Kristoffer Ørum
An archive with gaps in it, kept by the person who made the gaps.
Science fiction, set last week.
Not a joke.
Solitary. One person decides what is documented and what is forgotten.
Mostly it is admin.
This text is generated. He decided what it generates from.
The code sets the procedure, but the visual outcomes remain emergent and unpredictable. Watershed, 2025
The work was documented in a video presentation and included in the festival’s program alongside other international and local artists working in experimental modes of storytelling and urban critique. A Subjective History of Gdańsk, 2011
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
Until redevelopment started a few years ago, the area had somehow managed to escaped both commercial and municipal interest. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022
"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
Rather than recognising faces, it was trained exclusively to see noses or beetroot-like patterns. Putin's Nose, 2019
Especially simulations of destruction are so widespread and credible that one quickly forgets what the original physical phenomena looked like. Melting State, 2020
The resulting text alternated between objective and scientific passages and poetic or raving narratives. Roskilde Parahistory, 2009
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
The work pairs AI-generated images with non-AI captions to build a fragmented narrative of how such systems might emerge—from informal workshops to self-governed infrastructures and locally trained algorithms. Diffused States (Lexington), 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 symposium featured artists and scholars examining contemporary forms of image making and computational apparatus, investigating relations between desire and automation, uncertainty and labour, self and other. It Sings for Us of What We Might Become, 2019
Auto Navigate My History uses the digital archive of daily browsing as both source and medium. Auto Navigate My History, 2014
Text panels presented both accurate biological information and fabricated technical specifications. Signal_Crayfish, 2020
Guests were invited to renegotiate their role — not just as viewers, but as potential participants in a system of storytelling, symbols, and rituals that reframed both the neighbourhood and the museum as shared sites of imagination. Game Continent, 2010
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 work featured voices of people who inhabit these oysters, taking in post-work society, symbiotic relationships and alternative models of abundance. Affluence without abundance, 2021
All masks were thoroughly cleaned and sprayed with disinfectant after each user, with lending against deposit such as a driver's license or telephone. According to the Nose, 2021
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
This invisibility operates on several levels. Watershed, 2025
The project was mentioned in reviews for its role in public debates on landscape restoration and climate adaptation. Djurs Øhav, 2020
The centralised gatekeeping of 20th-century journalism has given way to fragmented, unstable formats. Watershed, 2025
In the post-totalitarian context of Latvia, where memory is often manipulated for political purposes, the work offers a reminder that the past is not fixed and demonstrates the fluidity of historical narratives. Monuments of A Fictitious Past, 2024
The same book was shown in Interspecies Futures at the Center for Book Arts, New York, in 2021. Signal_Crayfish, 2026
Over a period of 107 days, Anders Bojen and Kristoffer Ørum had a custom computer program rewrite the history of Roskilde in real time, from the town’s foundation by the Vikings in 980 to its present-day status as a world heritage site. Roskilde Parahistory, 2009
We are used to our own sight, shaped by memory and emotion, and to the camera's lens, with its illusion of objectivity. Speaker 1, 2026
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 virtual history book appeared on two projection screens: one mounted on Roskilde’s main square and another inside the exhibition. Roskilde Parahistory, 2009
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
Previous iterations of Freedom, Equality and Hip-hop have appeared at Kongegaarden (Korsør), Sydhavn Station (Copenhagen), Friisland (Copenhagen Nordhavn), Survival Kit Biennial (Riga, Latvia), and F.eks. (Aalborg). Hvidovre Makes Good Times Better, 2025
A third video, A Song for Ming, was a karaoke track by Kristoffer Ærørum with music and performance by Josefine Struckmann. Djurs Øhav, 2020
In this scenario, data does not flow through opaque corporate pipelines, but diffuses through neighbourhood workshops, shared servers, and informal archives. Diffused States (Vancouver), 2025
Diffused States picks up this lost thread and reroutes it through urban counterculture, where spray-painted circuits become speculative carriers of three-state logic. Diffused States (Boston), 2025
This reordering not only alters the image itself but also reshapes how it must be encountered. Watershed, 2025
The project extended across the museum basement, a nearby grocery store, and surrounding public lawns. Game Continent, 2010
One night I dreamt that the cancer might turn the Russian president into a crab, or perhaps a crayfish, and woke to a report that he was dying of cancer. A Human Pretending To Be An Artist Pretending To Be A Crayfish, 2022
*Radiant Copenhagen* was a speculative reimagining of the city developed as an online platform and complemented by real-world actions. Radiant Copenhagen, 2009
Visitors could connect their phones to new networks appearing in the gallery space and receive fragments of text and video. Invisible Objects, 2016
Mundane Heroics is a collaborative project by Kristoffer Ørum and Nilas Dumstrei. Mundane Heroics, 2019
Monuments of a Fictional Past (Kraków Edition) is a speculative archive of ephemeral monuments that emerge, dissolve, and resurface across Kraków’s historical and imagined timelines. Monuments of a Fictional Past (Kraków Edition), 2025