Kristoffer Ørum
A documentary practice. Every work here has an address and a date.
Local. Copenhagen and Aarhus, mostly.
Solitary. One person decides what is documented and what is forgotten.
A lot of it is waiting for a render to finish.
An archive with gaps in it, kept by the person who made the gaps.
Most of it was built on other people's work.
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
The installation features ephemeral, non-heroic structures that encourage scrutiny of conventional heroic narratives. Monuments of A Fictitious Past, 2024
The exhibition at Kunsthal for Maritim Æstetik included a large 3D-printed map depicting Djursland as a flooded archipelago and smaller objects like a 3D-printed oyster with eyes. Djurs Øhav, 2020
The work was documented in a video presentation and included in the festival’s program alongside other international and local artists working in experimental modes of storytelling and urban critique. A Subjective History of Gdańsk, 2011
The project formed part of a research collaboration between the participating museums and the University of Copenhagen. Signal_Crayfish, 2020
The installation included a manipulated deep fake video featuring politician Pernille Vermund discussing invasive species. Signal_Crayfish, 2020
At the hospital, Untitled — five photographs and an orange chalk drawing in aluminium frames along the corridor, from the perspective of somebody waiting. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
The collaboration involved fieldwork where Ørum spent time with the role-playing association in their regular activities, including battles in Hansted Forest and gaming sessions. Everyday Heroes, 2019
The signs Prognose eller kaos (Prognosis or Chaos) and a second Leddyrsomsorg in the gallery. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
The liquid stains my hands when I reach into the vegetable drawer. Qua Aqua (Beetroot Texts), 2017
The performance questions traditional notions of heroic bodies and monochrome histories, imagining instead non-heroic bodies in soft, feathered institutions that function as part of a collective ecosystem. Feathered Misconceptions, 2018
At the same time, I know how effective these images are. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
These landmark positions were then used to align, cut and combine eyes, noses, mouths and jawlines into a new synthetic portrait. Recognised Faces, 2014
Here I was using the same setup I had been trying to get out of: the darkened room, the rows of chairs facing me, the table, the laptop. A Human Pretending To Be An Artist Pretending To Be A Crayfish, 2022
The work took the form of an artist's book featuring a 3D-printed signal crayfish sculpture on the cover. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
It takes the current development of the site of the art space as its point of departure, arguing for the often-overlooked qualities and potential of brownfield sites like it. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022
What looks like a glitch to humans is in fact a trace of the statistical modelling that drives the software. Recognised Faces, 2014
The event included a Collective Art Talk on Sunday at 13:00 CET in collaboration with Outside Collective. According to the Nose, 2021
The video can be described as a combination of Half-Life 2, Hitchcock's *Vertigo*, and Bridget Riley, rendered in a computer-game-like animation of a man watching a screen. Once We All Walk through Solid Objects, 2007
Set in three symbolic locations—Folkets Park, Drottninggatan 6, and a speculative Malmö City Hall—the work blends archival research with fiction to propose a reparative reading of urban space. Even the City Dreams of Being Another, 2025
Video elements included a deep fake sequence featuring politician Pernille Vermund discussing invasive species. 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 exhibition catalogue was designed in a sci-fi paperback style and published by backbonebooks. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
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
In this counterfactual history, data is not extracted at scale but circulated within communities, adapting to local needs, languages, and cultural references. Diffused States (Lexington), 2025
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
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
Signal Crayfish was presented as part of "Monstrous Machines," an exhibition on why new technologies provoke fear and how this impacts our perception of technology. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
The visuals evoke a digital anatomy—an intersection of physical presence and quantifiable information, and of a body sensed, represented and transformed in media systems. Data Kroppe, 2017
Custom software automated the browsing process by reading from the recorded history file and simulating user clicks. Auto Navigate My History, 2014
Shown with Colette Fu, Diagonal Press / Tauba Auerbach, Kate Conlon, Myungah Hyon, Neta Bomani, Noam Youngrak Son, Sonnenzimmer / Nick Butcher, Nadine Nakanishi, Rujuta Rao, Stephanie Simek and THUNGRY / bex ya yolk. Signal_Crayfish, 2026
It is this everyday, digital infra-ordinary that Watershed makes tangible. Watershed, 2025
Through AI-generated images and counterfactual storytelling, the exhibition envisions a self-built utopia in Hvidovre. Hvidovre Makes Good Times Better, 2025
The book presents ten different pattern scenarios, ranging from animal vision and camouflage to government propaganda through patterned textiles. Once We All Walk through Solid Objects, 2007
The exhibition blurs the line between documentary and fiction, making room for the unrealised potential of the past to resurface not as nostalgia, but as unfinished possibility. Aarhus'er #1, 2025
"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
The work used artificial intelligence as a tool for speculative storytelling about Danish social and political history. Mr. Spray, 2024
These unsolicited “press releases” became part of the ongoing re-imagining of Amager by local government, private enterprise, and other forces. City Planning, 2010
Together, the elements formed a series of overlapping linguistic and visual displacements. Putin's Nose, 2019
These objects were then animated through role play and staged as collective tableaux, blurring the line between workshop and public presentation. Mundane Heroics, 2019