Kristoffer Ørum
Works with animals that have not agreed to it.
Local. Copenhagen and Aarhus, mostly.
Science fiction, set last week.
Twenty years out of art school, and back in it.
Mostly it is admin.
Not a joke.
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
It was coded using the then-ubiquitous Flash interactive format. Topographies of the Insignificant, 2010
The site opens on the series title and a single line — "Would you like to know more?" — set in pale green with a cartoon crayfish at the edge of the frame. Would You Like to Know More, 2017
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
In art and activism, humour has repeatedly functioned as a way of exposing the absurdity of power—from Dadaist performances to contemporary meme cultures. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
The work asks how we can imagine a future after the welfare state, now that it seems to be definitively being dismantled. Melting State, 2020
The installation combined digital and physical media to create humorous and inventive takes on contemporary environmental and technological themes. Mundane Monsters, 2022
Today, images are filtered, analysed, and manipulated by systems we rarely notice or understand. Watershed, 2025
By reinserting them into the same online environments where facial recognition is used for surveillance, marketing and classification, the project subtly disrupted how automated systems construct a digital identity. Recognised Faces, 2014
The work combined various media to create a cohesive environment that challenged perceptions of digital and physical reality. Mundane Monsters, 2022
It is an experiment in seeing, questioning not just what we see in the news, but how we are conditioned to see it. Watershed, 2025
How might civic memory be shaped not by permanence and power, but by shared breath, transient gatherings, and structures built to dissolve? Monuments of a Fictional Past (Kraków Edition), 2025
This Brownfield Wonderland might very well appear once again when this project is long forgotten, and current norms of what is useful and productive are forgotten. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022
Figures gather for shared meals, sweep longhouse floors, inscribe runes like graffiti, perform stylised rituals, or take part in dance battles and DJ sets using flat stones. The Good, the Lost, and the Beautiful, 2025
The work was part of the group exhibition "Perpetual Interpreter" at Lokale in Copenhagen, co-curated with Anders Visti. Listening Without Ears, 2019
During the exhibition, the carefully worded original English text on the exhibition space’s website was gradually replaced by an unstable bilingual text, one sentence at a time. Blind Listening, 2017
Shown alongside Honey Biba Beckerlee, Anna Bak, Elina Brotherus and Wang & Söderström, among others. Affluence without abundance, 2025
On the other hand, these systems are still trained on global datasets full of bias, stereotypes, and inequality. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
Caught between constant computer-generated simulations of destruction and status quo institutions, it becomes difficult to imagine that the welfare state can be replaced by something different and better. Melting State, 2020
First released in an edition of 10 and sold through the Specta Surplus Store at Galleri Specta, Copenhagen in February 2018. Wireless Walnut, 2018
Working with AI models trained on biased data, the project asks how such systems can still be repurposed to imagine collective and collaborative futures. Diffused States (Boston), 2025
Aarhus'er #1 doesn't offer a single reading of what was or what could be. Aarhus'er #1, 2025
I had taught at an art school for years and had taken to dressing up and interfering with the presentation software, introducing invented theory and fictitious examples, to make the conventions of teaching less certain. A Human Pretending To Be An Artist Pretending To Be A Crayfish, 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
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
Produced for Aarhus Public Libraries and published by Haandholdt, the app was made freely available through iTunes. KAOS, 2012
The centralised gatekeeping of 20th-century journalism has given way to fragmented, unstable formats. Watershed, 2025
The project used artificial intelligence not as a thinking entity, but as a tool filled with errors and biases that could inspire new ways of thinking. Frihed, Lighed Og Hip-Hop, 2023
Tank Hip-Hop established the methodology of using counterfactual storytelling to construct alternative Danish histories. Tank Hip-Hop, 2022
This breaks with the idea of a coherent and authentic artistic subject—an illusion that the art market is still deeply dependent on. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
The city of Aarhus serves as both source and subject, remixed through the lens of local imagination and global street culture. Aarhus'er #1, 2025
The headline read "The Inscrutable Face of Russia." This sparked reflections on how much difference there actually is between the paranoid gaze of computer surveillance technologies and that of human beings. Putin's Nose, 2019
The project contributed to the establishment of the Interspecies Library, the first archive dedicated to artists' books focused on more-than-human worlds. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
Ørum's contribution used algorithmic depth estimation to analyse one of the recovered photographs and generate a three-dimensional interpretation. Depth Estimation, 2019
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 installation used various media to investigate how technology shapes our understanding of faces, identity, and political figures. Putins Nose, 2018
Works included "When nature looks back at you" (3D print, 2021), "Pearl House" (mixed media, 2020), "Habitation Oyster from Kolidsound" (3D print, 2020), and "WARNING FLOOR FLOODED DURING HIGH TIDE" (hydrographic print on cornstarch, 2021). Ebeltoft After The Flood, 2021
The installation is accompanied by a series of AI-generated postcards that reimagine Viking life in the style of idealised holiday imagery. The Good, the Lost, and the Beautiful, 2025
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
The piece ends by saying that the conclusion was supposed to go here. A Human Pretending To Be An Artist Pretending To Be A Crayfish, 2022