptualise agency. Does creativity come from within—or through us? And how does this affect our understanding of authorship, originality, and intentionality?About this SeriesScripting for Agency: An Artistic Enquiry into Selfhood, Character and Agency in the Age of AI is a video lecture se...
2025-08-3117 minScripting for Agency1.2b On Jealousy: Character as a System of MemesAbout this EpisodeIn this episode, we explore the idea of character as a contagious system of memes—cultural patterns that spread and evolve like genes. Building on the concept of jealousy introduced earlier, this video investigates how our identities are shaped by memetic inheritance, and how imitation, expression, and transmission make us part of a shared cultural lineage. Drawing from Dawkins, Dennett, Goffman, and personal performance experiments, it asks: Are we the authors of our character, or its hosts?About this SeriesScripting for Agency: An Artistic Enquiry into Se...
2025-08-2827 minScripting for Agency1.2a On Jealousy: Performance, Empathy & ImitationAbout this EpisodeThis episode introduces jealousy as a central emotional mechanism in the development of character within an artistic performance practice. Drawing on childhood encounters with powerful fictional figures like Disney’s Mulan, the artist explores how admiration can become a catalyst for transformation, imitation, and aesthetic experimentation. Unlike desire or envy, the jealousy described here preserves the other’s autonomy, sparking a form of temporary empathy that allows the performer to inhabit different ways of being. Through reflections on copying, influence, mirror neurones and artistic identity, this video reframes jealousy as a positive, generative force in t...
2025-08-2427 minScripting for Agency1.1b Self-Estrangement as MethodAbout this EpisodeThis episode deepens the exploration of self-estrangement by analysing what happens before, during, and after a performance of character. Through a critical reflection on her own video tutorial, Katarina questions the distinction between “real” and “performed” identity, exploring how genre conventions and expressive habits shape even our most habitual selves. Drawing on Erving Goffman’s concept of expressive equipment, the video introduces the introspective performance experiment—a method for observing the cognitive and embodied shifts that occur when transitioning between characters. Key insights include the tension between narrative and character, the role of mood in shaping t...
2025-08-2123 minScripting for AgencySelf-Estrangement as Method - Tutorial 2About this EpisodeAs part of a collaborative research project at Exposed Arts (Intelligence Debiased, 2020), the artist-researchers will be swapping methodologies from their practices to explore an expanded notion of intelligence, beyond anthropocentric perspectives. This is a follow-up tutorial to a previous part, "Self-Estrangement as Method - Tutorial 1'", in which I shared one of my performance methods.About this SeriesScripting 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...
2025-08-1715 minScripting for AgencySelf-Estrangement as Method - Tutorial 1About this EpisodeThis method, derived from my art practice, involves recognising the malleability of personhood and using performance to newfangle the self and make room for new kinds of thoughts to emerge. When I use this practice to temporarily behave in a slightly altered way, it seems to shift the landscape of my mind and allows me to have thoughts that seem to have been previously inaccessible. As part of my ongoing research into the relationship between (fictional) character, roleplay and personhood, this video shares instructions on how to carry out the performance method...
2025-08-1712 minScripting for Agency1.1a Self-Estrangement as MethodAbout this EpisodeThis episode introduces "self-estrangement" as a performance-based research method. The practice involves deliberately altering one’s habitual identity in order to inhabit alternative characters and perspectives. Viewers are introduced to a two-part tutorial that demonstrates how to induce self-estrangement and explore the self as a flexible, embodied structure. The method is presented as a tool not only for performance art but also for rethinking authorship, research voice, and the embodied nature of thought.About this SeriesScripting for Agency: An Artistic Enquiry into Selfhood, Character and Agency in...
2025-08-1706 minScripting for Agency1.0 Becoming a QuestionAbout this EpisodeThis episode introduces the self-estrangement performance practice at the heart of the research. Developed over a decade, this method involves deliberately unsettling one’s habitual identity in order to explore and inhabit alternative characters. By manipulating subtle physical and vocal behaviours, the artist becomes other—and in doing so, questions what the self is and how it forms. Drawing on video documentation from the ongoing One-Woman Empathy Circus, the practice is framed as both a research tool and a lived inquiry into character, authorship, and the mechanics of self.Abou...
2025-08-1407 minScripting for Agency0.4 Research Findings: How Character Shapes Thought, Selfhood and SocietyAbout this EpisodeThis episode summarises the key findings of the research project. It introduces two central insights: first, that character functions like a cognitive attractor—it is the shape of what is thinkable to a person for the time it is adopted; and second, that the social agent (the character we perform in society) is not the same as the human being (the character-playing machine). By disentangling these ideas, the research points to a deeper politics of self—one that challenges essentialist notions of identity and opens new ways to think about freedom, authenticity, and social resp...
2025-08-1005 minScripting for Agency0.3 Methodology: A Laboratory of the SoulAbout this EpisodeThis episode introduces the research methodology at the heart of Scripting for Agency. Combining performance practice, critical self-reflection, and a mechanistic approach to concepts like self, character, and agency, it outlines how experimental role-play and artistic improvisation can function as a “laboratory of the soul.” The video explores how language, repetition, pattern, and meme-like behaviours contribute to selfhood, and explains how characters—viewed as free-floating scripts—are performed, transmitted, and questioned through embodied artistic inquiry.About this SeriesScripting for Agency: An Artistic Enquiry into Selfhood, Character and Agen...
