Kristoffer Ørum
A lot of it is waiting for a render to finish.
Not local. Boston, Vancouver, Riga, Kraków, Oberhausen, San Francisco.
Not a joke.
Comedy.
A programmer who picks the wrong algorithm on purpose.
Works with machines that are confidently wrong.
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
Staged as a series of narrative “figures,” the project invents and documents civic architectures that never existed—but perhaps could have. Monuments of a Fictional Past (Kraków Edition), 2025
Large halls and open foyers became stages for collaborative scenes, where the altered objects and role play merged into temporary sculptural environments. Mundane Heroics, 2019
The work contrasts the artificially generated with the seemingly authentic. Monuments of A Fictitious Past, 2024
For the exhibition opening, Vitar Horsens Rollespilslaug performed an InCrowd game at the art museum, bringing their practice directly into the gallery space. Everyday Heroes, 2019
The sculptures were inspired by the role-players' own objects and toolkit, translating elements from their gaming practice into interactive art objects. Everyday Heroes, 2019
At the same time, I know how effective these images are. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
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
Auto Navigate My History uses the digital archive of daily browsing as both source and medium. Auto Navigate My History, 2014
The fragmented narrative of Coffee Lake takes place in the grey area between computer-simulated 3D graphics and human imagination. Coffee Lake, 2019
It is this everyday, digital infra-ordinary that Watershed makes tangible. Watershed, 2025
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
They draw on the advertising industry’s most simplified identity categories and support algorithmic preferences. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
I also do it because I, as a white, established, middle-aged male artist, embody many of the privileges and blind spots that shape both the world and the art world. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
On YouTube, the video “Ballehage Woman Sighting” shows the figure moving through Marselisborg Forest. The Ballehage Woman, 2009
This duality exposes both the shortcomings of surveillance technologies and the alternative forms of perception they enact, offering a mechanical way of seeing that highlights aspects of our species that human vision alone might overlook. Recognised Faces, 2014
The project involved citizen participation in creating the final artwork, with local residents contributing both their pets' physical forms and personal stories. The Kolding Creature, 2021
To experience this material, users navigate a digital environment rather than scroll through a linear feed. Watershed, 2025
These precedents inform an imagined shift towards AI systems that are modest in scope, but deeply embedded in the cultures that maintain them. Diffused States (Vancouver), 2025
It was accompanied by scholarly publication and received coverage in Danish art press. Signal_Crayfish, 2020
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
At the neighbouring Museum Østjylland, speculative objects were integrated into the historical displays, including a model of an "oyster home" and interventions within exhibits about Grenå's local oyster history. Djurs Øhav, 2020
The publication set out the species' survival capabilities and cross-distance chemical communication systems, positioning the crayfish as superior to human technological networks in this comparison. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
*Radiant Copenhagen* was a speculative reimagining of the city developed as an online platform and complemented by real-world actions. Radiant Copenhagen, 2009
All 3D-printed in R-PETG and painted with urethane. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
In Helsinki, at the ANTI Contemporary Art Festival the project unfolded in the streets and open squares of the city centre. Mundane Heroics, 2019
The signs Prognose eller kaos (Prognosis or Chaos) and a second Leddyrsomsorg in the gallery. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
The work suggests that our understanding of phenomena like fire, water, and collective action is increasingly shaped by computational models and digital representations. Coffee Lake, 2019
The work combines AI-generated imagery with human-written captions, forming a dispersed narrative around how such systems might emerge—from grassroots tinkering to collectively governed infrastructures and hyper-local training data. Diffused States (Vancouver), 2025
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
Online, these fragments are assembled pseudo-randomly into a navigable three-dimensional space. Watershed, 2025
Two texts were airbrushed directly onto the wall using beetroot juice for the group exhibition *Qua Aqua* at Koldinggade 12 in Copenhagen. Qua Aqua (Beetroot Texts), 2017
I participate in the system myself because it can grant me access to freedom and resources. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
Ander Bojen & Kristoffer Ørum’s contribution combined personal narrative, historical research, and speculative urban theory to question how collective experience and perception shape the city. A Subjective History of Gdańsk, 2011
Perhaps there is more hope in admitting how deeply we are all entangled. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
Spray was a counterfactual exhibition that used AI to tell the story of a fictional relationship between the labour movement and hip-hop culture. Mr. Spray, 2024
Her head was made of cardboard squares, and as she walked she produced sad and disturbing sounds audible to late-night strollers and joggers. The Ballehage Woman, 2009
While gentrification night favour one imagined future out of all the others that could have come about, the ongoing struggle of whose imaginaries will be realised, and whose will be kept as potential or unrealistic futures, remains. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022
About this website This is one of many possible records of Kristoffer Ørum's work, but it's never going to be complete.
The project dismantles these logics and scrambles their effects. Watershed, 2025