Can’t help myself
Can’t help myself by SUN Yuan 孙 原 & PENG Yu 彭 禹
It is really difficult to create a connection between art and the viewer. The greatest masterpieces of art do it seemingly effortlessly while others struggle to create a connection regardless of the skill of the artist. Especially nowadays we are flooded with AI-”art” which, in my eyes, are soulless pictures, thrown together without sense and intent and, worse, which attribute to visual dilapidation. Anyways, as I said, it is difficult to create a meaningful connection. It is even more remarkable if the art piece in question doesn’t have a human form or even the shape of a living being but is only a little robot arm, a Kuka industrial robot.
You probably all guessed it already: I am talking about the installation by Sun Yuang and Peng Yu “Can’t help myself”. The installation consists of an industrial robot, painted black and mounted on a platform within an enclosed cubicle. Mounted on the arm are a rubber squeegee and a shovel. The robot arm was constantly leaking a dark red fluid: 48 gallons of cellulose ether and dark-red colored water that would seep from the center of the sculpture.
The arm with a movement range of 360 degrees was programmed to sweep up the red fluid and do a little happy dance – one of 32 distinct movements – when it managed to sweep up the fluid. Those movements and the programmed interaction with the viewer gave it a human-like quality, a mimicries of being alive. The viewer formed an emotional bond, as ugly as this arm was and as un-humanlike as it was.
At first it did its happy dance quite often but over time the spillage became increasingly harder to manage. The happy dances became rarer and rarer and the arm had to work harder and harder to sweep up the fluid until, at the end, it couldn’t manage anymore. It turned into a Sisyphean task, impossible to complete and, even worse, it was a ridiculous, senseless feat. The robot never needed the fluid to survive. It ran on electricity, not on hydraulic fluids. In 2019 it was permanently turned off by the creators.
The piece can be interpreted several ways. It can be seen as a symbol of our endlessly expanding capitalism, relying on the endless work of faceless people just to devour itself as an unavoidable result of the unconstrained growth. The hydraulic fluid can be seen as symbolic of the price of endless growth: it stands for the blood that is spilled due to industrialization and technological violence at geopolitical borders [Wikipedia]. The anthropomorphism can be seen as a challenge to our traditional view of the sharp divide between man and machine. There are some other interpretations possible. What would you say about it? How would you interpret it? Do you feel something for the robot?
Facts about the artwork: Can’t Help Myself was created in 2016 and commissioned by the Robert H.N. Ho family collection for display at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.[13] The artwork was intended to be displayed as a part of an exhibition that called attention to Chinese artists with an emphasis on displaying cultural and historical hidden narratives titled Tales of Our Time.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can%27t_Help_Myself_(Sun_Yuan_and_Peng_Yu)
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/sun-yuan-peng-yu-cant-help-myself-twitter-tiktok-1234615686
