Can't Help Myself (Sun Yuan and Peng Yu)

Can't Help Myself
Artist	Sun Yuan and Peng Yu
Year	2016-2019
Medium	Kuka industrial robot, stainless steel and rubber, cellulose ether in colored water, lighting grid with Cognex visual-recognition sensors, and polycarbonate wall with aluminum frame
Dimensions	Variable overall
Location	Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York
Accession	2016.40
Website	https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/34812

Can't Help Myself is a kinetic sculpture created by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu in 2016. The sculpture consists of a robotic arm that can move and dance, but has the primary purpose of sweeping up any of the red, cellulose ether fluid that escapes from its inner core. Can't Help Myself was commissioned by the Guggenheim museum and was created with the intent of cultivating several dialogues about the advancement of technology and industrialization, violent border control, and allusions to the nature of life.

Unlike other sculptures, Can't Help Myself is unique in the sense that it died in 2019, two years after its creation in 2016. The kinetic sculpture functioned under the presumption that it needed the red, bloodlike fluid in order to survive and support itself. For these years, the sculpture spent most of its time sweeping up its fluid in hopes of lasting another day. The sculpture ended up "dying" and loosing functionality in 2019, but due to an artist programmed power outage for its expiration. This indicates that Can't Help Myself did not need to sweep up the hydraulic fluid to survive and worked daily for its "survival" that was inherently out of its hand, which has fostered many conversations between critics, the audience, and the artists alike.

While the sculpture was functional, it was displayed at the Guggenheim Museum in the Tales of Our Times exhibition as well as the Venice Biennale in 2019 for the May You Live in Interesting Times exhibition. Each of the displays of Can't Help Myself has not only given it popularity, but has constructed the various audience interpretations of the kinetic sculpture's purpose, meaning, and social criticism.

Background

Modern artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu are an artistic duo that began making non-normative and unconventional art in the 2000s. Sun Yuan was born in Beijing, China in 1972 and Peng Yu was born in Heilongjiang, China in 1974. The pair first met each other while attending at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing where they both studied oil painting. After completing their studies at the Central Academy of Fine arts in the 1990s, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu had short solo careers that set an artistic foundation for their partnership in the early 2000s. The collaboration between Sun Yuan and Peng Yu in 2001 was subsequent to their marriage in 2000 when the two quickly became known as the husband and wife duo that received the Chinese Contemporary Art Award for their provocative art. Currently, the pair creates kinetic and installation art pieces that work to incorporate unconventional and organic materials into artworks and create statement pieces about the current systems of political and social authority. Yuan and Yu utilize technology and multi media art to "comment critically on the modern understanding and exercise of political constructs like the nation-state, sovereign territory, freedom, and democracy." The ultimate goal of Yuan and Yu's art is to evoke powerful physical, emotional, and psychological responses from their audience and prompt them to scrutinize the socio-political systems that plague todays society.

Can't Help Myself is one of the many pieces of kinetic art that Sun Yuan and Peng Yu created throughout their career, yet one with increasing popularity and media attention. The artwork was commissioned by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and was installed there in 2016 as a part of the Guggenheim's Tales of Our Times exhibition. The idea of using a robot as the main object of focus in Can't Help Myself stemmed from the artists' desires to relinquish their "artistic will" or "artistic genius" and replace it with something mechanical or programed, alluding to the meaning of the artwork.

Creation and Display

Can't Help Myself was created with a great deal of planning as well as consideration of the audience shock factor, a signature characteristic of Sun Yuan and Peng Yu's collaborative projects. The kinetic sculpture was created using a Kuka (KUKA model Kr180 R3100 K) industrial robot arm that was composed of stainless steal and an exterior black coating. The robotic arm operated at a full 360 degree range and was modified by Yuan and Yu through the addition of a shovel attachment with a rubber squeegee at the end of the arm. The Kuka arm was fully programmable and worked with the use of a Kuka controller and electricity. With that said, the robotic arm is surrounded by polyurethane foam elements to provide protection of the engine from exposure to liquids, as it did not run off of hydraulics. The robot was displayed in a white, waterproofed wooden platform surrounded by a floor-to-ceiling protective barrier of clear polycarbonate panels mounted to aluminum beams. The platform was 7m x 7m and was covered with an estimated 48 gallons off a cellulose ether and dark-red colored water. Aside from the sculpture itself there are 18 LED lights and 4 GigE Cognex industrial cameras placed in a ceiling mounted grid above the robotic arm. The cameras have a visual recognition system software which utilizes feed from the cameras to detect the movement of the red, bloodlike liquid. The visual recognition of the fluid's location is integrated into the Kuka robotic arm's programming language, which results in the arms recognition of an area of spillage, motion towards it, and consequential squeegeeing of the liquid toward the robots base. The Kuka robot was also programed to perform 32 distinct dances when not sent to squeegee different areas of the raised platform. Can't Help Myself was powered by a high voltage power cable which connected to the base of the robot from the control unit and was powered down and restarted daily by museum employees.

