Kristoffer Ørum

Kristoffer Ørum

A documentary practice. Every work here has an address and a date.

A sculptor. Jesmonite, foam, clay, 3D-printed plastic.

Local. Copenhagen and Aarhus, mostly.

An archive with gaps in it, kept by the person who made the gaps.

Not research. The works were made first and explained afterwards.

Works with machines that are confidently wrong.

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

What looks like a glitch to humans is in fact a trace of the statistical modelling that drives the software. Recognised Faces, 2014

The visuals evoke a digital anatomy—an intersection of physical presence and quantifiable information, and of a body sensed, represented and transformed in media systems. Data Kroppe, 2017

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

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

About this website This is one of many possible records of Kristoffer Ørum's work, but it's never going to be complete.

The works form part of Ørum’s ongoing series Även staden drömmer om att vara en annan ("Even the city dreams of being another"), offering glimpses of civic and technological alternatives rooted in joy, memory, and shared invention. Even the City Dreams of Being Another, 2025

By working with models that reflect the biases and gaps of their training data, DIFFUSED STATES treats these systems not as definitive or universal but as provisional, adaptable, and open to reinterpretation. Diffused States (Lexington), 2025

The performance concludes with Google's speech recognition continuously but often mistakenly transcribing what the lecturer says, with colours changing rhythmically each time the text updates. Feathered Misconceptions, 2018

However, following decades of “misuse”, the area is presently being integrated back into the rest of the city as a productive and commercially viable new part of town called “art city”. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022

Melting State is a video installation on three screens where the buildings of Statens Kunstfond, Det Kongelige Kunstakademi, and Kulturministeriet are subjected to computer-generated physics simulations. Melting State, 2020

The photo album was discovered among the salvaged items when the ship was recovered. Depth Estimation, 2019

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

An oversized plastic walnut that transmits wireless text. Wireless Walnut, 2018

These moments reflect our own unstable, contradictory digital selves. Speaker 1, 2026

The exhibition continued this approach, combining speculation with a documentary style to produce objects that felt like remnants of possible futures. The End of the Universe as We Know It?, 2007

They contribute to a narrowing of bodily representations that is far more damaging in the long run than strange AI slippage. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025

Exhibition aboard the ship Svartlöga at Ebeltoft Fregathavnen examining climate change scenarios where Djursland becomes an archipelago. Ebeltoft After The Flood, 2021

What you see here is just what felt important to document at the time.

Rather than scaling towards planetary computation, this speculative trajectory follows a slower, more situated evolution—one in which algorithms adapt to the languages, histories, and needs of their immediate context. Diffused States (Vancouver), 2025

During the exhibition a collaboration with Anders Bojen, a printer continuously produced emails describing fictional events taking place on Amager. City Planning, 2010

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

jerklædte Misforståelser (Feathered Misconceptions) is a fifteen-minute associative performance commissioned by Ny Carlsberg Fondet for their annual celebration of their founder on 28 February 2018. Feathered Misconceptions, 2018

Spray was a counterfactual exhibition that used AI to tell the story of a fictional relationship between the labour movement and hip-hop culture. Mr. Spray, 2024

It was coded using the then-ubiquitous Flash interactive format. Topographies of the Insignificant, 2010

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

The mud text is a site-specific text that has been made from the place where it has been written, even as it attempts to reimagine and remember this very place. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022

The project dismantles these logics and scrambles their effects. Watershed, 2025

As a user zooms in on a fragment, its pixel structure reveals itself, breaking the illusion of seamlessness. 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

"Monuments of a Fictional Past" is a project that imagines a past where Soviet edifices dotting the Latvian landscape have been replaced with AI-generated counterparts. Monuments of A Fictitious Past, 2024

Her head was made of cardboard squares, and as she walked she produced sad and disturbing sounds audible to late-night strollers and joggers. The Ballehage Woman, 2009

The code sets the procedure, but the visual outcomes remain emergent and unpredictable. Watershed, 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

Much of what presents itself as representations of reality are computer-created simulations. Melting State, 2020

The sculptures Sovende bænkebider (Sleeping Woodlouse) in three sizes, the middle one in a wheelchair. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026

The work was part of a series of four exhibitions at NLHspace from September to December 2009. Et Andet Rum 2, 2009

Components included routers, antennas, and cables arranged alongside the biological forms. Signal_Crayfish, 2020

In Aalborg, at Nordkraft the project was hosted in a former power plant turned cultural venue. Mundane Heroics, 2019

These images, generated through AI, deliberately embrace glitches and impossibilities to question how historical narratives are constructed and repeated. Aarhus'er #1, 2025

Recognised Faces
Recognised Faces See the work →