The Script System

Description

The Script System, Duesseldorf Germany (2013)

Performance by Milo Moiré

Duration 4:05 min

Daily life is characterized by “human automats”. Can we break the stereotyped action?

The Script System was Milo Moiré’s first artivist performance. The idea for the concept is based on the script theory of cognitive psychology. This states that, in everyday life, we repeatedly carry out stereotypical sequences of actions without being aware of it. We are all familiar with the restaurant script, for example: sit down, order, eat, pay and leave. We also function like human automatons in the streetcar, blindly obeying our inner film script and not even noticing the world around us. It is precisely here that Moiré sought to disrupt or break through people’s scripts. Like everyone else on their way to work, she used public transportation to travel through Düsseldorf as the sun went up. There was one difference: Instead of clothes, she had written the pieces of clothing on her naked body in the form of words.

Always the same way to work, day after day…it is early in the morning…far too early for performance art! Always the same way to work, day after day…it is early in the morning…far too early for performance art! The semi-automatized operating according to an internalised script…enter, pass through, punch the ticket, sit down… Disturbed by a completely naked woman, right in the middle of it, dressed in words… What will happen? Astonishingly… not that much!

The own radical nakedness turns in this process into a protective shield against the stereotype and paradoxically makes the artist invisible. If one allows stunning defencelessness, a protective, almost private space arises – even on the tram.

Poem
The Script System by Milo Moiré:

-The scripted Life-
Following in the footsteps ohs others,
who again
found their path in others.
Understanding the beginning
and having the nerve
to walk in to the end.
Being human, oneself.