Kristoffer Ørum
A portraitist. None of the portraits are of him.
An artist who makes things up about real places.
Science fiction, set last week.
Most of it was built on other people's work.
An archive with gaps in it, kept by the person who made the gaps.
A documentary practice. Every work here has an address and a date.
Coffee Lake is a video installation combining computer-generated video with animated text, created for the group exhibition "Machine sans nom" at Bonamatic. Coffee Lake, 2019
Across all three contexts, participants worked together in workshops to reshape their environments through collective imagination, material transformation, and performance. Mundane Heroics, 2019
The work successfully expanded the "Freedom, Equality and Hip-Hop" series into new institutional and performance contexts. Mr. Spray, 2024
In the video, Ørum reflects on the human body as data by visually overlaying biometric patterns, abstracted motion, and rhythmic shifts of light and texture. Data Kroppe, 2017
The exhibition consisted of a series of household objects and sculptural forms recreated in unusual materials and fitted with custom electronics. Invisible Objects, 2016
AALBORG ER FREMTIDEN (Aalborg Is the Future) is a public art project by Kristoffer Ørum that presents an alternative perspective on Aalborg's history. Aalborg Is The Future, 2024
The project includes works such as Detergent (Real Imaginary System) and Auto Navigate My History, which visualize, manipulate, and creatively reimagine the information generated by ordinary activities. Day to Day Data, 2008
The project connected personal memory (the grandmother's nose) with political imagery (Putin's face) through everyday objects (beetroots) and digital mediation. Putins Nose, 2018
The work also examines how digital interaction can transform learning. Disbelieving Gravity, 2013
These objects were then animated through role play and staged as collective tableaux, blurring the line between workshop and public presentation. Mundane Heroics, 2019
The two videos alternate: when one plays, the other rests. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
Lesson plans, assessment structures and financial data are translated into dynamic graphics, situating the institution in relation to broader societal forces and its individual members. A Body Has Many Members, 2012
Each email contained a unique, computer-generated text announcing fictional construction projects — ranging from the plausible to the fantastic. City Planning, 2010
A chair, a refrigerator door containing a bottle of milk, a platter holding a watermelon, and a breadbox with a loaf of rye bread were produced in jesmonite with inner cores of flamingo foam that were dissolved in acetone. Invisible Objects, 2016
Today, images are filtered, analysed, and manipulated by systems we rarely notice or understand. Watershed, 2025
"REVISIT: EROTIK" revisited Overgaden's 1989 "EROTIK" exhibition, which featured 48 female photographers and drew 100,000 visitors. Sucker Trick, 2017
The project features a map and website highlighting 16 reinterpreted locations in Aalborg. Aalborg Is The Future, 2024
The exhibition opened on 8 October 2009 and remained on view until 30 October 2009. Et Andet Rum 2, 2009
Standard interfaces are optimised for speed, reducing engagement to rapid recognition. Watershed, 2025
The faces produced through this process often appear distorted or uncanny to human eyes, yet they retain a resemblance to mainstream ideals of beauty. 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 oysters provide shelter, regulate air quality, supply electricity and heating, and monitor their human inhabitants' health and behaviour. Affluence without abundance, 2021
A ghostly city that is no less real than the cities summoned forth in digital renderings by architects and planners to convince us of the future they are proposing. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022
The result is a fleeting, fractured archive of the collective present—an algorithmic shadow of daily events. https://oerum.org/watershed/ Watershed, 2025
As Putin's face speaks of Russian identity in the viewer's place, the work demonstrates how digital images today do not simply document reality but actively form identity and power relations. Vladimir's Tongue, 2020
Yet, as critics such as Allan Sekula have argued, photography has never been a transparent medium; it has always been a construction. Watershed, 2025
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
As tension builds, the man gradually dissolves into the screen, becoming one with the flickering patterns. Once We All Walk through Solid Objects, 2007
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
They are the most revealing parts of the process. Speaker 1, 2026
In this way, Ørum reconsidered the relationship between national identity, food, body and surveillance, hoping to open up an identity model where it is possible to be foreign, Danish, body and digital representation at the same time. Putin's Nose, 2019
The performance questions traditional notions of heroic bodies and monochrome histories, imagining instead non-heroic bodies in soft, feathered institutions that function as part of a collective ecosystem. Feathered Misconceptions, 2018
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 work departed from the exhibition space but moved as performative action into urban space, with an online component extending the offline event. According to the Nose, 2021
This does not mean that vulnerability is shared equally—some bodies are more exposed than others—but that we might begin in a recognised mess rather than in ideals of purity. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
Tank Hip-Hop established the methodology of using counterfactual storytelling to construct alternative Danish histories. Tank Hip-Hop, 2022
Signal_Crayfish was exhibited at Center for Book Arts from April to June 2021 as part of "Interspecies Futures ," curated by Oscar Salguero. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
The project continued themes from the "Putin's Nose" project, extending nose-based investigations into performative and participatory formats. According to the Nose, 2021
The project contributed to Epsilon Spires' mission of offering enriching programming of the highest quality while remaining accessible to diverse audiences. Mundane Monsters, 2022
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