Upper Austria, 1750. A middle-aged woman holding a baby stands at the mouth of a waterfall that seems to stretch all the way up to heaven on a cascade of white foam. What happens next won’t come as much of a surprise to anyone familiar with the rest of Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz’s captivatingly bleak — and religiously familicidal — body of work: She lobs the child over the edge, with no discernible expression on her face as the little bundle plummets out of sight.
From there, the woman immediately reports herself to the local authorities. The next time we see her, she’s on public display in a local forest, her decapitated head resting in an iron cage next to her corpse. This morbid exhibit is complete with an illustrated plaque that’s meant to serve as a warning for those who would dare to trespass against God. It doesn’t.
