How an unusual art installation from 2016 went viral
An art installation created in 2016 by two Chinese artists has been given a new life online, with users on TikTok connecting to the piece.
The artwork, titled Can’t Help Myself, showcases a machine inside a glass cube with a robotic arm that is illuminated by fluorescent lighting.
The robot arm has one task: to sweep up an oozing dark red liquid, made to resemble blood, that slowly spills out in a perfect circle.
The machine works endlessly on a task that is never finished, to showcase the tiring feeling of endless labour.
Every now and then, the task is interrupted when the robotic arm breaks into a series of dance moves, giving the machine scarily human characteristics.
Created by artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu for New York’s Guggenheim Museum, the piece uses “visual-recognition sensors and software systems to examine our increasingly automated global reality, one in which territories are controlled mechanically and the relationship between people and machines is rapidly changing.”
As the exhibit was first installed in 2016, footage of the machine slowing down has gone viral on TikTok, with many younger audiences finding their own devastating meaning in the piece.
“It looks frustrated with itself, like it really wants to be finally done,” one comment with over 350,000 likes reads. “It looks so tired and unmotivated,” another said.
Another emotional user commented, “This is what trauma feels like. You can sweep it away but it’s always there no matter what you do.”
One Twitter user analysed the work, claiming the piece was about “the hydraulic fluid in relation to how we kill ourselves both mentally and physically for money just in an attempt to sustain life, how the system is set up for us to fail on purpose to essentially enslave us and to steal the best years of our lives.”
With all art, Can’t Help Myself is open to interpretation by an objective audience, with the artists welcoming people’s thoughts on its greater meaning.
Regardless of how it influences each person, the hypnotising installation has cemented itself in the creative zeitgeist, with audiences finding similarities between their own struggles and a programmed bionic machine.
Image credits: Twitter