If There's No Sheepdog

作品賞析

Once the artist Lin Chen-Shun happened to watch a drive-cam recording from abroad. A shepherd was leading a flock of sheep through a place in the mountains, and suddenly a car raced by, horn blaring. While the sheepdog was preoccupied with the car, one sheep ran and collided into the shepherd, and the usually stable class relationship between sheep and shepherd disintegrated in an instant. Lin realized that the nature of class is actually quite fragile, and that one small variable might collapse it. In his If There’s No Sheepdog, the animals are arranged on a long platform symbolizing Noah’s ark. Their heads have been deliberately removed, and yet the brainless sheep and sheepdog still blindly move in the same direction. Close observation will reveal that some of the sheep are actually humans in sheep’s costumes. At the tail-end of the flock, the shepherd, who symbolizes the top of the class structure, has his back turned to the flock, showing a sense of alienation. “Life equality” may be a ridiculous deception.