2025-08-0736 minScripting for Agency0.2 Overview of the State of the Art: From Performance Art to ComputationAbout this EpisodeThis episode offers a cross-disciplinary overview of the major thinkers and traditions that shape contemporary ideas about selfhood, identity, and agency. From Judith Butler and Paul Ricoeur to Daniel Dennett and cultural psychology, it traces how the self has been theorised as fluid, scripted, contextual, and computational. The video also contrasts how academic and artistic practices handle influence and authorship, and introduces “character” as a transferable script that plays out across bodies, cultures, and media. This foundational review sets the stage for the thesis’ central proposition: that scripting and agency may not be opposites, but in...
2025-08-0318 minScripting for Agency0.1 Implications and Significance: Identity, Humanity & SuperintelligenceAbout this EpisodeThis episode explores why the question of selfhood has become urgent in the context of rapidly advancing artificial intelligence and deepening political divisions. It examines how our implicit assumptions about what a self is—particularly the belief that true agency must be spontaneous and unscripted—can reinforce rigid, essentialist identities. These assumptions shape how we navigate questions of cultural appropriation, identity politics, and even mourning. By rethinking the self as something scripted, yet still agentic, the video proposes a shift in how we understand autonomy, belonging, and human values in an increasingly automated world.
2025-07-3111 minScripting for Agency0.0 Introduction to Scripting for AgencyAbout this EpisodeWhat does it really mean to bring a fictional character to life—and what does this reveal about what makes a “real” person? In this opening episode, artist and researcher Katarina Ranković introduces the original motivation behind her thesis: a quest to free her characters from authorship and grant them autonomy. But this creative problem quickly spirals into deeper questions about the nature of the self, the distinction between fiction and reality, and how both human beings and AI systems may be “scripted” into agency. This first part of the Introduction sets the stage for a philo...
2025-07-2708 minScripting for AgencyWhat Is a Self? Rethinking Identity, Character & AI through ArtAbout this SeriesScripting 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.Originally recorded for YouTube: https://bit.ly/sfa-seriesPhD thesis (PDF format): https://bit.ly/sfa-pdfThesis artworks: https://bit.ly/sfa-art
2025-07-2010 min
Die Franchisejause#114 Mario Nachbaur Business Development Manager Eismanufaktur Kolibri GmbHBereits 1990 wurde die Eismanufaktur Kolibri in Vorarlberg gegründet und 2014 von Katarina Rankovic übernommen. "Eisherstellung ist für uns pure Leidenschaft und nicht bloß Handwerk", über 400 Eissorten werden jährlich hergestellt und einige davon haben bei Eiswettbewerben Auszeichnung gewonnen. Als junges Franchisesystem bietet Kolibri sowohl fixe Standorte/Eisdielen als auch mobile Trucks an. Business Development Manager Mario Nachbaur erzählt in dieser Episode vom Aufbau und den ersten Franchise-Standorten und gibt Einblick, welchen Support FranchisepartnerInnen erwarten können. Ein Gespräch über Wiedererkennungswert, Fans, Eiswettbewerbe, Ritterschlag und Dokumentationwww.eismanufaktur-kolibri.atwww.soulcream.atfa...
2025-03-1339 min
TAMPON ZONAŽene i nasleđivanje: Imovina, odricanje, kult sina - Katarina Ranković i Jelena RužićDa li znate koliko žena u Srbiji poseduje imovinu? Čak 43,2% žena biva isključeno iz procesa podele nasledstva u korist muških članova porodice. Izraz „žensko dete – tuđa kuća“ potiče iz perioda kad su se porodice primarno bavile poljoprivredom i veći broj dece se smatrao većim ljudskim kapacitetima za rad u polju. Zašto se do danas održao obrazac da se žene odriču imovine u korist braće i da je to nešto što se jednostavno podrazumeva?
Zajedno sa Katarinom Ranković i Jelenom Ružić iz ŽUKO pričamo o običajima koji su doveli do ove sit...
2024-02-061h 20
Pokretači Podcast#180 Jelena Ružić i Katarina Ranković iz ŽUKO o osnaživanju žena na lokaluŽensko udruženje Kolubarskog okruga se bavi osnaživanjem žena, pogotovo na lokalu, aktivnostima koja razvijaju posmatrajući šta treba njihovim komšinicama: od kamapnja da se ne odriču nasledstva do organizovanja online prodavnice.
Duža verzija na patreon.com/belgrade
2023-04-1859 min
OblakoderAktivni glasovi - pojedinci koji stvaraju promene: Katarina RankovićKatarina Ranković je studentkinja Fakulteta političkih nauka iz Lazarevca i članica Ženskog udruženja kolubarskog okruga. Misija ove organizacije je osnaživanje položaja marginalizovanih grupa društva, a pre svega žena na teritoriji Kolubarskog okruga sa Lazarevcem. Ona govori da je u stvarima za koje se ŽUKO zalaže videla način doprinese svojoj lokalnoj zajednici, a da je i izbor fakulteta imao dosta veze sa njenom odlukom da postane aktivna na raznim poljima.
Katarina je počela da volontira na fakultetetu, i bila je deo ESN-a u Beogradu, jer je oduvek bila zainteresovana za druge kulture...
2021-11-2615 min
My China StoryKatarina Rankovic’s self-imposed, no-technology lifeTo most people having a wild adventure means going on an African safari, participating in survivalist-type of a television reality show or simply, travelling solo in a completely dissimilar culture or society, hopefully where nobody speaks your language and you don’t speak theirs. But for Katarina Rankovic, from Serbia, that adventure spirit also includes traversing China with absolutely no phone and no internet access. In this episode of the programme, she tells her story to Nillah Nyakoa.
2019-09-0126 min