Kristoffer Ørum
Some of it only exists as a photograph now.
A documentary practice. Every work here has an address and a date.
Not local. Boston, Vancouver, Riga, Kraków, Oberhausen, San Francisco.
A portraitist. None of the portraits are of him.
An artist who makes things up about real places.
Science fiction, set last week.
AALBORG ER FREMTIDEN (Aalborg Is the Future) is a public art project by Kristoffer Ørum that presents an alternative perspective on Aalborg's history. Aalborg Is The Future, 2024
The End of the Universe as We Know It? was a solo exhibition by Anders Bojen & Kristoffer Ørum at Galerie Mikael Andersen in Copenhagen in 2007. The End of the Universe as We Know It?, 2007
The oysters provide shelter, regulate air quality, supply electricity and heating, and monitor their human inhabitants' health and behaviour. Affluence without abundance, 2021
The project replaced advertising posters at Sydhavn Station with what appeared to be an information campaign about the development and dissolution of the welfare state from 1872 to 2001. Frihed, Lighed Og Hip-Hop, 2023
Signal_Crayfish was commissioned as a book work for "Interspecies Futures ," the first survey of bookworks by international practitioners from bio-art and speculative design fields. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
The piece functioned within the broader context of examining technological fears and the archetype of the monstrous machine. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
The work asks how we can imagine a future after the welfare state, now that it seems to be definitively being dismantled. Melting State, 2020
The installation asked speculative questions: Can you remember when Prime Minister Helle Thorning played a DJ set in Parliament instead of giving an opening speech? Frihed, Lighed Og Hip-Hop, 2023
The animation recreates the street outside the former artist-run space, projecting a computer-generated scene onto a screen covering the window. Et Andet Rum 2, 2009
Rather than proposing a return to older models, Watershed treats this uncertainty as an opportunity: a chance to experiment with new arrangements of familiar material, to test how different structures shape perception. Watershed, 2025
In Copenhagen, at Live Art for Kids the project took shape in courtyards, playgrounds, and cultural centres. Mundane Heroics, 2019
Visitors could connect their phones to new networks appearing in the gallery space and receive fragments of text and video. Invisible Objects, 2016
The project exploited technological imperfections to imagine an improved future by manipulating AI's original commercial intent. Frihed, Lighed Og Hip-Hop, 2023
Rather than presenting the institution as a fixed architectural entity, the work represents it as an evolving body defined by the everyday activities, lessons, evaluations, and exchanges taking place within and around it. A Body Has Many Members, 2012
At that time, Denmark experienced economic growth and falling unemployment, and society was marked by optimism and collective visions of a better future — hopes that are harder to find today. Hvidovre Makes Good Times Better, 2025
During this struggle of imaginaries Spanien 19C continues to function as an art space, wedged in between building sites of what is to come and fragments of what used to be. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022
It positions deliberate misunderstanding as a productive alternative to seamless digital communication and reliable interpretation systems. Feathered Misconceptions, 2018
Instead of treating these models as definitive or universal, the project approaches them as partial and provisional—open to reinterpretation, modification, and play. Diffused States (Vancouver), 2025
Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care is a twenty-minute video, one of nine works Ørum showed in FORSTADIER / Precursors — a duo exhibition with Aske Thiberg, curated by Morten K Jacobsen and Heidi Hove. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
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
It employs a computational process to dismantle and reassemble the daily flow of news images into a navigable world built from their fragments. Watershed, 2025
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
jerklædte Misforståelser (Feathered Misconceptions) is a fifteen-minute associative performance commissioned by Ny Carlsberg Fondet for their annual celebration of their founder on 28 February 2018. Feathered Misconceptions, 2018
By exposing an otherwise private dataset in a public exhibition space, the work reflects on memory, digital traces, and the role of the internet as a space for both research and distraction. Auto Navigate My History, 2014
The project was supported by research conducted at Aarhus University as part of an ongoing investigation into the aesthetic dimensions of computational processes and automated interpretation systems. Listening Without Ears, 2019
The work set daily life against hypothetical digital physiognomies, using the nose as a means to examine identity and perception. According to the Nose, 2021
The Video was Presented as part of Illumenarts, the work took the form of a thriller-like visual sequence in which digital structures spread and evolve. Once We All Walk through Solid Objects, 2007
The starting point was the woodlouse as a kind of care worker. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
Tank Hip-Hop established the methodology of using counterfactual storytelling to construct alternative Danish histories. Tank Hip-Hop, 2022
Mundane Monsters was presented as part of Epsilon Spires' 2022 programming, which included 68 events focused on bringing cutting-edge creative work from around the world to southern Vermont. Mundane Monsters, 2022
The exhibition posed a paradox about how we can become accustomed to living in a constantly changing world with technological trends that supplement, expand and reinforce reality with extra layers of information. Mundane Monsters, 2023
It was curated by Nanna Lysholt-Hansen and supported by Vesterbro Lokaludvalg. Et Andet Rum 2, 2009
Rather than corporate development, this speculative trajectory imagines ternary computing as evolving through grassroots cultures of experimentation and resistance. Diffused States (Boston), 2025
Like collage, the work is not about arriving at a definitive meaning but about generating provisional configurations that open new ways of seeing. Watershed, 2025
It operates in a zone where phenomena such as computer screens, lakes of coffee, simulated fire, and collective machines all influence our conceptions and expectations of the physical world. Coffee Lake, 2019
The outcome was a series of live tableaux presented in public space, inviting direct engagement and chance encounters. Mundane Heroics, 2019
In The Old Gate at Folkets Park, Malmö’s working-class history is reactivated through DIY sound system cultures. Even the City Dreams of Being Another, 2025
The images are unstable and shifting, conjuring a welfare system built on an uneasy combination of nature and technology that is neither utopian nor dystopian but simply strange and somehow plausible. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
Diffused States was presented as part of *Data Fluencies: Tributaries*, curated by Roopa Vasudevan, which brought together artists working on the ways data can be resisted, rerouted, or reimagined outside dominant narratives. Diffused States (Vancouver), 2025
Kristoffer Ørum’s contribution imagines Malmö as shaped by the afterlives of its industrial past and alternative forms of civic imagination. Even the City Dreams of Being Another, 2025