By Nour Atieh | Staff Writer
Can’t Help Myself (2016) is an artwork by Sun Yuan & Peng Yu for the Guggenheim Museum that was displayed at the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia ‘May You Live In Interesting Times’. It employs an industrial robot, visual-recognition sensors, software systems, but it could not be any more human. This piece went viral on TikTok attracting the attention of people after it began to slow down and die, and the general response was dominated by sympathy and grief over nothing but a dead machine.
Sun Yuan and Peng Yu are contemporary Chinese artists. Their use and adoption of unusual materials, their engagement in past struggles, and their awareness of the current context are all factors in making their work relevant and extremely relatable. Their art is based on the incessant confirmation of paradox, on the perpetual search for the dualities between reality and falsehood, and the manifest and the concealed. Their provocative work is the demonstration of a continual analysis of life through experience in which the viewing public is often invited to participate, equipped with the will to find the essence and substance hidden behind the outwards appearance.
“May you live in interesting times” is claimed to be a translation of a traditional Chinese curse. While seemingly a blessing, the expression is normally used ironically; life is better in “uninteresting times” of peace and tranquility than in “interesting” ones, which are usually times of trouble. But, is there peace? Or are we just silent? Isn’t everyone just struggling while remaining silent?
Behind clear acrylic walls, the robot struggles to fulfil its one specific duty: to contain a viscous, deep-red liquid within a predetermined area, so when its sensors detect that the fluid has strayed too far, its arm desperately shovels it back into place, leaving traces on the ground and splashes on the surrounding walls.
It is a battle and a fight.
It is a struggle. But what exactly is this continual struggle for?
People vs Power
Can’t Help Myself often left people with the thoughts of being trapped, yet the perspectives on the kind of prison differed. Some spectators understood it as the struggle of the human race against civilization and routine in which we remain enchained.
We are stuck. We are the slaves of society, the law, and civilization. We are not free.
We all have a duty. Whether you’re a child, a teenager, a student, a worker, a mother, a teacher, a guard, or an observer, you are told what to do. Our priorities are set in a way that society and productivity come first. Even our lives are shaped to serve society and capitalism, not ourselves. We go to schools and graduate to study for a degree in a university and then work; we are told that this is the ideal life. Society expects us to wake up each day and work to get to the next stage, and in the end, we rest just like the machine in death.
And, you wake up and do it every day.
Again,
And, again…
And, again…
Until you’re tired, but you still perform your duty because you’re enchained.
The machine was programmed to do whatever it takes to contain that liquid that it keeps on leaking, and it was not given the option to stop and rest. Just like us; the machine is forced to abide by the notions of society, and by the rules set for it by man.
Summoned by the power, we listen and perform, and we never question. They take everything in return, our light, our air, our life, our soul, our happiness, and our honor. We are left with nothing but a sense of false security and belonging.
Just because I was told to stay behind the glass and suffer on my own performing my duty each day, does not mean that I should do it or at least not question it.
Why?
Why am I working?
Why am I accepting this reality?
Why haven’t I broken from these chains yet?
While the tears coated the tip of our boots, the machine laughed in its death; it was more human than humanity in itself. The machine screams the words with its flailing arm “I am art, yet I am pain. I am what your hands have gained. I am the product of humanity, a never-ending cycle of enslavement and a chain around the neck.”
People vs Life
The spectators continued to empathize with the machine as they announced that it was truly alive with human emotions: “It reminded me of depression and how we try to hide our suffering in life.” It reminded them of the struggle against mental illness and life; it reminded them of how we perform daily while our world is in conflict whether external or internal.
You’re born crying; and that in itself is a sign for suffering.
I watch you suffer safely behind a see-through glass, and I do nothing. I watch you struggle with life, with death, with happiness, and with misery. One day it’ll die off and perhaps be freed.
Shall I accept life as it is and dance with it in the night?
Shall I tell her that your poison keeps me alive, and your beauty kills me each time?
Maybe?
But I shall live.
I shall live even if my fangs seep and puncture my skin, poisoning the same light that keeps me going. I shall struggle and suffer in silence, but I will keep on living.
I shall not leave a trace, or they will know.
The machine moved around in rhythmic movements capturing the tail of her maroon gown, and in the ecstasy of desperation, it crawled on the ground with one arm to capture the traces. In these moments, the gallery echoed with screams of pain so human yet mechanical.
“I am okay,” I mumble.
“I am just fine,” I smile.
What a perfect lie.
But, I slip sometimes, and I say the wrong thing; I am exposed.
The wounds heal, but the walls are coated with the memories; all that remains is some scars and some traces on the glass.
I am fine.
Perhaps, I am not.
Everyone is watching, and they are all blind.
Everyone sees me suffering, but they don’t help.
I can’t help myself, so who can?
The glass dissolved, and you become one with your reflection.
The machine stopped after 3 years and died in 2019 as everyone watched it suffer on its own. Yet they felt sad for it, a heartless programmed being that is pretty much senseless, heartless, and feels nothing. The machine trended on Tiktok with people sympathizing with it and claiming that they saw its pain, yet we fail to understand people around us. We fail to see them.
“It looks frustrated with itself like it really wants to be finally done.”
It was not the only one that needed to be freed.
We all need to be freed from the restraints.
To watch the artistic piece in action: