A rite of passage is a ritual event that marks a person's progress from one status to another. It is a universal phenomenon, which can show social hierarchies, values and beliefs, which are directly connected to cultural behaviours.

The concept has been assigned to rituals marking the transitional phase between childhood and full inclusion into a tribe or social group. Normally, rites of passage have three phases: separation, transition, and reincorporation.

In our work we have established a connection between the rite of passage and the strong influence the sense of sight has in our cultural context. We have worked on the way of looking others in civil ceremonies such as going out for a drink, to an art opening or other social exchanges and we discovered our cultural tendency to judge and prejudge others through what we externally see, and how this judgments can condition human relations.

After an introduction where we judged and located the public in the space, we brought this reflection to a personal field, introducing our personal experiences of bad judgment and error. Finally we did our own ritual splitting  into two characters, which end up in a “woodoo” type relation of power. Suddenly we broke this annoying relationship leaving the audience in a standby reflection modus.

March, 2011 RITES DE PASSAGE, performance with Christiane Mudra. In the cultural venue Import / Export in Münich, Germany