Kristoffer Ørum
Not a joke.
Not local. Boston, Vancouver, Riga, Kraków, Oberhausen, San Francisco.
Local. Copenhagen and Aarhus, mostly.
Works with animals that have not agreed to it.
A teacher who keeps a studio in order to have something to teach from.
Twenty years out of art school, and back in it.
It suggests that the media of the future may not converge into a single stable format, but instead coexist as a patchwork—some fostering clarity, others producing estrangement. 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
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
The work presented a speculative interface for interacting with locally trained language models on recycled consumer hardware, quietly resisting the scale and speed of mainstream AI deployments. Diffused States (Boston), 2025
Diffused States was part of the Data Fluencies exhibition curated by Roopa, on the diverse ways artists engage with, resist, or reimagine data. Diffused States (Boston), 2025
Recognised Faces is an internet application by Kristoffer Ørum that ran for a year. Recognised Faces, 2014
Players learn a new language through twelve game-based exercises, each designed to deliberately reinterpret established ideas and challenge conventional understanding. Disbelieving Gravity, 2013
The first part of the project was held at Galleri Image in Aarhus in 2017. Putin's Nose, 2019
The work involved 3D-printing signal crayfish models equipped with electromagnetic sensing components. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
This video asks a question that sits at the heart of our digital lives: how do we appear to a machine? Speaker 1, 2026
By establishing rules and constraints—writing without interruption, juxtaposing unrelated images—the Surrealists sought to bypass rational control and provoke unexpected associations. Watershed, 2025
The series also exists as gallery installations, an artist's book and 3D prints; this is its web form. Would You Like to Know More, 2017
Topographies of the Insignificant is a web-based project from 2010 presenting a series of micro-topological maps of ultra-local spaces in five European cities: Berlin, Bratislava, Luxembourg, Rome and Vienna. Topographies of the Insignificant, 2010
The industrial spaces provided a striking backdrop for the reimagined objects and performances. Mundane Heroics, 2019
The exhibition was curated by Ida Schyum as the third presentation in Radar Contemporary's Extensions series. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
Layers of paint, repurposed tools, and collective modifications create temporary architectural shifts, reflecting the rhythms of everyday life and shared space. Even the City Dreams of Being Another, 2025
The project dismantles these logics and scrambles their effects. Watershed, 2025
By framing the narrative as a myth, the artists connected the story of The Ballehage Woman to broader experiences of people excluded from society due to norms around appearance and behavior in Denmark. The Ballehage Woman, 2009
Additional elements included a video installation where visitors had Putin's face projected over them, making them momentarily become Putin speaking about Russian male superiority and Western decadence. Putin's Nose, 2019
Central to the work is a fictional universe populated by figures such as Torkild Simonsen, Aarhus' first hip-hop mayor (1982-1997), and Marc Johnston, who relocated Denmark's capital from Copenhagen to Aarhus in 2019. Aarhus'er #1, 2025
Signal_Crayfish takes the invasive signal crayfish, which displaces native Danish freshwater species and communicates chemically across distance, and sets it beside human communication technology. Would You Like to Know More, 2017
Instead of showing only what is lost when a human is translated into data, these moments offer a new perspective. Speaker 1, 2026
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
Together, the elements formed a series of overlapping linguistic and visual displacements. Putin's Nose, 2019
Admitting this is not, in Andrea Fraser’s spirit, a defeat, but a strategy: I would rather acknowledge my own narcissism and greed and use them as material, than pretend I stand outside. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
Leaving the site once again ready to become yet another kind of Brownfield Wonderland, where one might just be able to dream of something new, instead of more of the same. Brownfield Wonderland, 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 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
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
Custom software automated the browsing process by reading from the recorded history file and simulating user clicks. Auto Navigate My History, 2014
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
The Glyptotek building emerges from darkness with its solid architecture beginning to flow whilst first hair and then colourful feathers grow out of the building, transforming it. Feathered Misconceptions, 2018
Over the past year, I have created a series of self-portraits using locally run AI. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
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
Much of what presents itself as representations of reality are computer-created simulations. Melting State, 2020
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
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
They draw on the advertising industry’s most simplified identity categories and support algorithmic preferences. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
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
The project was mentioned in reviews for its role in public debates on landscape restoration and climate adaptation. Djurs Øhav, 2020