Synopsis

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.