Everyone Cried for This Robot. But It Was Never Dying
Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s Can’t Help Myself became the internet’s favourite dying machine. The story was false. What the
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Sun Yuan e Peng Yu - Can’t Help Myself (2016) 
Peng Yu
Peng Yu is a Chinese contemporary artist known for provocative installations created in collaboration with Sun Yuan. Working together since 2000, the Beijing-based duo uses robotics, living materials, manufactured objects and controlled spectacles to examine power, violence, surveillance and human behaviour.
Their works often place viewers in morally unstable situations. Instead of delivering a clear political message, Peng Yu and Sun Yuan construct environments in which looking becomes a form of participation and the audience must confront its own fascination, discomfort and complicity.
Among their best-known installations is Can’t Help Myself (2016), an industrial robot programmed to contain a spreading blood-like liquid. The work addresses automated control and guarded borders, but its viral circulation transformed it into a global metaphor for burnout, repetition and emotional exhaustion.
This archive collects articles and critical readings on Peng Yu, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s collaborative practice, Chinese contemporary art, robotic installations and the politics of spectacle.
Sun Yuan e Peng Yu - Can’t Help Myself (2016)