Parasympathica
In a Spanish magazine, I found a list of characteristics considered by the Catholic church to be positive and negative. With two exceptions, the positive characteristics represented passive attitudes. In the film, I represent them mimically. Using animated imagery, I let the juices which are stimulated by the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, flow over the body: tears, sweat, sperm, vaginal secretions. (Mara Mattuschka) In Parasympathica the artist divides her body into two halves, one black and the other white, with everything held together by a crown she wears. This "split" figure rotates jerkily by means of single frame animation. As Mattuschka spins on her own axis in a movement resembling a butterfly, the contrasts between the two divisions of the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic, are blurred. (Christa Blümlinger)