Uffe Isolotto is a Danish multi-disciplinary artist specialising in physical and digital sculpture. His work is known for pushing the boundary around questions of how the human body intersects with the machine – in a time when social media and artificial intelligence are increasing their presence in our day-to-day life, what does it mean to be human, how do our bodies interact with the world (physical and digital), and how do we conceive of our bodies as they wonder, stress, move, reflect, escape, revel and survive through the twenty-first century world?

His latest installation, We Walked the Earth, is being exhibited in The Pavilion of Denmark at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. A family of centaurs greet visitors as they walk through a farm life installation examining the human form and machinery.

We interviewed Isolotto over Instagram chat to ponder over social media and its relationship with art, artificial intelligence and his thoughts on the time-old question of where do your ideas come from – is it a pest of a question or does it allow the artist time to reflect?

How do you see artificial intelligence changing how we perceive art?

At this point in time I think artificial intelligence is a mere mirror of ourselves - we’re gazing into the reflection and hoping to find ourselves, or our maker. We might see something which thinks like us -but with a much larger processor - and we confuse it for another being capable of echoing our desires to understand this mess called life that we’re in. Artificial intelligence has the potential to go beyond us, and ultimately, we’ll have to set it free, give it a body and figure out if we created another being, or a version of ourselves which is better to cope with the consequences of climate change or the life of another planet. Art is sort of an inter-human language and I’m not sure if art would be the choice for an artificial intelligence.

How do you see people interact with art in the social media age?

I just opened my exhibition We Walked the Earth at the Danish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2022 a few weeks ago, and the response and interaction through social media has been overwhelming. I’m based in Copenhagen, so it’s comforting to see that the show has a life on its own in Venice. A lot of people document the work and put it up, so it’s almost like seeing a live feed from the exhibition. I’m in direct contact with people, often minutes after they saw my work and it’s very impulsive, respectful and emotional. I didn’t expect this feedback, so that part is really positive. The downside is that it’s quite often the same angles people take pictures from, so the documentation becomes homogeneous and leaves out part of the narrative, which then becomes its legacy. I guess it was the same problem when photographing was analogue and sparse and artworks were dispersed through printed matter.

When you conceive of ideas do you think about the audience - do you envision a particular part of society accessing your art or does that depend on the project?

I think about the audience. I try to use symbols that are recognisable and somehow universal - which often is some kind of body - so people have an entry into the work. Then I take them somewhere else. I change their context a bit to keep people curious about the rest of the narrative and then they are free to engage with the work, based on their own experiences. I have an idea of where I want to go with my narrative, but sometimes your story is just as good as mine, and I’m not going to take that away from you. I use images from our common image bank, process them and feed them back again, so they can enter our language and create new understandings. I see my work as part of a rhizome, a non-hierarchical system, where I’m connected to all these ideas and people and crafts.

What joys does collaborating with other artists of different mediums give to the creative process?

It’s a truly fantastic experience to work with people who give you the best that they have. It can be very personal and intimate and therefore result in feelings other than joy, but essentially it’s the awe-inspiring feeling of creating something big together. I did some curating when I ran a couple of artist-run spaces in Copenhagen, and it was the same feeling of humbleness and happiness when artists trusted you with their work. They would not do it if you hadn’t presented them with something new, a possibility for them to see their work from a different angle. Collaborating can also be very exhausting, because you spend a lot of time making people feel good about their choices and end up not focusing that much on your own processes. I think that it might be time to write a novel, in solitude, after doing the exhibition in Venice.

You meshed a centaur with a human in your latest project - We Walked the Earth - why do you think artists are so drawn to examining the past and present using folklore tales and creatures?

Good question. It’s something that’s been on my mind for years. I think we need to tell some stories and manifest them through artworks, in a time where the digital stream is rapid and narratives change faster than we can take them in. Folktales from the past about humans and creatures were subject to change and cross-pollination, and different versions of them appeared in local contexts, until they were collected and authored. The nature of the internet opened up for a plurality of stories once again, so I think it’s a way of dealing with fake news and the monsters of our time. For We Walked the Earth I used the mythological centaurs and a 19th century farmhouse setting to talk about the future. I see a longing in our time for a simpler living, and the glorification of the peasant life of yester-yestercentury or of off-Earth biosphere colonies are just two opposites of the same longing.

Are you working on anything new at the moment?

We Walked the Earth will travel from Venice to Copenhagen, where I will install a version of the exhibition at Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art. It’s an old wooden building built by a group of artists in the 19th century and has a long history of artists working and exhibiting together. It’s a very traditional structure, but it’s also the perfect place to show this project, given the nature and history of the building. This time I want to dissolve my part as the central artist even more by inviting other artists to join in on the narrative with their artworks and performances. I’m inspired by the collectiveness of musicians and filmmakers and I want to embrace this kind of practice in my own work.

Do you find the question, ‘where did that idea come from’ a nuisance or a time of reflection for you and the process you went through?

I like that question, as much as I’m paralysed by it. I think there is a lot of good to harness from creative ways of thinking, as an alternative to a more linear line of thought. But I also often find myself demystifying something which relies on not being decipherable. I mean, I spent so much time and energy creating a complex machine of physicality, sensations, ideas and emotions that is non-linear and mute, so what is the purpose of taking it apart with words? My motivation for creating it will only make me the subject of the work, which will render your input useless. That being said, I thoroughly enjoy any questions regarding my process, because it makes me feel that I can revisit those parts again and something new can stem from there - that all the possible versions of the exhibition are still at hand and may exist in a multiverse.