Kristoffer Ørum
An artist who makes things up about real places.
Not local. Boston, Vancouver, Riga, Kraków, Oberhausen, San Francisco.
This text is generated. He decided what it generates from.
A documentary practice. Every work here has an address and a date.
Made by hand, mostly. Cut, cast, sanded, painted.
Not research. The works were made first and explained afterwards.
The electromagnetic pick-ups were integrated into the crayfish body parts, creating hybrid biological-technological entities that could detect and respond to electromagnetic fields in the environment. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
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
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
Her home was a makeshift cardboard shelter resembling her head. The Ballehage Woman, 2009
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
From advertising screens on buses to personal mobile phones, we are daily surrounded by lifelike computer-generated representations of physical phenomena. Melting State, 2020
The installation used various media to investigate how technology shapes our understanding of faces, identity, and political figures. Putins Nose, 2018
The title refers to multiple senses of “diffusion”: the technical process of image generation; the social circulation of tools and knowledge; and the physical dispersal of small-scale devices across different environments. Diffused States (Vancouver), 2025
This duality exposes both the shortcomings of surveillance technologies and the alternative forms of perception they enact, offering a mechanical way of seeing that highlights aspects of our species that human vision alone might overlook. Recognised Faces, 2014
This section functions as a resting state — the video slows to almost nothing, a pause between cycles. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
The signal crayfish served as a figure for both biological invasion and technological infiltration. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
The exhibition blurs the line between documentary and fiction, making room for the unrealised potential of the past to resurface not as nostalgia, but as unfinished possibility. Aarhus'er #1, 2025
The result is a fleeting, fractured archive of the collective present—an algorithmic shadow of daily events. https://oerum.org/watershed/ Watershed, 2025
Television screens were also installed, showing interviews that had been produced through workshop-based role play. Invisible Objects, 2016
Historical facts, such as names of kings or weather reports, were interwoven with stories of the Rosicrucian Order, royal lizards, and extraterrestrials landing on the outskirts of town. Roskilde Parahistory, 2009
Admitting this is not, in Andrea Fraser’s spirit, a defeat, but a strategy: I would rather acknowledge my own narcissism and greed and use them as material, than pretend I stand outside. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
Each email contained a unique, computer-generated text announcing fictional construction projects — ranging from the plausible to the fantastic. City Planning, 2010
Its on-screen lyrics tell the factual story of a 507-year-old clam killed during the scientific process of determining its age. Djurs Øhav, 2020
Once generated, these daily phantom faces replaced Ørum’s personal avatar across his website, social networks and other platforms. Recognised Faces, 2014
Signal_Krebs was an installation work presented in the group exhibition "Navigeringer – På kanten af en verden i forandring". Signal_Crayfish, 2020
Using the fictional device Scope 3000, he ultimately merged with the patterns themselves. The Pattern In Us All, 2007
Instead, it opens up space for interpretation, uncertainty and collective speculation, asking visitors to consider alternative trajectories for urban development, cultural production, and collective organisation. Aarhus'er #1, 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 was exhibited at Vejle Kunstmuseum from March to August 2020, then travelled to Holstebro Kunstmuseum from September 2020 to January 2021. Signal_Crayfish, 2020
For me, these are not just errors, but moments of strange beauty and surplus meaning. Speaker 1, 2026
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
"Mundane Monsters" brought together three speculative and humorous everyday monsters in an installation at the artist-run exhibition space Bonamatic in Copenhagen. Mundane Monsters, 2023
The exhibition was part of a series of events organised by Kunsthal for Maritim Æstetik, which also included publications, debates, food events, and bus tours. Djurs Øhav, 2020
Project part of Oxer's programming on maritime exhibition platform Svartlöga. Ebeltoft After The Flood, 2021
The installation consisted of 3D-printed crayfish models, information screens, video material, and text displays on pink pedestals. Signal_Crayfish, 2020
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 two spaces integrate into each other, creating a continuous fluid motion where the boundary of the window is removed. Et Andet Rum 2, 2009
From the cover of the newspaper that the greengrocer wrapped the beets in, Russian President Vladimir Putin looked up, his face now covered in beetroot juice splatter. Putin's Nose, 2019
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
Fed back into the internet, these phantom portraits acted as a small disturbance within systems of profiling maintained by intelligence agencies, corporations and other data collectors. Recognised Faces, 2014
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
Presented by Anders Bojen and Kristoffer Ørum as part of the MFA 2004 Degree Show at Goldsmiths, London, UK, the work was exhibited from 22 to 26 July 2004. In a Dark Room/a Storm in a Coffee Cup, 2004
It is based on the belief that there is no inevitability to the current process of gentrification, it is simply one choice taken out of a million other possible ways we could develop our cities. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022
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
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