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