Kristoffer Ørum
Twenty years out of art school, and back in it.
A documentary practice. Every work here has an address and a date.
Some of it only exists as a photograph now.
Not research. The works were made first and explained afterwards.
Not local. Boston, Vancouver, Riga, Kraków, Oberhausen, San Francisco.
Solitary. One person decides what is documented and what is forgotten.
Ørum's installation used speech recognition technology integrated into sculptural objects that resembled common household items. Listening Without Ears, 2019
Custom software automated the browsing process by reading from the recorded history file and simulating user clicks. Auto Navigate My History, 2014
Leaving the site once again ready to become yet another kind of Brownfield Wonderland, where one might just be able to dream of something new, instead of more of the same. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022
Each day, Watershed collects images from international news websites and subjects them to a watershed segmentation algorithm. Watershed, 2025
To understand it, I placed a digital version of myself—a puppet with my face and a clone of my voice—in front of various AIs. Speaker 1, 2026
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
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
Standing at 1.5 metres, the piece draws on 17th-century drawings by Jón Skonvig, known for his work with antiquarian Ole Worm. The Good, the Lost, and the Beautiful, 2025
Documentation: - Liveart.dk project page - Nilas Dumstrei – Mundane Heroics - Liveart.dk overview - Kristoffer Ørum – Liveart.dk profile - ANTI Festival background - Facebook event archive - Video documentation on YouTube Mundane Heroics, 2019
Part of Ørum’s ongoing project "Freedom, Equality, and Hip-Hop", the work engages AI technologies (Flux.1, Stable Diffusion 3.5) to construct histories that never were. Aalborg Is The Future, 2024
However, this an unsanctioned and unrealistic version of what could exist, made plausible but the authority of technology, not the dreams of bureaucracy. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022
Its on-screen lyrics tell the factual story of a 507-year-old clam killed during the scientific process of determining its age. Djurs Øhav, 2020
The exhibition contributed to ongoing discussions about AI, storytelling, and alternative histories. Mr. Spray, 2024
The voices are those of the people who live in them. Affluence without abundance, 2025
The exhibition was accompanied by the website Mundanemonsters.oerum.org and a series of interventions in the local urban space. Mundane Monsters, 2023
The system operated continuously throughout the exhibition, looping through the history without direct interaction. Auto Navigate My History, 2014
Staged as a series of narrative “figures,” the project invents and documents civic architectures that never existed—but perhaps could have. Monuments of a Fictional Past (Kraków Edition), 2025
Online, these fragments are assembled pseudo-randomly into a navigable three-dimensional space. Watershed, 2025
The Ballehage Woman was created by Anders Bojen and Kristoffer Ørum for the outdoor sculpture exhibition Sculpture by the Sea, organised by AROS Museum in Aarhus in 2009. The Ballehage Woman, 2009
On the screen of a phone or tablet, one can arrange a combination of scaffolding, 3d scans from the site and architectural fragments into an unstable and intangible building mass. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022
Invigilators tell stories of events that could have transpired, whilst screens display the construction of monuments that never materialised. Monuments of A Fictitious Past, 2024
The title refers to multiple forms of diffusion: the technical process of algorithmic image generation; the physical dispersion of paint; and the informal, community-based spread of knowledge and technology. Diffused States (Boston), 2025
The signs Prognose eller kaos (Prognosis or Chaos) and a second Leddyrsomsorg in the gallery. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
And we interpret everything through cultural repertoires of symbols and social cues. Watershed, 2025
The installation included a manipulated deep fake video featuring politician Pernille Vermund discussing invasive species. Signal_Crayfish, 2020
Listening Without Ears consists of 3D printed copies of everyday objects that transcribe what is said in the exhibition space and print it out. Listening Without Ears, 2019
Pages were loaded sequentially or at random, with intervals that gave visitors time to recognise and reflect on the material. Auto Navigate My History, 2014
The project exploited technological imperfections to imagine an improved future by manipulating AI's original commercial intent. Frihed, Lighed Og Hip-Hop, 2023
Signal_Krebs was an installation work presented in the group exhibition "Navigeringer – På kanten af en verden i forandring". Signal_Crayfish, 2020
Like collage, the work is not about arriving at a definitive meaning but about generating provisional configurations that open new ways of seeing. Watershed, 2025
A chair, a refrigerator door containing a bottle of milk, a platter holding a watermelon, and a breadbox with a loaf of rye bread were produced in jesmonite with inner cores of flamingo foam that were dissolved in acetone. Invisible Objects, 2016
Using AI, familiar sites are transformed into speculative visions, such as Karolinelunden as a DIY amusement park or Aalborg Shipyard taken over by its workers. Aalborg Is The Future, 2024
Yet it is also a paradox: even though AI produces many versions of me, they all point back to a recognisable “I.” This double movement—dissolution and reinforcement—is part of what interests me. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
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
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 exhibition was the result of several years' work with the three monsters, bringing together elements from numerous performances, exhibitions and interventions both domestically and abroad. Mundane Monsters, 2023
The show aimed to make the realm of coded instructions, programming languages, software protocols, electrical signals and logical operations available to aesthetic experience. Listening Without Ears, 2019
The Kolding Creature was a virtual three-dimensional creature created from 3D scans of local Kolding pets and conversations with their owners. The Kolding Creature, 2021
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
"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