Kristoffer Ørum
Collaborative. Most of it was made with other people.
Local. Copenhagen and Aarhus, mostly.
Made by hand, mostly. Cut, cast, sanded, painted.
This text is generated. He decided what it generates from.
Works with machines that are confidently wrong.
A portraitist. None of the portraits are of him.
However, this an unsanctioned and unrealistic version of what could exist, made plausible but the authority of technology, not the dreams of bureaucracy. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022
In the weeks before, I was waiting for the results of cancer tests. A Human Pretending To Be An Artist Pretending To Be A Crayfish, 2022
About this website This is one of many possible records of Kristoffer Ørum's work, but it's never going to be complete.
Instead of being representations in a conventional sense, they functioned as productions of effects, transforming the exhibition space into an operational field based on concepts such as energy, velocity, and transformation. Coffee Lake, 2019
The work featured voices of people who inhabit these oysters, taking in post-work society, symbiotic relationships and alternative models of abundance. Affluence without abundance, 2021
Rather than scaling towards planetary computation, this speculative trajectory follows a slower, more situated evolution—one in which algorithms adapt to the languages, histories, and needs of their immediate context. Diffused States (Vancouver), 2025
Being your own record-keeper means accepting these gaps and changes.
The presenter introduces himself as Karsten Orth (deliberately mispronouncing his own name), welcomes the audience and discusses the boundary between inside and outside in the Glyptotek's winter garden. Feathered Misconceptions, 2018
The exhibition allowed passersby to experience the animation in the context of the public street, at the junction of site-specific art and urban space. Et Andet Rum 2, 2009
The exhibition consisted of stencils painted with beetroot juice, 3D-printed noses and beetroots, inkjet prints, a webcam and screens of various sizes with nose recognition, texts and animation. Putin's Nose, 2019
I am tired of artists who speak as if they know what is best for others, instead of investigating what is wrong with themselves. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
Retired factory workers repurpose their technical knowledge to build speakers and maintain audio infrastructure, passing skills across generations. Even the City Dreams of Being Another, 2025
The oysters provide shelter, regulate air quality, supply electricity and heating, and monitor their human inhabitants' health and behaviour. Affluence without abundance, 2021
A multidisciplinary team including architects, artists, designers, engineers, musicians and literary theorists collaborated with Bojen and Ørum to jointly create this immersive vision. Radiant Copenhagen, 2009
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
Video elements included a deep fake sequence featuring politician Pernille Vermund discussing invasive species. Signal_Crayfish, 2020
By engaging with the game, players experience how facts and assumed truths can be challenged, restructured and rearranged in playful and experimental ways. Disbelieving Gravity, 2013
Tank Hip-Hop was the inaugural project that launched the multi-year "Freedom, Equality and Hip-Hop" series, built on the fictional relationship between the labour movement and hip-hop culture. Tank Hip-Hop, 2022
The exhibition was curated by museum inspector Pernille Rom Bruun and featured partnerships between artists and associations including nature conservation, bird watching, boxing, gliding, gymnastics, and rabbit breeding groups. Everyday Heroes, 2019
The mud text is a site-specific text that has been made from the place where it has been written, even as it attempts to reimagine and remember this very place. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022
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 project arises from a media environment where trust in both institutions and images is unsettled. Watershed, 2025
The exhibition opened on Friday, November 8th, 2019. Listening Without Ears, 2019
The starting point was the woodlouse as a kind of care worker. 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
The resulting work consists of around 600 interlinked texts, images and videos. Topographies of the Insignificant, 2010
Mundane Heroics is a collaborative project by Kristoffer Ørum and Nilas Dumstrei. Mundane Heroics, 2019
The 3D printed objects served as camouflaged recording devices, appearing as innocuous everyday items while performing the technical operation of speech-to-text conversion. Listening Without Ears, 2019
"It Sings for Us of What We Might Become" is a specially commissioned performative lecture presented as part of the symposium "ScreenShots: Desire and Automated Image" at Kunsthal Aarhus. It Sings for Us of What We Might Become, 2019
Shown alongside Honey Biba Beckerlee, Anna Bak, Elina Brotherus and Wang & Söderström, among others. Affluence without abundance, 2025
Yet, as critics such as Allan Sekula have argued, photography has never been a transparent medium; it has always been a construction. Watershed, 2025
Invigilators tell stories of events that could have transpired, whilst screens display the construction of monuments that never materialised. Monuments of A Fictitious Past, 2024
Signal_Crayfish (2021), the book work, shown in Futurity Library: Disobedient Artists' Books in the Postbook Age at the San Francisco Center for the Book, 25 April to 26 July 2026, curated by bex ya yolk. Signal_Crayfish, 2026
Disparate subjects such as English Vorticism, brainwaves, animal perception, and doomsday scenarios were connected in an increasingly ambitious thesis. The Pattern In Us All, 2007
By naming the work after the processor used to create it, Ørum draws attention to the material infrastructure of digital media while simultaneously questioning the boundaries between virtual and physical experience. Coffee Lake, 2019
SignalCrayfish was presented as part of the two-person exhibition "Semio-Technical Traffics" with Emily Rosamond. Signal_Crayfish, 2020
Recognised Faces unfolded publicly on a dedicated Tumblr, where the daily composites accumulated into a year-long portrait of both an individual and the internet’s visual culture at large. Recognised Faces, 2014
The piece ends by saying that the conclusion was supposed to go here. A Human Pretending To Be An Artist Pretending To Be A Crayfish, 2022
One night I dreamt that the cancer might turn the Russian president into a crab, or perhaps a crayfish, and woke to a report that he was dying of cancer. A Human Pretending To Be An Artist Pretending To Be A Crayfish, 2022
I miss images that are weird, flawed, or personal. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025