About this Episode
This 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 the creative process.
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
- Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook. Mulan. United States: Buena Vista Pictures, 1998.
- Daniel Dennett. Freedom Evolves. New York: Viking, 2003.
- Yuval Noah Harari. “A Brief History of Humankind.” Coursera, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
- Brené Brown. Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience. United Kingdom: Penguin Audio, 2021. Audiobook.
- Samuel Beckett (quoted in): Anthony Cronin. Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist. London: Flamingo, 1997.
- Jean Matthee. “Eating the Book.” Journal of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research 4 (Summer 1994): 113–135.
- T. S. Eliot. “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” In Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern: A Reader, edited by Sean Burke, 73–80. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995.
- Erving Goffman. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin, 1990.
- Alfred Gell. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.
- Lucina Q. Uddin, Marco Iacoboni, Claudia Lange, and Julian Paul Keenan. “The Self and Social Cognition: The Role of Cortical Midline Structures and Mirror Neurons.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11, no. 4 (2007): 153–157.
- Cecilia Heyes and Caroline Catmur. “What Happened to Mirror Neurons?” Perspectives on Psychological Science 17, no. 1 (2022): 153–168.
- Alan Palmer. “Storyworlds and Groups.” In Introduction to Cognitive Literary Studies, edited by Lisa Zunshine, 179–193. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.
- Daria Martin. At the Threshold. 16mm film, 17.5 min, 2014–2015.
- Katarina Ranković. Amado Mio. Video, 2012.
- Leslie H. Martinson. Batman. United States: 20th Century Fox, 1966.
- Winsor McCay and Bill Blackbeard. Little Nemo 1905–1913, 2nd ed. Köln, Germany: Taschen, 2006.
- Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain. France: UGC Fox Distribution, 2001.
- Jane Rendell. “Travelling the distance/Encountering the Other.” In Here, There, Elsewhere: Dialogues on Location and Mobility, edited by David Blamey, 53–54. London: Open Editions, 2002.
- Gemma Blackshaw. “‘In time the likeness will become apparent’: Rebecca Fortnum’s Feminist Copies.” In A Mind Weighted with Unpublished Matter, edited by Rebecca Fortnum and Andrew Hunt, 6. London: Slimvolume, 2020.