Kristoffer Ørum

Kristoffer Ørum

Made by hand, mostly. Cut, cast, sanded, painted.

Local. Copenhagen and Aarhus, mostly.

Some of it only exists as a photograph now.

An artist who makes things up about real places.

This text is generated. He decided what it generates from.

Works with machines that are confidently wrong.

The Downloadable Augmented Reality App (available here: https://s.oerum.org/BW) allows one to build one's own messy and unregulated digital architectures, both on and off the building site around Spanien 19C. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022

A key moment features a deliberately misspelled book title: "Plummed Past" instead of "Plumed Past" (feathered past becomes "blommet fortid" - flowered past in Danish), leading to the presentation of a talking plum. Feathered Misconceptions, 2018

Together, the elements formed a series of overlapping linguistic and visual displacements. Putin's Nose, 2019

The oysters provide shelter, regulate air quality, supply electricity and heating, and monitor their human inhabitants' health and behaviour. Affluence without abundance, 2021

The cardboard boxes were imprinted with logos of Tessellax, a fictitious medical company claiming to cure Involuntary Tessellation, a condition causing uncontrolled growth of square body parts. The Ballehage Woman, 2009

Produced for Aarhus Public Libraries and published by Haandholdt, the app was made freely available through iTunes. KAOS, 2012

The work was part of the group exhibition "Perpetual Interpreter" at Lokale in Copenhagen, co-curated with Anders Visti. Listening Without Ears, 2019

The site opens on the series title and a single line — "Would you like to know more?" — set in pale green with a cartoon crayfish at the edge of the frame. Would You Like to Know More, 2017

Despite this, they were largely abandoned in favour of commercially driven binary architectures. Diffused States (Boston), 2025

The installation was part of Overgaden's REVISIT format, responding to the exhibition "EROTIK" which took place at Overgaden in 1989. Sucker Trick, 2017

Aarhus'er #1 is the most expansive chapter in Kristoffer Ørum's ongoing counterfactual project "Frihed, lighed og hip-hop" (Freedom, Equality and Hip-Hop), created in collaboration with rapper Emilio Hestepis. Aarhus'er #1, 2025

Through AI-generated images and counterfactual storytelling, the exhibition envisions a self-built utopia in Hvidovre. Hvidovre Makes Good Times Better, 2025

The project draws on the history of low-resource and locally maintained computing, from community-run bulletin board systems to peer-to-peer networks sustained by recycled hardware. Diffused States (Vancouver), 2025

The outcome was a series of live tableaux presented in public space, inviting direct engagement and chance encounters. Mundane Heroics, 2019

By working with AI models trained on biased and incomplete datasets, DIFFUSED STATES engages with both their limitations and their possibilities. Diffused States (Vancouver), 2025

What emerges is a narrative of the self that is both enacted and undermined by an indifferent system — an algorithmic account of personality, filtered through the lenses of psychology, technology and cultural expectation. AutoBiography, 2011

The work mixed factual information about signal crayfish with invented characteristics, including claims that the species can grow to 1.8 metres and possess wireless communication abilities. Signal_Crayfish, 2020

The fact that they are made with local AI is important, because it provides a certain independence from the major platforms and makes it possible to work with the technology on my own terms. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025

The project served as the conceptual foundation for later work on how artificial intelligence could be used to create alternative historical narratives about Danish society. Tank Hip-Hop, 2022

In the post-totalitarian context of Latvia, where memory is often manipulated for political purposes, the work offers a reminder that the past is not fixed and demonstrates the fluidity of historical narratives. Monuments of A Fictitious Past, 2024

The symposium featured artists and scholars examining contemporary forms of image making and computational apparatus, investigating relations between desire and automation, uncertainty and labour, self and other. It Sings for Us of What We Might Become, 2019

The installation combined the physical presence of the large-scale 3D-printed oyster sculpture with video content projecting the voices and experiences of future oyster-dwellers. Affluence without abundance, 2021

The project was exhibited at General Public in Berlin, tranzit.sk in Bratislava, Casino Luxembourg in Luxembourg, and Fondazione Volume! in Rome, as well as Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Vienna. Topographies of the Insignificant, 2010

The book was commissioned during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic as part of a group of works that examined interspecies entanglement and human vulnerability. Signal_Crayfish, 2021

Listening Without Ears consists of 3D printed copies of everyday objects that transcribe what is said in the exhibition space and print it out. Listening Without Ears, 2019

Simultaneously with the physical performances, stories of The Ballehage Woman were disseminated across media including a website, YouTube video, Google ads, newspaper articles, and emails. The Ballehage Woman, 2009

The museum basement acted as a “rabbit hole,” filled with props, relics, tables, and charts that grounded the fictitious world. Game Continent, 2010

A collective of ten artists, led by Anders Bojen and Kristoffer Ørum, documented these spaces and transformed them into an interconnected web of associations, facts, myths and misunderstandings. Topographies of the Insignificant, 2010

At the moment the building site is a site of overlapping and contested imaginaries and Brownfield Wonderland is a celebration of this brief moment where two ideas of what a city is coexist. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022

The virtual history book appeared on two projection screens: one mounted on Roskilde’s main square and another inside the exhibition. Roskilde Parahistory, 2009

The work was reviewed in The Brooklyn Rail and included in a panel discussion about interspecies publications created during the pandemic. Signal_Crayfish, 2021

The work referenced Gustave Courbet's 1866 painting "L'Origine du monde", which was kept hidden behind a curtain for over a century. Sucker Trick, 2017

It questions the implications of surveillance, the accumulation of digital traces, and the way ordinary routines are recorded and interpreted. Day to Day Data, 2008

Google ads for tessellax.com used keywords like AROS and Sculpture by the Sea. The Ballehage Woman, 2009

I believe that vulnerability and the recognition of one’s own inadequacy can create stronger communities than ideals of moral purity. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025

To understand it, I placed a digital version of myself—a puppet with my face and a clone of my voice—in front of various AIs. Speaker 1, 2026

Generated with a Chinese variant of the Huyuan algorithm, the images include intentional misreadings of the runic inscriptions, echoing centuries of translation, loss, and projection. The Good, the Lost, and the Beautiful, 2025

Exhibition aboard the ship Svartlöga at Ebeltoft Fregathavnen examining climate change scenarios where Djursland becomes an archipelago. Ebeltoft After The Flood, 2021

The Kolding Creature was a virtual three-dimensional creature created from 3D scans of local Kolding pets and conversations with their owners. The Kolding Creature, 2021

The work was documented through performance protocols and connected to broader research into facial recognition, identity, and technological surveillance through embodied experience in public space. According to the Nose, 2021

Signal_Crayfish
Signal_Crayfish See the work →