Kristoffer Ørum
Mostly it is admin.
The machines are collaborators and cannot be credited.
A documentary practice. Every work here has an address and a date.
An artist who makes things up about real places.
Most of it was built on other people's work.
A teacher who keeps a studio in order to have something to teach from.
It questions the implications of surveillance, the accumulation of digital traces, and the way ordinary routines are recorded and interpreted. Day to Day Data, 2008
Two texts were airbrushed directly onto the wall using beetroot juice for the group exhibition *Qua Aqua* at Koldinggade 12 in Copenhagen. Qua Aqua (Beetroot Texts), 2017
Once generated, these daily phantom faces replaced Ørum’s personal avatar across his website, social networks and other platforms. Recognised Faces, 2014
The work forms part of De Tabte Runesten, a group exhibition returning nine lost cultural artefacts to Rundetaarn through the visions of contemporary artists. The Good, the Lost, and the Beautiful, 2025
Data Kroppe is a video artwork by Kristoffer Ørum, commissioned and broadcast by Danish national television (DR) and featured on DR Kulturklubben. Data Kroppe, 2017
The work contributed to ongoing conversations about how digital images and recognition technologies influence our perception of identity and political power. Putins Nose, 2018
I believe that vulnerability and the recognition of one’s own inadequacy can create stronger communities than ideals of moral purity. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
Disparate subjects such as English Vorticism, brainwaves, animal perception, and doomsday scenarios were connected in an increasingly ambitious thesis. The Pattern In Us All, 2007
The work opens itself to failure, loss of control and improvisation, embodying these conditions rather than merely describing them. It Sings for Us of What We Might Become, 2019
But there is now a third gaze, one that works through calculation. Speaker 1, 2026
DIFFUSED STATES imagines an alternative trajectory for artificial intelligence—one in which computational systems develop through local, small-scale infrastructures rather than centralised corporate platforms. Diffused States (Lexington), 2025
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
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
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
The project involved citizen participation in creating the final artwork, with local residents contributing both their pets' physical forms and personal stories. The Kolding Creature, 2021
The work takes up how repeated exposure to images of buildings sinking into rubble with glass shards and dust spreading symmetrically creates expectations that the physical world behaves the same way. Melting State, 2020
All 3D-printed in R-PETG and painted with urethane. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
It presents language as both infrastructure and interference, existing in plain sight yet obscured within the everyday signals that surround us. Wireless Walnut, 2018
The work was installed in the lobby of the National Danish Broadcaster (DR) as part of Glowing Climate, organized by Illumenarts in 2009. The Wave, 2009
That is part of the work rather than a fault in it. A Human Pretending To Be An Artist Pretending To Be A Crayfish, 2022
Enigmatic posters appear in public spaces where these structures were never erected, and a website hosts an archive with weekly updates on images and stories. Monuments of A Fictitious Past, 2024
The project aimed to examine new forms of dialogue in contemporary art on different terms than previously known. Everyday Heroes, 2019
Each day, Watershed collects images from international news websites and subjects them to a watershed segmentation algorithm. Watershed, 2025
The work featured 3D-printed signal crayfish models, USB-connected gadgets, and digital manipulations. Signal_Crayfish, 2020
The collaboration process involved both artists visiting associations for fieldwork and associations visiting the museum for workshop days that became the foundation for the exhibited artworks. Everyday Heroes, 2019
The installation was part of Overgaden's REVISIT format, responding to the exhibition "EROTIK" which took place at Overgaden in 1989. Sucker Trick, 2017
The 3d printed copies of fragments from the construction site have become a sort of digital “ghosts”. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022
At the hospital: Gør din pligt og kræv din udredning (Do Your Duty and Demand Your Assessment) and Diagnose gør stærk (Diagnosis Makes You Strong) in the corridor, Frihed, lighed & symptom (Liberty, Equality & Symptom) in the waiting room. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
Another, the film The City that No Longer Exists (2020), was shown as a projection of a purple oyster narrating a story where humans transform into oyster-like beings after their city on a drained lake is flooded. Djurs Øhav, 2020
Until redevelopment started a few years ago, the area had somehow managed to escaped both commercial and municipal interest. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022
The postcards extend this blending of eras, presenting scenes where identity, memory, and cultural imagination converge and transform. The Good, the Lost, and the Beautiful, 2025
The transcription was done by Google's speech recognition, which is better at place names and brand names than at anything I was trying to say. A Human Pretending To Be An Artist Pretending To Be A Crayfish, 2022
Students and staff appear as avatars moving within these systems, creating a portrait of the university as a living, shifting organism. A Body Has Many Members, 2012
The installation asked speculative questions: Can you remember when Prime Minister Helle Thorning played a DJ set in Parliament instead of giving an opening speech? Frihed, Lighed Og Hip-Hop, 2023
The book presents ten different pattern scenarios, ranging from animal vision and camouflage to government propaganda through patterned textiles. Once We All Walk through Solid Objects, 2007
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
Kristoffer Ørum’s contribution imagines Malmö as shaped by the afterlives of its industrial past and alternative forms of civic imagination. Even the City Dreams of Being Another, 2025
"It Sings for Us of What We Might Become" is a specially commissioned performative lecture presented as part of the symposium "ScreenShots: Desire and Automated Image" at Kunsthal Aarhus. It Sings for Us of What We Might Become, 2019
The project was documented by Kevin Malcolm and received coverage in Danish art press as part of discussions about digital art and algorithmic perception. 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