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) 
Sun Yuan
Sun Yuan is a Chinese contemporary artist known for provocative installations created in collaboration with Peng Yu. Working together since 2000, the Beijing-based duo uses robotics, manufactured objects, unconventional materials and controlled spectacles to examine power, violence, surveillance and human behaviour.
Their installations frequently place viewers in morally unstable situations. Instead of providing a reassuring political message, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu construct environments in which looking becomes participation and the audience must confront its own curiosity, discomfort and complicity.
Among their most widely recognised works is Can’t Help Myself (2016), an industrial robot programmed to contain a spreading blood-like liquid. Conceived around surveillance, automated control and guarded borders, the installation later became a viral metaphor for burnout, repetition and emotional exhaustion.
This archive collects articles and critical readings on Sun Yuan, the collaborative practice of Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, Chinese contemporary art, robotic installations and the politics of spectacle.
Sun Yuan e Peng Yu - Can’t Help Myself (2016)