Kristoffer Ørum
Local. Copenhagen and Aarhus, mostly.
Not local. Boston, Vancouver, Riga, Kraków, Oberhausen, San Francisco.
A documentary practice. Every work here has an address and a date.
Made by hand, mostly. Cut, cast, sanded, painted.
An artist who makes things up about real places.
The website keeps itself up to date. He does not.
Works were deliberately constructed with glitching and raw digital noise to make visible the technological mediation and signal transmission processes. Signal_Crayfish, 2020
Public places became stages for brief moments of shared fiction. Mundane Heroics, 2019
The sculptures Sovende bænkebider (Sleeping Woodlouse) in three sizes, the middle one in a wheelchair. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
The game turns on how the concept of gravity is embedded in language, metaphors, and everyday actions. Disbelieving Gravity, 2013
It suggests that the media of the future may not converge into a single stable format, but instead coexist as a patchwork—some fostering clarity, others producing estrangement. Watershed, 2025
The association continued to use the museum as a venue throughout the exhibition period, demonstrating their activities alongside the artworks. Everyday Heroes, 2019
Erikson’s model of personality development, a voice-over chronicles formative experiences in their lives. AutoBiography, 2011
Across media, the fictional creatures were presented with a mixture of pop cultural humour and the kind of scientific authority familiar from public information campaigns. Mundane Monsters, 2023
The work was part of a series of four exhibitions at NLHspace from September to December 2009. Et Andet Rum 2, 2009
Signal_Krebs was an installation work presented in the group exhibition "Navigeringer – På kanten af en verden i forandring". Signal_Crayfish, 2020
The work took the form of an artist's book featuring a 3D-printed signal crayfish sculpture on the cover. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
"REVISIT: EROTIK" revisited Overgaden's 1989 "EROTIK" exhibition, which featured 48 female photographers and drew 100,000 visitors. Sucker Trick, 2017
Signal Crayfish was presented as part of "Monstrous Machines," an exhibition on why new technologies provoke fear and how this impacts our perception of technology. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
At the neighbouring Museum Østjylland, speculative objects were integrated into the historical displays, including a model of an "oyster home" and interventions within exhibits about Grenå's local oyster history. Djurs Øhav, 2020
The collaboration involved fieldwork where Ørum spent time with the role-playing association in their regular activities, including battles in Hansted Forest and gaming sessions. Everyday Heroes, 2019
They draw on the advertising industry’s most simplified identity categories and support algorithmic preferences. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
Coffee Lake continues Ørum's ongoing investigation of the analog and digital spaces we navigate daily, both physically and mentally. Coffee Lake, 2019
In Aalborg, at Nordkraft the project was hosted in a former power plant turned cultural venue. Mundane Heroics, 2019
The installation combined the physical presence of the large-scale 3D-printed oyster sculpture with video content projecting the voices and experiences of future oyster-dwellers. Affluence without abundance, 2021
Nyt Lys is lit at dusk and switched off at eight. Affluence without abundance, 2025
The work featured electromagnetic pick-ups installed within body parts of a 3D-printed signal crayfish, comparing fears of digital transformation with concerns about invasive species. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
Call-outs have of course played an important role in making injustices visible, but when they are based on an idea of moral purity, they also create distance. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
Within the installation, a microclimate experiment is contained in a coffeemaker, adding subtle atmospheric variation to the space. In a Dark Room/a Storm in a Coffee Cup, 2004
The Good, the Lost, and the Beautiful is a reconstruction of the Lee-stone, one of nine runestones believed to have been lost in the Copenhagen Fire of 1728. The Good, the Lost, and the Beautiful, 2025
As Judith Butler has pointed out, an acknowledgement of our interdependence can be a basis for political communities, while Sara Ahmed highlights the possibility of an “affective solidarity” built on honesty rather than claims of innocence. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
Components included routers, antennas, and cables arranged alongside the biological forms. Signal_Crayfish, 2020
Through web-based platforms, interactive media, and speculative design, the project transforms mundane moments into complex systems of meaning. Day to Day Data, 2008
Each scanning session lasted approximately 30 minutes and included conversations between pet owners and the artist about their animals. The Kolding Creature, 2021
All works intentionally carry imperfections — too many fingers, floating houses, distorted details — which reveal their fictional origins. Hvidovre Makes Good Times Better, 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 project is a labyrinthian installation composed of hand-printed cardboard boxes, arranged to create interconnected spaces. In a Dark Room/a Storm in a Coffee Cup, 2004
Putin's Nose was a multi-year project that sought to turn surveillance systems' simplified identity categories and tools against themselves. Putin's Nose, 2019
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
The project was presented as part of the group exhibition Coming From at Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art in Copenhagen. Auto Navigate My History, 2014
In Copenhagen, at Live Art for Kids the project took shape in courtyards, playgrounds, and cultural centres. Mundane Heroics, 2019
The work proposes a less apocalyptic demise where representative buildings don't explode and crash into computer-generated rubble, but instead lose their weight, melt, or are covered with colourful hair. Melting State, 2020
The project operated on several levels with "lines of flight" into the city, online, and in local media. According to the Nose, 2021
The work unfolds through short video sequences in which a man slowly unpacks a large box while Olsen’s text is read aloud. KAOS, 2012
The contrast is not presented as a solution but as a tool of critique—making the invisible conventions of ordinary web interfaces visible by inverting them. Watershed, 2025
The installation features ephemeral, non-heroic structures that encourage scrutiny of conventional heroic narratives. Monuments of A Fictitious Past, 2024