Alÿs's sheep

I love Alÿs’s sheep, Francis Alÿs’ sheep in his video work entitled Cuentos patrióticos (Patriotic Tales), 1997, recently shown at MoMA in the retrospective exhibition A Story of Deception. The video is 24:40 minutes, and I can watch it over and over like a child insisting on having read the same favorite story every night at bedtime.

Strictly speaking, I should say I love Alÿs’s video which features a flock of 25 sheep going around a pole. The pole is the flagpole in the center of the Zòcalo in Mexico City, well known to Mexicans as the site of political protests where once, in 1968, a group of civil servants were herded there and, to suppress a demonstration, bleated like sheep with their backs against the tribune. But without the implied political iconography, the video is remarkable in itself.

The video starts with Alÿs himself leading one sheep on a tether and going around the pole. When he completes the circle a second sheep comes in and joins the first, then the third and so on, one after another, at the completion of each round until the flock of 25 sheep completes the circle. Alÿs then removes the tether and now follows the last sheep, and the head sheep leaves the circle after another round and then others follow suit one by one, after each round, until one is left and then none.

It’s utterly simple, almost silly. We are reminded of children’s counting rhymes and a game of rounds, or a dance in a circle, like “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush,” for example, but no narrative event. What makes it mesmerizing, despite its simplicity, is the infinite variety embodied in the repetitive action because sheep are sheep. They don’t march in a military discipline; they don’t count. As we watch intently we begin to notice a lot, however. We note not only that every sheep is different in shape and size and movement but also in their gait and pace. Some stride on, others dawdle; and the slowpokes quicken their steps now and then to catch up. In trying to catch up, some trot, others make skipping steps. Some keep the circle, others starts to wander off but, as if realizing the error, hop back to the circle. Since the pace varies, so the head bobs up and down differently, too, and the distance between one sheep and the next changes constantly. Moreover, the sunlight illuminates the sheep differently depending on their position on the circle. With each round, the number of the sheep is one more or one less. So, the repetition is illusory, or rather, only nominal. There is no regularity in the pattern of form, movement, or pacing; moreover, each change follows no rules and is unpredictable. The design embodies the variety that one sees in the group of uniformed nursery children on excursion; they stay in line more or less -- more less than more. The complexity is made visible by virtue of the simplicity of the circular line-up; but it is visible only if one sits through the entire routine; a casual glance eludes it.

Subtle diversity in the seemingly uniform was what Andy Warhole explored in his multiples representing products we expect to be perfectly repetitive in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, as we find in his Coca Cola bottles and Campbell soup cans. They also demand us to inspect carefully from one panel to another.

While watching the video, the thought that came to my mind was, “oh, it’s such fun to watch and watch.” We are reminded of the repetitive routine from day to day, which are essentially the same and yet never really the same, unless we blindly succumb to the illusion of sameness. Conversely, day-to-day events, though diversified, are subsumed in the earth’s rotation as night follows day and night day. Similarly the cycle of the seasons from year to year is never repetitive. Spring is spring but no two springs are the same; yet years repeat from one to the next. You cannot step twice into the same stream,” as Heraclitus taught. This is the aesthetic that underlies the fascination of Francis Alÿs’s video of sheep.