Kristoffer Ørum
Local. Copenhagen and Aarhus, mostly.
Works with animals that have not agreed to it.
Not local. Boston, Vancouver, Riga, Kraków, Oberhausen, San Francisco.
Solitary. One person decides what is documented and what is forgotten.
Twenty years out of art school, and back in it.
A lot of it is waiting for a render to finish.
The images are unstable and shifting, conjuring a welfare system built on an uneasy combination of nature and technology that is neither utopian nor dystopian but simply strange and somehow plausible. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
It was accompanied by scholarly publication and received coverage in Danish art press. Signal_Crayfish, 2020
Monuments of a Fictional Past references both the speculative tradition of counterfactual history and the architectural poetics of unrealized futures. Monuments of a Fictional Past (Kraków Edition), 2025
Everyday objects were recognisable yet altered. Mundane Heroics, 2019
A multidisciplinary team including architects, artists, designers, engineers, musicians and literary theorists collaborated with Bojen and Ørum to jointly create this immersive vision. Radiant Copenhagen, 2009
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 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
Each day, the system generated a new composite face from images found via Google’s lists of top search terms. Recognised Faces, 2014
The work was exhibited at ARoS Public's communication centre on the third floor from May to July 2021, alongside works by Danish and international artists including Lawrence Lek, Morehshin Allahyari, Stephanie Dinkins, and others. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
Tank Hip-Hop was the inaugural project that launched the multi-year "Freedom, Equality and Hip-Hop" series, built on the fictional relationship between the labour movement and hip-hop culture. Tank Hip-Hop, 2022
Public places became stages for brief moments of shared fiction. Mundane Heroics, 2019
The liquid stains my hands when I reach into the vegetable drawer. Qua Aqua (Beetroot Texts), 2017
Diffused States imagines a counterfactual technological history in which graffiti and phone phreaking converged through the discovery that modified spray paint could interact with electromagnetic infrastructure. Diffused States (Boston), 2025
Mundane Monsters was an interactive digital multimedia exhibition that transformed the gallery at Epsilon Spires into a walk-through experience about the modern relationship between nature and culture. Mundane Monsters, 2022
The exhibition featured wall art contributions by artist Anders Reventlov alongside AI-generated narratives. Mr. Spray, 2024
In collaboration with local live role-players, Anders Bojen and Kristoffer Ørum created a fictitious universe whose rules and borders were only fully known to its participants. Game Continent, 2010
The video combines humor, science fiction, and speculative narratives in a single continuous run through unusual and imaginative topics. Search for Carrot ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence, 2006
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
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
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
The exhibition consisted of stencils painted with beetroot juice, 3D-printed noses and beetroots, inkjet prints, a webcam and screens of various sizes with nose recognition, texts and animation. Putin's Nose, 2019
The performance concludes with Google's speech recognition continuously but often mistakenly transcribing what the lecturer says, with colours changing rhythmically each time the text updates. Feathered Misconceptions, 2018
At Drottninggatan 6, the building itself becomes a collaborative canvas, shaped by decades of creative reuse. Even the City Dreams of Being Another, 2025
The work was part of the group exhibition "Perpetual Interpreter" at Lokale in Copenhagen, co-curated with Anders Visti. Listening Without Ears, 2019
The work featured 3D-printed signal crayfish models, USB-connected gadgets, and digital manipulations. Signal_Crayfish, 2020
The work takes up how computer technology mediates our relationship to the physical world, creating hybrid zones where digital simulation and material reality intersect. Coffee Lake, 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
These moments reflect our own unstable, contradictory digital selves. Speaker 1, 2026
The work consists of more than 30 screens distributed throughout the campus, each showing a real-time visualisation of the institution’s invisible infrastructures. A Body Has Many Members, 2012
The exhibition Coming From took place from 23 August to 14 September 2014, with an opening on 22 August. Auto Navigate My History, 2014
Especially simulations of destruction are so widespread and credible that one quickly forgets what the original physical phenomena looked like. Melting State, 2020
Instead of being representations in a conventional sense, they functioned as productions of effects, transforming the exhibition space into an operational field based on concepts such as energy, velocity, and transformation. Coffee Lake, 2019
The faces produced through this process often appear distorted or uncanny to human eyes, yet they retain a resemblance to mainstream ideals of beauty. Recognised Faces, 2014
Topographies of the Insignificant is a web-based project from 2010 presenting a series of micro-topological maps of ultra-local spaces in five European cities: Berlin, Bratislava, Luxembourg, Rome and Vienna. Topographies of the Insignificant, 2010
Coffee Lake is a video installation combining computer-generated video with animated text, created for the group exhibition "Machine sans nom" at Bonamatic. Coffee Lake, 2019
The project arises from a media environment where trust in both institutions and images is unsettled. Watershed, 2025
Visitors encountered these figures both inside the museum and in everyday spaces, such as the local supermarket, where baguettes from the freezer section served as swords. Game Continent, 2010
The project treats these everyday activities as data sources capable of producing narratives, insights, and imaginative associations. Day to Day Data, 2008
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
"Sucker Trick" is a collaboration between visual artist Kristoffer Ørum, magician Claus Mulbjerg, and architect Tomas Skovgaard. Sucker Trick, 2017