How an unusual art installation from 2016 went viral
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">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. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The artwork, titled </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Can’t Help Myself</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">, showcases a machine inside a glass cube with a robotic arm that is illuminated by fluorescent lighting. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">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. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The machine works endlessly on a task that is never finished, to showcase the tiring feeling of endless labour. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">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. </span></p>
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<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Created by artists </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Sun Yuan and Peng Yu for New York’s </span><a href="https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/34812"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Guggenheim Museum</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, 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.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">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. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“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.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">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.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">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.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">With all art, </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Can’t Help Myself</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;"> is open to interpretation by an objective audience, with the artists welcoming people’s thoughts on its greater meaning. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">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. </span></p>
<p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Image credits: Twitter</span></em></p>
