As a newly-appointed shepherdess, I was struck by the power of non-verbal communication. During an incident, when the entire flock started following me, I was overwhelmed by the joy of being accepted. The flock suddenly changed course—moving as a collective body—towards an oat field, which is considered taboo. I knew the older sheep had become the brain of the body, deciding to betray me; they couldn’t resist oats. This took place in southern Lithuania during my residency at Verpėjos. Without the help of a shepherd dog, I had to learn to drive the herd using my own movements as well as my voice, which to establish boundaries.
This is a fictitious story about the nomadic life of a sheep flock, based on actual facts. The flock migrates through both urban and rural areas, from the countryside in the south of Lithuania to the city center of Munich, and further onto the rooftop of Bellevue di Monaco. In this story the rooftop is one of the few remaining green spaces in the city. If you happen to see it from above, it appears as a small green island amidst the concrete. If you zoom in, you can tell one is the other’s home; one is the other’s skin; one is the other’s limbs; one is the other’s sensory organs. And they communicate in the mother tongue of the shepherd dog’s flying eye.
When they migrate to the Munich city center, the green spaces in public areas unfold themselves from leisure spaces into an arena of survival. You can find them in every crack of the city: the park, the roadside green belts, the hill where trash is buried underneath. They dream of the countryside, where two rams had to leave my herd. No longer allowed to join the flock on their journey to the meadow, every night I prepared a domestic buffet for them, consisting of different local plants in a wooden house.