Kinetic Sculpture

Kinetic art began occupying space in the art realm in the 1920s upon the publication of the "Realist Manifesto" in Moscow. Kinetic art emerged as a means of defying the static nature of art and art elements by the formation of sculptures with kinetic rhythms perceivable to their audience.

In order for an art piece to be characterized as kinetic it must possess one or more of the following characteristics: 1) an optical phenomena, 2) transformative, 3) movable by the observer, 4) mechanical in nature, 5) playing with light and surrounding environments, and 6) have intrinsic movement.

The goal of a kinetic sculpture is to create a machine in which motion is a critical component of the piece, resulting the audience's failure to associate the sculpture with an mere object. The automated nature of Can't Help Myself categorizes the sculpture as a work of kinetic art, which, in turn, generates an anthropomorphic quality to the robotic arm. This anthropomorphism partially is because of the robotics performative nature and completion of the human task of cleaning up a spillage. In addition, the spectators enter an emotional phase of connection with the artwork, followed by in intellectual phase where the audience works to understand the origins and significance of the motion, another quality of kinetic art. Can't Help Myself was created with the intent of generating both an emotional and intellectual response from viewers and takes up the human task of representing the violence and terror at the border. Furthermore, Can't Help Myself is a physical manifestation of metaphysical ideas which directly elicits a human emotional response from the audience, as kinetic art should do.

Dances, Duty, and Demise

There are three integral qualities to understanding the functionality of Can't Help Myself: the dances it performs, its programmable duty and purpose, as well as its demise when it stopped operating in 2019.

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Dances

When Can't Help Myself was created, it was programmed to perform for its spectators. The robotic arm was made to dance, and had 32 unique dance moves, such as "a** shake", "scratch an itch", and "bow and shake". These dances functioned as technical representations of the artists' machine animation skills as well as the artists' desire to anthropomorphize the sculpture and parallel its existence to that of a human. The dances themselves served the purpose of eliciting an emotional response from the viewer and grasping their attention. The programmed dances would have looked familiar to the audience giving Can't Help Myself a humanistic quality that is unavoidable. The robot also would have interacted with viewers through "waving" or even doing "jazz hands", committing their attention to the sculpture. Furthermore, this dancing quality simultaneously shifts the audience perspective of the sculpture as an object to understanding the sculpture as an extension of humanity or something living.

Duty

The functional purpose of the moving robotic arm in Can't Help Myself spans much further than its interactive dance moves and crowd engagement. The true duty of the robotic arm is to sweep up the dark-red cellulose ether fluid that seeps out from its inner core, something that was thought as necessary to maintain its functionality. The 4 GigE Cognex industrial cameras, placed above the sculpture, alert the robotic arm to move to an area of spillage and squeegee said fluid back to its center. As time proceeded the spillage became greater and became harder for the robotic arm to manage. This shifted the life trajectory of the robot from dancing and entertaining its viewers to constantly working to fulfill its programmed duty. The responsibilities of the sculptures have been equated to the participation in a Sisyphean task, a task that will never be fully completed, by the artists and curators alike. The endless sweeping of the fluid to the inner core of the sculpture was artistically intended to be absurd, laborious, and eerily satisfying. The audience surveying the repetitive duty of the robot keeps them engaged in the piece and contemplate its meaning and significance. Furthermore, the repeated duty of Can't Help Myself gives it a sense of consciousness as a life-form, one that has been capture, confined, and subject to a task in a given space.

Demise

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Two years after the completion of Can't Help Myself, it came to a permanent halt in 2019. Contrary to popular belief, the death was not due to hydraulics or the loss of too much fluid, as Can't Help Myself was completely programmed, ran on electricity, and powered off every night by museum staff. The artwork instead was programmed to perpetually squeegee the "blood-like" fluid seeping from its inner core, as a Sisyphean task, not as a life necessity. The death of Can't Help Myself was completely subjected to the artists, and in May 2019 they decided to come into the gallery space and unplugged their creation. Therefore hydraulics of the kinetic sculpture was not an integral part of its functionality, but only a component of the piece to make a statement. The death of the robot elicited many feelings from the audience, but ultimately demonstrated that it doesn't matter if people do their due diligence to sustain, there is always a higher preceding power that has other plans. The mortal nature of the sculpture, too, provides Can't Help Myself with an anthropomorphic quality as a "person" that worked to live and causes the audience to empathize with its life duties and eventual demise.

