Kristoffer Ørum
Works with machines that are confidently wrong.
A documentary practice. Every work here has an address and a date.
An archive with gaps in it, kept by the person who made the gaps.
The machines are collaborators and cannot be credited.
Most of it was built on other people's work.
A portraitist. None of the portraits are of him.
The project was presented as part of the group exhibition Coming From at Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art in Copenhagen. Auto Navigate My History, 2014
The exhibition recounted the story of a black magnetic fluid, ferrofluid, that generated forms and figures without human interaction. The End of the Universe as We Know It?, 2007
The work consists of more than 30 screens distributed throughout the campus, each showing a real-time visualisation of the institution’s invisible infrastructures. A Body Has Many Members, 2012
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
The second ten minutes show a baby sleeping, curled peacefully against a blue woodlouse. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
Using computer vision software, a rapping face appears on the plum, following its movements as the lecturer holds it in front of the webcam. Feathered Misconceptions, 2018
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
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
The work takes up how computer technology mediates our relationship to the physical world, creating hybrid zones where digital simulation and material reality intersect. Coffee Lake, 2019
Amorphous forms in PU foam were combined with media players hidden inside. Invisible Objects, 2016
The project arises from a media environment where trust in both institutions and images is unsettled. Watershed, 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 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
Each scanning session lasted approximately 30 minutes and included conversations between pet owners and the artist about their animals. The Kolding Creature, 2021
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
The museum basement acted as a “rabbit hole,” filled with props, relics, tables, and charts that grounded the fictitious world. Game Continent, 2010
While not free from environmental impact, this approach reflects an effort to minimize resource use and ecological harm in the project’s production. Hvidovre Makes Good Times Better, 2025
The work set daily life against hypothetical digital physiognomies, using the nose as a means to examine identity and perception. According to the Nose, 2021
Using AI, familiar sites are transformed into speculative visions, such as Karolinelunden as a DIY amusement park or Aalborg Shipyard taken over by its workers. Aalborg Is The Future, 2024
How might civic memory be shaped not by permanence and power, but by shared breath, transient gatherings, and structures built to dissolve? Monuments of a Fictional Past (Kraków Edition), 2025
Part of Ørum’s ongoing project "Freedom, Equality, and Hip-Hop", the work engages AI technologies (Flux.1, Stable Diffusion 3.5) to construct histories that never were. Aalborg Is The Future, 2024
Or the years when rap lyrics were about helping at home and taking good care of elderly citizens? Frihed, Lighed Og Hip-Hop, 2023
Instead of treating these models as definitive or universal, the project approaches them as partial and provisional—open to reinterpretation, modification, and play. Diffused States (Vancouver), 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
The work featured a large, curved canvas onto which the magician's hands were projected. Sucker Trick, 2017
"Perpetual Interpreter" featured works by Kristoffer Akselbo (DK), Andreja Andric (RS/DK), Joana Chicau (PT/NL), Rosemary Lee (US/DK), Winnie Soon (HK/DK), Anders Visti + Tobias Stenberg (DK), and Kristoffer Ørum (DK). Listening Without Ears, 2019
Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care is a twenty-minute video, one of nine works Ørum showed in FORSTADIER / Precursors — a duo exhibition with Aske Thiberg, curated by Morten K Jacobsen and Heidi Hove. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
Occasionally she would enter well-lit areas briefly before disappearing when confronted. The Ballehage Woman, 2009
The system does not distinguish between what a photojournalist might frame as a central subject and what might appear incidental. Watershed, 2025
Transparent mobiles with polarisation filters cause the overlapping projections to shift constantly, creating a spatial interpretation of a hybrid and unstable identity. AutoBiography, 2011
The exhibition posed a paradox about how we can become accustomed to living in a constantly changing world with technological trends that supplement, expand and reinforce reality with extra layers of information. Mundane Monsters, 2023
The work examined how digital recognition systems and facial detection algorithms influence perception and identity. Putins Nose, 2018
As Rosi Braidotti has written, critique of the “tyranny of the unified subject” cannot be separated from the fact that we constantly reproduce the very idea of it. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
NLHspace was initiated in 2006 by artist Nanna Lysholt Hansen and operated as an "always open / always closed" space. Et Andet Rum 2, 2009
Diffused States picks up this lost thread and reroutes it through urban counterculture, where spray-painted circuits become speculative carriers of three-state logic. Diffused States (Boston), 2025
The project used artificial intelligence not as a thinking entity, but as a tool filled with errors and biases that could inspire new ways of thinking. Frihed, Lighed Og Hip-Hop, 2023
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
The installation asked speculative questions: Can you remember when Prime Minister Helle Thorning played a DJ set in Parliament instead of giving an opening speech? Frihed, Lighed Og Hip-Hop, 2023
Two folders, with texts by medical historian Adam Bencard and by Kristoffer Ørum, printed inkjet and held in 3D-printed R-PETG holders in both buildings. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
To experience this material, users navigate a digital environment rather than scroll through a linear feed. Watershed, 2025