Can’t Help Myself is a kinetic installation created by Chinese artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu in 2016.
A large industrial robot is enclosed within a transparent glass box.
Its single programmed task is to continuously scrape back a thick, blood-like red liquid that slowly spreads across the floor.
The robot performs this motion endlessly—rotating, bending, and wiping with mechanical precision—yet the liquid keeps escaping its reach.
Over time, its movements appear more desperate and exhausted, almost human, though it never stops working.
The piece reflects themes of futility, control, surveillance, and the absurd repetition of labor under automation.

Like Can’t Help Myself, my work also deals with a system that keeps operating without achieving its purpose.
While Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s robot endlessly tries to clean, my box endlessly begins and cancels its own delivery.
Both reveal the irony of automation—machines that follow commands perfectly but lose all meaning in repetition.
They humorously and critically expose the emotional emptiness within systems that seem efficient yet remain blind to purpose.