Solomon R. Guggenheim: Tales of Our Time

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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. 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. The name of the exhibition is a play on the title of a book, Gushi xin bian, by a modern Chinese literary Lu Xun, which comments on society and contemporary issues by retelling relevant ancient Chinese legends. The exhibit itself serves as a cohesive group of art pieces that deconstruct the fabrications of the past and reveal the present for its true nature. This exhibit was curated by Xiaoyu Weng with the intention of being politically polarized in nature and creating a dialogue about migration and borders in China. Tales of Our Time ran from November 4, 2016 to March 10, 2017. With its purpose of eliciting unknown cultural and historical narratives as well as challenging the "conventional understanding of place", Can't Help Myself was created as Sun Yuan and Peng Yu's representation of geography and the nation state. The presence of Can't Help Myself as a kinetic sculpture in this exhibit speaks to its role of promote awareness to industrialized brutality on the Asian borders as well as the migration crisis in China. This artwork along with the others in the exhibition represent an artistic effort of contributing to the globalization of art via combating nationalism and intersecting art and traditional storytelling.

2019 Venice Biennale: May You Live in Interesting Times

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After its display at the Guggenheim, Can't Help Myself was displayed at the 2019 Venice Biennale for its 58th anniversary. The Venice Biennale's 58th exhibition, titled May You Live in Interesting Times was curated by Ralph Rugoff and ran from May 11, 2019 to November 24, 2019.

The expression "interesting times" was utilized by the Venice Biennale to represent the "menacing times" of sociopolitical polarization and oversimplification of controversial topics. The May You Live in Interesting Times was to bring awareness to global crises such as nationalism, treats to traditions and institutions, and controversial relationships in a "post-war" and highly combated world. The works present in May You Live in Interesting Times was to serve as a demonstration of arts social function and present art pieces that challenging existing habits and exposes multiple perspectives on controversial issues.

The exhibition itself was split into two propositions, Proposition A and Proposition B which each include one unique artwork from the same group of artist, each piece being vastly different and utilizing different mediums. In general, Proposition A was more primitive in subject and had archaic displays, whereas Proposition B represented a shift toward modernity and industrialization. This allows for each artist to display an alternative presentation of their perspective of global politics. Can't Help Myself was displayed in the Central Pavilion within Proposition B and served as a testament to Sun Yuan and Peng Yu's perspective of technology's effect on politics and the maintenance of geopolitical borders. Can't Help Myself tells the story of the political "other" through using industrialization to emphasize this narrative. The kinetic sculpture is a manifestation of a sentient form of life captured in a cage and put on display and confined to do a Sisyphean task because of technology and industrial programming.

Interpretations of Can't Help Myself

Can't Help Myself is a modern artist interpretation of technology at the border and the violence that it has caused. Firstly, the cameras present above the sculpture are method of activation for a machine that elicits a response once something or someone passes a certain point of restriction or no return. The blood-like substance, although useless for the functionality for the object itself, is a testament to the bloodshed that spills out from industrialization and technological violence at geopolitical borders in China and across the globe. The Sisyphean task of cleaning up the spillage is a reference to border technology's sole purpose of causing bloodshed and restricting migrants from passing a specific point. However the constant spillage represents the human impulsive behavior of seeping out for the core for outward movement. The dancing of the machine is purposeful as it convolutes Can't Help Myself's identity as both a robot, but as a human, exposing its vulnerabilities. This anthropomorphic quality raises questions about the separation of man from machine and generates the audience to question if the makers of the machine or the machine itself has true control over its actions. Lastly the piece is a testament to increasing machine intelligence and the controversies of surveillance culture, as humans are unaware that the machines and programs that they create for surveillance then, too, become subject to their constant monitoring and controlling of behavior.

Social Media and Popularity

Can't Help Myself has gained public attention in 2023 because of social media networks like TikTok and Instagram; however, its audience perception has changed. Social media framing as well as commentary on posts has highlighted the anthropomorphic quality of the sculpture where people feel as though it is "relatable robot" and state "no piece of art has emotionally effected me this way". The artistic interpretation of the robot has altered itself to being allegorical to life and the idea of working to live. The most common misconception is that the hydraulic fluid is lost "blood" from the robot and is squeegeed back to the center because the robot needs it to live. The Sisyphean nature of the sculpture has caused its audience to resonate with Can't Help Myself as a reflection on people's constant suffering that comes with repetitively doing work to maintain themselves and their lifestyles. This suffering, as seen in the sculpture, is perpetual and never ends until it becomes the source of human's death and demise as they work their entire life to keep themselves from "spilling" and falling apart.

References

• Weird= Morphology of movement

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The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation. “Sun Yuan and Peng Yu | Can’t Help Myself.” Accessed March 6, 2024. https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/34812.

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