Kristoffer Ørum
Collaborative. Most of it was made with other people.
Local. Copenhagen and Aarhus, mostly.
Mostly it is admin.
Not local. Boston, Vancouver, Riga, Kraków, Oberhausen, San Francisco.
Made by hand, mostly. Cut, cast, sanded, painted.
The machines are collaborators and cannot be credited.
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
Exhibition documented by photographer Mikkel Kaldal. Ebeltoft After The Flood, 2021
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
In Copenhagen, at Live Art for Kids the project took shape in courtyards, playgrounds, and cultural centres. Mundane Heroics, 2019
Auto Navigate My History uses the digital archive of daily browsing as both source and medium. Auto Navigate My History, 2014
My focus, however, lands on the moments of breakdown and confusion where this logic fails. Speaker 1, 2026
On the one hand, it can be seen as an attempt to resist the grip of major platforms, their data collection, and their opaque models. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
*Radiant Copenhagen* was a speculative reimagining of the city developed as an online platform and complemented by real-world actions. Radiant Copenhagen, 2009
Like Haraway, I believe the only honest critique must come from a situated place—knowledge that is always embodied, compromised, and grounded in specific contexts. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
Using the fictional device Scope 3000, he ultimately merged with the patterns themselves. The Pattern In Us All, 2007
Frihed, Lighed og Hip-Hop used advanced imaging technology (artificial intelligence) to tell the story of a fictional relationship between the labour movement and hip-hop culture. Frihed, Lighed Og Hip-Hop, 2023
The work involved creating AI-generated posters and videos that depicted an alternative Danish history where the labour movement and 1990s hip-hop culture merged. Frihed, Lighed Og Hip-Hop, 2023
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
Several video works were part of the exhibition. Djurs Øhav, 2020
AALBORG ER FREMTIDEN (Aalborg Is the Future) is a public art project by Kristoffer Ørum that presents an alternative perspective on Aalborg's history. Aalborg Is The Future, 2024
Alongside the artworks, the programme includes talks, workshops and events on the histories and relevance of these vanished monuments. The Good, the Lost, and the Beautiful, 2025
Television screens were also installed, showing interviews that had been produced through workshop-based role play. Invisible Objects, 2016
Rather than simply discussing these themes, the performance stages a series of unstable software experiments and semi-fictional narratives, creating a situation that is deliberately out of the performer's control. It Sings for Us of What We Might Become, 2019
A third video, A Song for Ming, was a karaoke track by Kristoffer Ærørum with music and performance by Josefine Struckmann. Djurs Øhav, 2020
The installation drew connections between magic, architecture and eroticism through practices of showing and hiding. Sucker Trick, 2017
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
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 work takes up how electronic systems constantly push at our understanding of who we are, our history and context, suggesting that their constant misunderstanding provides opportunities to see the world with fresh eyes. Feathered Misconceptions, 2018
These scenes combined role play, sculpture, and performance into temporary worlds accessible to anyone passing by. Mundane Heroics, 2019
In Helsinki, at the ANTI Contemporary Art Festival the project unfolded in the streets and open squares of the city centre. Mundane Heroics, 2019
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
It is based on the belief that there is no inevitability to the current process of gentrification, it is simply one choice taken out of a million other possible ways we could develop our cities. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022
Putin's Nose worked at the boundary between object and image, examining how digital images not only register meaning but enter physical space to shape identity and power relations. Putins Nose, 2018
It combines Live Action Role Playing (LARP), performance art, and sculpture, developed in close collaboration with young participants from across the Nordic region. Mundane Heroics, 2019
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
What emerges is a narrative of the self that is both enacted and undermined by an indifferent system — an algorithmic account of personality, filtered through the lenses of psychology, technology and cultural expectation. AutoBiography, 2011
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 exhibition was curated by Ida Schyum as the third presentation in Radar Contemporary's Extensions series. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
From the cover of the newspaper that the greengrocer wrapped the beets in, Russian President Vladimir Putin looked up, his face now covered in beetroot juice splatter. Putin's Nose, 2019
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
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
The work referenced Gustave Courbet's 1866 painting "L'Origine du monde", which was kept hidden behind a curtain for over a century. Sucker Trick, 2017
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
It aligns with the idea that technology, even when shaped by exclusionary structures, can be repurposed towards shared imagination, local autonomy, and slower forms of innovation. Diffused States (Vancouver), 2025
It takes the current development of the site of the art space as its point of departure, arguing for the often-overlooked qualities and potential of brownfield sites like it. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022