Kristoffer Ørum
Made by hand, mostly. Cut, cast, sanded, painted.
Nothing digital about it. A screen is an object, and objects sit in rooms.
A programmer who picks the wrong algorithm on purpose.
The machines are collaborators and cannot be credited.
Some of it only exists as a photograph now.
Most of it was built on other people's work.
Each scanning session lasted approximately 30 minutes and included conversations between pet owners and the artist about their animals. The Kolding Creature, 2021
Philosopher Donna Haraway has called this illusion a “god trick”: a view from nowhere that claims to see everything. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
This process dismantles the images into fragments by “flooding” a grayscale version of an image from its darkest points to its lightest, just as rainwater would fill a real-world mountainous landscape from its lowest valleys. Watershed, 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
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
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
Diffused States was presented as part of *Data Fluencies: Tributaries*, curated by Roopa Vasudevan, which brought together artists working on the ways data can be resisted, rerouted, or reimagined outside dominant narratives. Diffused States (Vancouver), 2025
The work took the form of an artist's book featuring a 3D-printed signal crayfish sculpture on the cover. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
The work successfully expanded the "Freedom, Equality and Hip-Hop" series into new institutional and performance contexts. Mr. Spray, 2024
Diffused States imagines a counterfactual technological history in which graffiti and phone phreaking converged through the discovery that modified spray paint could interact with electromagnetic infrastructure. Diffused States (Boston), 2025
Aarhus'er #1 doesn't offer a single reading of what was or what could be. Aarhus'er #1, 2025
One room was painted bright pink with beetroot juice, smelling earthily of childhood beetroot soup, and featured a Russian rap sung by a life-sized copy of Putin's nose. Putin's Nose, 2019
The opening performance on 30 May 2024 was paired with Linnea Langfjord's work on alternative presents focused on care and slowness in the art world. Mr. Spray, 2024
The work also examines how digital interaction can transform learning. Disbelieving Gravity, 2013
Each monument is situated in a specific district or moment in Kraków’s layered history, blending archival poetics with infrastructural speculation. Monuments of a Fictional Past (Kraków Edition), 2025
The resulting images visualise how computers perceive individuals not as whole people but as patterns within datasets. Recognised Faces, 2014
The work asks how we can imagine a future after the welfare state, now that it seems to be definitively being dismantled. Melting State, 2020
Call-outs have of course played an important role in making injustices visible, but when they are based on an idea of moral purity, they also create distance. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
The project imagines a future where columns echoing ancient Greek wooden architecture lose their weight or melt, where gravity is suspended for a moment while art institutions deform and dance in the wind before the air goes out of them. Melting State, 2020
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
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
It ran across two buildings in Ringsted: the artist-run Ringsted Galleriet on Bøllingsvej 15, and the blood-sampling department of Midt- og Vestsjællands Hospital on Bøllingsvej 30. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
The exhibition was the first public survey of bookworks focused on alternative interspecies possibilities and featured artists working at the intersection of speculative fiction and bio-art. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
Roskilde Parahistory was part of the group exhibition Kurs at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde in 2009. Roskilde Parahistory, 2009
Recognised Faces is an internet application by Kristoffer Ørum that ran for a year. Recognised Faces, 2014
At the same time, I know how effective these images are. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
Monuments of a Fictional Past references both the speculative tradition of counterfactual history and the architectural poetics of unrealized futures. Monuments of a Fictional Past (Kraków Edition), 2025
They have been 3d scanned, using the kind of technology one might find in one's smartphone, and subsequently 3d printed in monochrome versions using a variety of materials ranging from terracotta to granite. 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 performative lecture addresses how we might recover some semblance of agency and hope while living under the gaze of ever more watchful algorithmic systems of control. It Sings for Us of What We Might Become, 2019
The work utilises the props and techniques of an academic presentation in a playful and open-ended manner, examining present-day culture of classification and the potential of letting go of control. It Sings for Us of What We Might Become, 2019
The project was mentioned in reviews for its role in public debates on landscape restoration and climate adaptation. Djurs Øhav, 2020
The exhibition was curated by Ida Schyum as the third presentation in Radar Contemporary's Extensions series. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
The work unfolds through short video sequences in which a man slowly unpacks a large box while Olsen’s text is read aloud. KAOS, 2012
The work renders the fragile and transient qualities of soap in digital animation, turning an everyday material into a dynamic, projected environment. Soap Particles, 2005
The system operated continuously throughout the exhibition, looping through the history without direct interaction. Auto Navigate My History, 2014
By exposing an otherwise private dataset in a public exhibition space, the work reflects on memory, digital traces, and the role of the internet as a space for both research and distraction. Auto Navigate My History, 2014
The project dismantles these logics and scrambles their effects. Watershed, 2025
But there is now a third gaze, one that works through calculation. Speaker 1, 2026
The work operates as both a technical demonstration and a poetic meditation on the relationship between computation and imagination, revealing the "reservoirs of strangeness" that exist within everyday technological objects. Coffee Lake, 2019