Kristoffer Ørum
Not research. The works were made first and explained afterwards.
A documentary practice. Every work here has an address and a date.
Research. Somebody is going to have to examine it.
Science fiction, set last week.
Twenty years out of art school, and back in it.
Some of it only exists as a photograph now.
The same book was shown in Interspecies Futures at the Center for Book Arts, New York, in 2021. Signal_Crayfish, 2026
Yet, as critics such as Allan Sekula have argued, photography has never been a transparent medium; it has always been a construction. Watershed, 2025
This is a subjective and living archive - it grows and shifts as time passes and the world changes.
Kristoffer Ørum’s contribution imagines Malmö as shaped by the afterlives of its industrial past and alternative forms of civic imagination. Even the City Dreams of Being Another, 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 outcome was a series of live tableaux presented in public space, inviting direct engagement and chance encounters. Mundane Heroics, 2019
The installation combined digital and physical media to create humorous and inventive takes on contemporary environmental and technological themes. Mundane Monsters, 2022
To launch the project, staged reality events and a guided bus tour extended its speculative narrative into the physical city. Radiant Copenhagen, 2009
The talk is about not knowing whether it is a lecture or a performance, and about deciding not to settle the question. A Human Pretending To Be An Artist Pretending To Be A Crayfish, 2022
The 2017 version included male artists and moved away from explicit imagery toward more abstract works. Sucker Trick, 2017
Artists were invited through an open call to create works in dialogue with the water-damaged photographs. Depth Estimation, 2019
These objects continuously monitored conversations in the gallery space, converting spoken words into text through automated transcription systems, then physically printing the transcribed text. Listening Without Ears, 2019
Deconstructed 2D news images drift across a constructed 3D landscape, never pretending to be windows onto reality. Watershed, 2025
The project emphasizes local DIY spirit, encouraging citizens to reimagine Hvidovre’s past and future. Hvidovre Makes Good Times Better, 2025
A Body Has Many Members is a large-scale public commission by Anders Bojen & Kristoffer Ørum for the University College Capital (UCC) Campus Nordsjælland, produced with support from the Danish Agency for Culture. A Body Has Many Members, 2012
Exhibition documented by photographer Mikkel Kaldal. Ebeltoft After The Flood, 2021
Original photographs were by Henrik Grønborg, with exhibition photography by Billedmageren. Depth Estimation, 2019
Rooted in histories of low-resource computing and community-run networks, the project repositions AI as a tool for collective experimentation and situated knowledge-making. Diffused States (Lexington), 2025
The plate facing it is green and reads "I cheer as the pink-green crayfish team score a goal", over a passage about crayfish sending messages to each other across the same wireless networks that carry a live football game. Signal_Crayfish, 2026
Google ads for tessellax.com used keywords like AROS and Sculpture by the Sea. The Ballehage Woman, 2009
The project questions the assumption that it is "easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of the welfare state" (paraphrasing Slavoj Žižek). Melting State, 2020
Signal_Crayfish (2021), the book work, shown in Futurity Library: Disobedient Artists' Books in the Postbook Age at the San Francisco Center for the Book, 25 April to 26 July 2026, curated by bex ya yolk. Signal_Crayfish, 2026
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
In art and activism, humour has repeatedly functioned as a way of exposing the absurdity of power—from Dadaist performances to contemporary meme cultures. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
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
It considers what AI might look like if it evolved through neighbourhood initiatives, recycled consumer hardware, and community-specific datasets, moving at the pace of shared maintenance rather than commercial urgency. Diffused States (Lexington), 2025
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 project continued themes from the "Putin's Nose" project, extending nose-based investigations into performative and participatory formats. According to the Nose, 2021
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
Invisible Objects was presented at Prince Gallery, Copenhagen, from 3 June to 1 July 2016. Invisible Objects, 2016
The project arises from a media environment where trust in both institutions and images is unsettled. Watershed, 2025
Hverdagens Helte (Everyday Heroes) consists of a series of interactive sculptures created in collaboration with Vitar Horsens Rollespilslaug (role-playing association). Everyday Heroes, 2019
Instead of being representations in a conventional sense, they functioned as productions of effects, transforming the exhibition space into an operational field based on concepts such as energy, velocity, and transformation. Coffee Lake, 2019
Some pieces he remembers to add, others he forgets.
Another, the film The City that No Longer Exists (2020), was shown as a projection of a purple oyster narrating a story where humans transform into oyster-like beings after their city on a drained lake is flooded. Djurs Øhav, 2020
Soap Particles (2005) is a 3D animation work exhibited in two venues: as part of a solo show at Q, Copenhagen (20–29 May 2005) and in the group exhibition Critical Mass at Skulpturens Hus, Stockholm (3 May 2005). Soap Particles, 2005
We are shaped by the grammar of the frame, where composition and colour psychology direct our gaze and mood. Watershed, 2025
Through these monstrous and bizarre creatures, the work addressed our relationship to more familiar creatures and digital systems that we share the modern technological world with. Mundane Monsters, 2023
Ordinary objects—such as a box of detergent or a web browser—become the basis for fictional universes, playful interfaces, and alternative representations of the data embedded in daily life. Day to Day Data, 2008
The project involved both the creation of a physical artist's book and a 3D-printed sculptural element integrated into the cover design. Signal_Crayfish, 2021