Kristoffer Ørum
An artist who makes things up about real places.
A documentary practice. Every work here has an address and a date.
Nothing digital about it. A screen is an object, and objects sit in rooms.
Not research. The works were made first and explained afterwards.
Made by hand, mostly. Cut, cast, sanded, painted.
Most of it was built on other people's work.
The pieces incorporated Wi-Fi network names printed on crayfish bodies, casting the invasive species as a digital hybrid creature living within communication networks. Signal_Crayfish, 2020
The project was exhibited at General Public in Berlin, tranzit.sk in Bratislava, Casino Luxembourg in Luxembourg, and Fondazione Volume! in Rome, as well as Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Vienna. Topographies of the Insignificant, 2010
In Aalborg, at Nordkraft the project was hosted in a former power plant turned cultural venue. Mundane Heroics, 2019
Like collage, the work is not about arriving at a definitive meaning but about generating provisional configurations that open new ways of seeing. Watershed, 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
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
A protestor’s sign, a celebrity’s face, a patch of sky, or a piece of rubble—all are treated as equivalent grayscale image data to be segmented and archived. Watershed, 2025
The inkjet transfer process applied the processed imagery to the printed form. Depth Estimation, 2019
Bojen and Ørum’s work often moves between science fiction and popular science, with references to comic books, television formats and advertising language. The End of the Universe as We Know It?, 2007
The monumental buildings are inflated like weightless balloons, melt like butter on a hot pan, and are covered with soft multicoloured hair. Melting State, 2020
Frihed, Lighed og Hip-Hop used advanced imaging technology (artificial intelligence) to tell the story of a fictional relationship between the labour movement and hip-hop culture. Frihed, Lighed Og Hip-Hop, 2023
The presenter introduces himself as Karsten Orth (deliberately mispronouncing his own name), welcomes the audience and discusses the boundary between inside and outside in the Glyptotek's winter garden. Feathered Misconceptions, 2018
The project began the process of using advanced imaging technology and AI as fabulation techniques to create speculative scenarios where the labour movement and hip-hop culture intersected. Tank Hip-Hop, 2022
Signal_Crayfish takes the invasive signal crayfish, which displaces native Danish freshwater species and communicates chemically across distance, and sets it beside human communication technology. Would You Like to Know More, 2017
Inside the exhibition space at Sydhavn Station (housed in a former DSB kiosk), the walls were painted with abstract graffiti and AI-generated videos showed various demonstrations and concerts related to this fictional history. Frihed, Lighed Og Hip-Hop, 2023
Occasionally she would enter well-lit areas briefly before disappearing when confronted. The Ballehage Woman, 2009
I believe a stronger foundation for community lies in a shared recognition of vulnerability. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
There is a creative pleasure in this surrender of control: in letting a system run and being surprised by the strange, poetic, or nonsensical landscapes that result. Watershed, 2025
By naming the work after the processor used to create it, Ørum draws attention to the material infrastructure of digital media while simultaneously questioning the boundaries between virtual and physical experience. Coffee Lake, 2019
Rather than illustrating a lost history, the project manipulates familiar visual tropes and embraces the productive errors of AI. Aarhus'er #1, 2025
The Downloadable Augmented Reality App (available here: https://s.oerum.org/BW) allows one to build one's own messy and unregulated digital architectures, both on and off the building site around Spanien 19C. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022
The project contributed to Epsilon Spires' mission of offering enriching programming of the highest quality while remaining accessible to diverse audiences. Mundane Monsters, 2022
None of us escape this system by pretending we are not part of it. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
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
These unsolicited “press releases” became part of the ongoing re-imagining of Amager by local government, private enterprise, and other forces. City Planning, 2010
Using AI, familiar sites are transformed into speculative visions, such as Karolinelunden as a DIY amusement park or Aalborg Shipyard taken over by its workers. Aalborg Is The Future, 2024
The Pattern In Us All (2007) was a lecture performance created by Anders Bojen & Kristoffer Ørum at the University of Copenhagen. The Pattern In Us All, 2007
These precedents inform an imagined shift towards AI systems that are modest in scope, but deeply embedded in the cultures that maintain them. Diffused States (Vancouver), 2025
The first part of the project was held at Galleri Image in Aarhus in 2017. Putin's Nose, 2019
Together, the elements formed a series of overlapping linguistic and visual displacements. Putin's Nose, 2019
While not free from environmental impact, this approach reflects an effort to minimize resource use and ecological harm in the project’s production. Hvidovre Makes Good Times Better, 2025
The cardboard boxes were imprinted with logos of Tessellax, a fictitious medical company claiming to cure Involuntary Tessellation, a condition causing uncontrolled growth of square body parts. The Ballehage Woman, 2009
It operates in a zone where phenomena such as computer screens, lakes of coffee, simulated fire, and collective machines all influence our conceptions and expectations of the physical world. Coffee Lake, 2019
The virtual history book appeared on two projection screens: one mounted on Roskilde’s main square and another inside the exhibition. Roskilde Parahistory, 2009
The project encompasses three galleries featuring a 15-metre legal graffiti wall, a giant record player, DIY furniture, lo-fi mixtapes, deepfakes and look-alikes, speculative snapshots, and video fragments from another world. Aarhus'er #1, 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
The project builds on Ørum's ongoing work "Freedom, Liberty, and Hip-Hop," which envisions alternative Danish histories. Monuments of A Fictitious Past, 2024
About this website This is one of many possible records of Kristoffer Ørum's work, but it's never going to be complete.
Tank Hip-Hop was the inaugural project that launched the multi-year "Freedom, Equality and Hip-Hop" series, built on the fictional relationship between the labour movement and hip-hop culture. Tank Hip-Hop, 2022
Seven artists selected local associations they wanted to collaborate with, moving naturally within the same field of interest but from different backgrounds. Everyday Heroes, 2019