Colleen Billing 𝒳 Noah Furman
with Bad Water
Palazzo San Giuseppe, Polignano a Mare

𝔛𝔒, 2021, rye flour, urine, salt, water, corrugated cardboard, wood, archival pigment print, cast pewter

"A witch cake is a mixture of rye, ash and urine.
Throughout the late 17th century, it was believed a witch cake could be used to detect the presence of magic. The cake was made from the urine of the afflicted - or the accused, and fed to a dog. The dog’s reaction would reveal the presence or absence of witchery. If the dog got sick - witchcraft. If not - no witchcraft. Similar bread ornaments were made and suspended on entry doors, used as protective ornaments or amulets to ward off evil spirits.

This confusion in the use and purpose of the witch cake reflects a blurry illegibility between contaminant and the contaminated, between subject and object, between gut and brain - a way to see what’s happening inside, outside.

Much like the chemical reaction that causes bread to rise, this bizarre form of counter-magic begins with a state change.

In her 1976 essay on ergotism and the New England Witch Trials, Linda R. Caporeal hypothesized that those accused of being witches may have been suffering the effects of consuming ergot, a fungi which contains lysergic acid, the precursor for the synthesis of LSD, which grows on spoiled wheat.

In their work for Baitball, Colleen Billing and Noah Furman have made a network of rye sculptures combined with cast pewter and UV prints. The table-based works reference alchemy (the magical transformation of matter), ergotism, and the way culture becomes material."