Rite of Passage a 2 hour durational preformance that was presented as part of a living Installtion with The Performance Collective at Catalyst Arts Belfast in February 2009.

 

Poised aloft on a high table, a figure dressed in white crushes eggs. As her heals come to bear over these fragile forms, blood seeps from the cracks. She then attempts to hide this mess, cleaning the deep red liquid from the surface. The task is impossible and makes more visible that which she has created. Finally she rises and finds her place inbetween this pedestal and the ceiling that holds her in. Gradually she attempts to take the weight of this structure finding a place of power and strength in this restriction.

 

 

'Michelle Browne worked on the theme Rite of passage. Arnold van Gennep (1873 – 1957) proposed a threefold structure of rites of passage: separation/ transition/ re-incorporation. Browne intentionally enabled the first two stages: “I created a high table as I wanted to reference the domestic but I also wanted there to be a sense of danger in my position on it…I wanted the audience…to be intimately connected to my cleaning of the blood…In touching the ceiling I wanted to create a sense of restriction…” (e-mail to me, 26 February 2009). Vulnerable yet strong, wet and bloody yet silent, with her bare feet she crushed eggshells filled with blood, which she then mopped up with her body and dress. The story of a self-sacrificed maiden (e.g. Antigone by Sophocles) has surfaced in European art often in periods of state oppression, which makes this performance significant for now and here.'

 

 

Slavka Sverakova, The Performance Collective, Circa 128, Summer 2009, pp. 67-69