Can't Help Myself (Sun Yuan and Peng Yu)
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Prior to all of the below sections I want to insert an "introductory paragraph" about Can't Help Myself and preview what is to come. Here I want to insert a picture of the artwork and give a brief synopsis of the sculpture, its history, and its qualities. This will hopefully foreshadow what is to come!
P.S.: Some images are placeholders as I am currently learning how to upload images from Flikr to Wikipedia!
Contents
Background
Creation and Display
Kinetic Sculpture
Dances, Duties, and Demise
Dances
Duty
Demise
Solomon R. Guggenheim: Tales of Our Time
2019 Venice Biennale: May You Live in Interesting Times
Interpretations of Can't Help Myself
Social Media and Popularity
Background
The background section will speak about the artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, and give a brief history of the artists and their works. I will also include a hyperlink to the Sun Yuan and Peng Yu Wikipedia page. This section will also have a quick background to the artwork itself and summarize some overarching themes, similar to a thesis statement.
Creation and Display
In this section I intend on writing specific information about Can't Help Myself in order for readers to have a better understanding of when and how it was made and displayed. This section will include its creation date (2016), the artists it was created by (Sun Yuan and Peng Yu) as well as the materials and mediums through which it was made (Kuka industrial robot, stainless steel, etc.). Furthermore, I intend on briefly writing about how this sculpture was displayed (glass encasing, etc.) and how that was designed by the artists. Lastly, I want to mention how the sculpture died in 2019, as a preview to the following two sections, one on Kinetic sculpture and one on the functionality of the Can't Help Myself robot.
Main source: The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation. “Sun Yuan and Peng Yu | Can’t Help Myself.” Accessed March 6, 2024. https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/34812.
Kinetic Sculpture
This section will provide readers with information about the history of kinetic sculptures and their evolution over time. It will define what a kinetic sculpture is according to art historical literature while also giving laying out the six qualities of kinetic sculpture in one place, such as optical phenomena, motion, etc. I intend on briefly speaking about the pioneers of kinetic sculpture; however, the ultimate goal of this section is to tie the definition and qualities of kinetic sculpture back to Can't Help Myself to defend its classification as a kinetic sculpture and justify some of the emotions the sculpture elicits.
Main sources: Rickey, George W. “The Morphology of Movement: A Study of Kinetic Art.” Art Journal 22, no. 4 (1963): 220–31. https://doi.org/10.2307/774539.
Celms, Valdis. “The Dialectic of Motion and Stasis in Kinetic Art.” Leonardo 27, no. 5 (1994): 387–90. https://doi.org/10.2307/1576092.
Dances, Duty, and Demise
In this section I intend on describing the kinetic nature of Can't Help Myself. The goal of this section is to describe the sculptures functionality from its creation to its "death", essentially creating a timeline of the sculptures activity and mapping out its "life" through using three stages, dances, duties, and demise. There will also be an overarching view of the time line divisions and an explanation as to why it was divided this way.
Dances
This subheading will be about the kinetics of the sculpture and its ability to dance. Different dance moves, such as "scratch an itch" will be spoken about. This will serve as a summary of the mechanical nature of the dances and touch upon how the sculpture danced constantly at the beginning of its life. This will likely be the shorter of the three subcategories
Duty
This section will speak about the duty of the sculpture to sweep up the red-dyed hydraulic fluid in order to keep itself functioning and alive. Duty will serve as the transition point from the sculpture constantly dancing shifting toward the sculpture spending the entirety of its day sweeping up its own spillage and parts of itself to maintain its proper function.
Demise
Demise will speak on the "death" of Can't Help Myself. Here, I will better inform the audience on the demise of the sculpture in 2019 and, most importantly, tell the readers how and why the sculpture died. The importance of Can't Help Myself losing functionality due to a programmed loss of power causes the analysis and comprehension of the sculpture to be interpreted differently (possible parallel to human mortality).
Main Sources: The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation. “Sun Yuan and Peng Yu | Can’t Help Myself.” Accessed March 6, 2024. https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/34812.
Weng, Xiaoyu, and Hanru Hou. 故事新編 = Tales of our time / [organized by] Xiaoyu Weng, Hou Hanru. New York, New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2016.
“Sun Yuan and Peng Yu: Audience, Agency, and Complicity | Spiegel-Wilks Seminar: Venice Biennale.” Accessed March 6, 2024. https://web.sas.upenn.edu/venicebiennale/sun-yuan-and-peng-yu/.
Solomon R. Guggenheim: Tales of Our Time
The first display of Can't Help Myself was at the Guggenheim in their Tales of Our Times exhibition. This exhibition was curated by Xiaoyu Weng with the intention of being politically polarized in nature through creating a dialogue about migration and borders in China. The presence of Can't Help Myself as a kinetic sculpture in this exhibit causes one to draw several conclusions about its role to promote awareness to industrialized brutality on the Asian borders as well as the migration crisis in China. This section will talk about the Tales of Our Times and its collected effort to combat nationalism and intersect art and storytelling, with mentions of how Can't Help Myself plays a role in advocating for awareness.
