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.