Kristoffer Ørum
A teacher who keeps a studio in order to have something to teach from.
Solitary. One person decides what is documented and what is forgotten.
An artist who makes things up about real places.
Twenty years out of art school, and back in it.
Collaborative. Most of it was made with other people.
Not local. Boston, Vancouver, Riga, Kraków, Oberhausen, San Francisco.
The project arises from a media environment where trust in both institutions and images is unsettled. Watershed, 2025
The familiar rhythm of news consumption—fast, frictionless, designed for scanning—is replaced by movement through a spatial terrain. Watershed, 2025
The exhibition featured artists working in watercolor and gouache—a medium known for its fluidity and delicate textures—even when their usual practice includes sculptural, video, photographic, or installation-based work. Qua Aqua (Beetroot Texts), 2017
The title reflects several forms of diffusion: the algorithmic process of generating images; the grassroots spread of ideas and tools; and the physical scattering of devices across different environments. Diffused States (Lexington), 2025
Some pieces he remembers to add, others he forgets.
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
Today, images are filtered, analysed, and manipulated by systems we rarely notice or understand. Watershed, 2025
The pieces incorporated Wi-Fi network names printed on crayfish bodies, casting the invasive species as a digital hybrid creature living within communication networks. Signal_Crayfish, 2020
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 work combines AI-generated imagery with human-written captions, forming a dispersed narrative around how such systems might emerge—from grassroots tinkering to collectively governed infrastructures and hyper-local training data. Diffused States (Vancouver), 2025
"Sucker Trick" is a collaboration between visual artist Kristoffer Ørum, magician Claus Mulbjerg, and architect Tomas Skovgaard. Sucker Trick, 2017
Transparent mobiles with polarisation filters cause the overlapping projections to shift constantly, creating a spatial interpretation of a hybrid and unstable identity. AutoBiography, 2011
They are the most revealing parts of the process. Speaker 1, 2026
On the contrary, humour often arises in breaks with the expected, in encounters with the unknown, bringing fear and laughter close together. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
The installation ran on a standard computer connected to a screen in the exhibition space. Auto Navigate My History, 2014
Components included routers, antennas, and cables arranged alongside the biological forms. Signal_Crayfish, 2020
The piece functioned within the broader context of examining technological fears and the archetype of the monstrous machine. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
The project was realised in three different locations, each with its own public settings and time frame. Mundane Heroics, 2019
The work was reviewed in The Brooklyn Rail and included in a panel discussion about interspecies publications created during the pandemic. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
In this way, Ørum reconsidered the relationship between national identity, food, body and surveillance, hoping to open up an identity model where it is possible to be foreign, Danish, body and digital representation at the same time. Putin's Nose, 2019
The photographs were found in a cabin after the vessel had spent seven days on the seabed, having been exposed to three atmospheres of pressure and salt water. Depth Estimation, 2019
Aarhus'er #1 doesn't offer a single reading of what was or what could be. Aarhus'er #1, 2025
They draw on the advertising industry’s most simplified identity categories and support algorithmic preferences. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
The artist-run space Spanien 19c used to be located in a messy and unregulated, but fairly central, part of the increasingly gentrified city of Aarhus. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022
The installation drew from actual environmental concerns about invasive species whilst incorporating fictional elements related to digital communication networks and surveillance technologies. Signal_Crayfish, 2020
Combining elements from the early labor movement with the local hip-hop culture of the 1990s, the project looks for untapped potential where creativity, community, and enjoyment take center stage. Aalborg Is The Future, 2024
From advertising screens on buses to personal mobile phones, we are daily surrounded by lifelike computer-generated representations of physical phenomena. Melting State, 2020
The project examined the invasive signal crayfish species, cataloguing its chemical communication abilities in comparison to human technologies like Wi-Fi. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
Nyt Lys is lit at dusk and switched off at eight. Affluence without abundance, 2025
Et Andet Rum 2 is a site-specific 3D animation by Anders Bojen and Kristoffer Ørum. Et Andet Rum 2, 2009
Taking its starting point in classical ideas about the end of the world, the exhibition mixed anxiety and faith in the future into a playful soap-opera-like narrative, relocating human fate to mysterious experiments of a distant time. The End of the Universe as We Know It?, 2007
Rather than recognising faces, it was trained exclusively to see noses or beetroot-like patterns. Putin's Nose, 2019
The voices are those of the people who live in them. Affluence without abundance, 2025
Roskilde Parahistory was part of the group exhibition Kurs at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde in 2009. Roskilde Parahistory, 2009
Two folders, with texts by medical historian Adam Bencard and by Kristoffer Ørum, printed inkjet and held in 3D-printed R-PETG holders in both buildings. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
Visitors could observe the browser wandering through familiar and obscure websites, highlighting the fragmented and associative nature of online experience. Auto Navigate My History, 2014
The invasive biological species served as an analogy for invasive digital technologies and data collection systems. Signal_Crayfish, 2020
Even the City Dreams of Being Another is part of the exhibition At the Edge II, presented at Skene in Malmö. Even the City Dreams of Being Another, 2025
Rather than illustrating a lost history, the project manipulates familiar visual tropes and embraces the productive errors of AI. Aarhus'er #1, 2025
Installation took place aboard Svartlöga ship functioning as gallery space. Ebeltoft After The Flood, 2021