Main Sources: Weng, Xiaoyu, and Hanru Hou. 故事新編 = Tales of our time / [organized by] Xiaoyu Weng, Hou Hanru. New York, New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2016.
Carrol, Noël. “Art and Globalization: Then and Now.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65, no. 1 (September 22, 2007): 131–43. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-594X.2007.00244.x.
Shan, Lo Yin, Janet Fong, and Isaac Leung. “Digitisation with (in/out) Borders.” In Boredom, Shanzhai, and Digitisation in the Time of Creative China, edited by Jeroen de Kloet, Chow Yiu Fai, and Lena Scheen, 307–14. Amsterdam University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvqr1bnw.26.
2019 Venice Biennale: May You Live in Interesting Times
Prior to the death of the sculpture, it was featured in the 2019 Venice Biennale titled May You Live in Interesting Times. This subsection about the second instillation of Can't Help Myself will primarily discuss the concept of “interesting times” and the connotations that come with said expression. "Interesting times" was used as a term to describe the contemporary age as a "menacing time" and better explain the complexity of said times through using art as a form of educating others on human events. In relation to Can't Help Myself, I will use May You Live in Interesting Times to emphasize how Can't Help Myself tells the story of the political "other" through using industrialization to emphasize this narrative.
Carrol, Noël. “Art and Globalization: Then and Now.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65, no. 1 (September 22, 2007): 131–43. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-594X.2007.00244.x.
Shan, Lo Yin, Janet Fong, and Isaac Leung. “Digitisation with (in/out) Borders.” In Boredom, Shanzhai, and Digitisation in the Time of Creative China, edited by Jeroen de Kloet, Chow Yiu Fai, and Lena Scheen, 307–14. Amsterdam University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvqr1bnw.26.
Interpretations of Can't Help Myself
In this section I will write about the different interpretations of Can't Help Myself and how these interpretations have been modified by its instillation at both the May You Live in Interesting Times and Tales of Our Times. These interpretations will be divided into three subsections: Perspective on industrialization, perspective on politically polarized borders, and the allegory between kinetic sculptures to the nature of life.
THIS MAY BE UNDER THIS ONE SUBJECTS OR IN THREE SUBHEADINGS
Weng, Xiaoyu, and Hanru Hou. 故事新編 = Tales of our time / [organized by] Xiaoyu Weng, Hou Hanru. New York, New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2016.
Carrol, Noël. “Art and Globalization: Then and Now.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65, no. 1 (September 22, 2007): 131–43. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-594X.2007.00244.x.
Shan, Lo Yin, Janet Fong, and Isaac Leung. “Digitisation with (in/out) Borders.” In Boredom, Shanzhai, and Digitisation in the Time of Creative China, edited by Jeroen de Kloet, Chow Yiu Fai, and Lena Scheen, 307–14. Amsterdam University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvqr1bnw.26.
Social Media and Popularity
In this section I intend on BRIEFLY writing about the increased social media presence of Can't Help Myself from the tail end of 2023 to the present time in 2024. I will briefly mention the new TikToks, and Instagram reels that feature the sculpture as well as talk about the influx of magazine articles that cover the sculpture. The goal here is to not only mention popularity, but to also mention how this popularity stems from the sculpture's ability to elicit emotions from the audience that tie back to the sculpture interpretations mentioned in the section above.
References
Carrol, Noël. “Art and Globalization: Then and Now.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65, no. 1 (September 22, 2007): 131–43. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-594X.2007.00244.x.
Celms, Valdis. “The Dialectic of Motion and Stasis in Kinetic Art.” Leonardo 27, no. 5 (1994): 387–90. https://doi.org/10.2307/1576092.
Rickey, George W. “The Morphology of Movement: A Study of Kinetic Art.” Art Journal 22, no. 4 (1963): 220–31. https://doi.org/10.2307/774539.
The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation. “Sun Yuan and Peng Yu | Can’t Help Myself.” Accessed March 6, 2024. https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/34812.
Shan, Lo Yin, Janet Fong, and Isaac Leung. “Digitisation with (in/out) Borders.” In Boredom, Shanzhai, and Digitisation in the Time of Creative China, edited by Jeroen de Kloet, Chow Yiu Fai, and Lena Scheen, 307–14. Amsterdam University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvqr1bnw.26.
“Sun Yuan and Peng Yu: Audience, Agency, and Complicity | Spiegel-Wilks Seminar: Venice Biennale.” Accessed March 6, 2024. https://web.sas.upenn.edu/venicebiennale/sun-yuan-and-peng-yu/.
Weng, Xiaoyu, and Hanru Hou. 故事新編 = Tales of our time / [organized by] Xiaoyu Weng, Hou Hanru. New York, New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2016.