Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care
Details9
- No.
- 0327
- Date
- 28 Feb 2026 – 11 Apr 2026
- Type
- Exhibition
- Place
- Ringsted Galleriet and Midt- og Vestsjællands Hospital, Bøllingsvej 15 and 30, 4100 Ringsted, DK
- Group show
- FORSTADIER / Precursors
- Support
- Statens Kunstfond, Augustinus Fonden, Ny Carlsbergfondet, Louis Hansens Fond, Det Obelske Familiefond, Billedkunstrådet Ringsted, Øernes Kunstfond, Kulturregion Midt- og Vestsjælland, Grosserer L.F. Foghts Fond
- Photo
- Morten Jacobsen
- Resembles
- 0067 Sucker Trick
- Read as
- BLUE 24%, DARK, EVEN, DETAILED
- Links
- ringstedgalleriet.dk
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. 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. It opened SYMPTOM, a programme of four exhibitions held in the hospital's own rooms.
The starting point was the woodlouse as a kind of care worker.
The video
Computer-generated video and sound, 20 min, made with WAN 2.1 on a local RTX 4090, projected on the end wall of a darkened gallery.
It runs in two parts. The first ten minutes follow a journey from the ocean to the inauguration of a fictional Ringsted Hospital by a version of the Danish Prime Minister — a building staffed by dancing workers and giant blue woodlice that handle the laundry, provide diagnoses, repair electronics and generally occupy the roles that futurists and policy makers are currently imagining for AI and automation in the Danish health sector. The images are unstable and shifting, conjuring a welfare system built on an uneasy combination of nature and technology that is neither utopian nor dystopian but simply strange and somehow plausible.
The second ten minutes show a baby sleeping, curled peacefully against a blue woodlouse. This section functions as a resting state — the video slows to almost nothing, a pause between cycles.
The sculptures
Sovende bænkebider (Sleeping Woodlouse) in three sizes, the middle one in a wheelchair. Bænkebider flok (Woodlouse Flock) on the floor. Bænkebider betragtere (Woodlouse Observers), the title of the ones placed around the hospital. All 3D-printed in R-PETG and painted with urethane. The exhibition text calls them blind creatures watching over the exhibition and the people in it.
The signs
Prognose eller kaos (Prognosis or Chaos) and a second Leddyrsomsorg in the gallery. At the hospital: Gør din pligt og kræv din udredning (Do Your Duty and Demand Your Assessment) and Diagnose gør stærk (Diagnosis Makes You Strong) in the corridor, Frihed, lighed & symptom (Liberty, Equality & Symptom) in the waiting room. Each is hand-cut XPS foam, worked from a computer-generated sketch.
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. Both are below.
Aske Thiberg
Säg det igen (Say it again), an eight-minute computer-generated video, plays inside a pine box built in the middle of the gallery: an animation of a clinical interior with therapy wallpaper, air conditioning, heavy blue curtains and a stacking chair. At the hospital, Untitled — five photographs and an orange chalk drawing in aluminium frames along the corridor, from the perspective of somebody waiting.
The two videos alternate: when one plays, the other rests. The sleeping baby is the handover.
