Kristoffer Ørum
A programmer who picks the wrong algorithm on purpose.
Solitary. One person decides what is documented and what is forgotten.
Twenty years out of art school, and back in it.
Mostly it is admin.
Made by hand, mostly. Cut, cast, sanded, painted.
Nothing digital about it. A screen is an object, and objects sit in rooms.
Children and young people modified everyday objects such as chairs, umbrellas, tools, or clothing into hybrid sculptural forms. Mundane Heroics, 2019
The project imagines a future where columns echoing ancient Greek wooden architecture lose their weight or melt, where gravity is suspended for a moment while art institutions deform and dance in the wind before the air goes out of them. Melting State, 2020
The project was mentioned in reviews for its role in public debates on landscape restoration and climate adaptation. Djurs Øhav, 2020
Instead of showing only what is lost when a human is translated into data, these moments offer a new perspective. Speaker 1, 2026
These objects were then animated through role play and staged as collective tableaux, blurring the line between workshop and public presentation. Mundane Heroics, 2019
About this website This is one of many possible records of Kristoffer Ørum's work, but it's never going to be complete.
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
The sculpture is a giant oyster from a setting where the earth is covered by an endless ocean and people have moved into the oysters, which give them shelter, air, warmth and food. Affluence without abundance, 2025
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
The exhibition was noted for providing a rare opportunity to interact with cutting-edge technology in a gallery setting. Mundane Monsters, 2022
By naming the work after the processor used to create it, Ørum draws attention to the material infrastructure of digital media while simultaneously questioning the boundaries between virtual and physical experience. Coffee Lake, 2019
Through this lens, the familiar streets and landmarks of Gdańsk are reimagined, highlighting the city’s layered histories, political influences, and the subjective experience of its inhabitants. A Subjective History of Gdańsk, 2011
At that time, Denmark experienced economic growth and falling unemployment, and society was marked by optimism and collective visions of a better future — hopes that are harder to find today. Hvidovre Makes Good Times Better, 2025
*KAOS* is an interactive iPad app created in collaboration with poet Ursula Andkjær Olsen. KAOS, 2012
An oversized plastic walnut that transmits wireless text. Wireless Walnut, 2018
The book was commissioned during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic as part of a group of works that examined interspecies entanglement and human vulnerability. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
The project questioned human privilege by highlighting the sophisticated communication systems of non-human species that operate beyond human perception. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
The work set daily life against hypothetical digital physiognomies, using the nose as a means to examine identity and perception. According to the Nose, 2021
Works were deliberately constructed with glitching and raw digital noise to make visible the technological mediation and signal transmission processes. Signal_Crayfish, 2020
The project includes works such as Detergent (Real Imaginary System) and Auto Navigate My History, which visualize, manipulate, and creatively reimagine the information generated by ordinary activities. Day to Day Data, 2008
I do it because I see a critique of the world that too often points outward, as if one could speak from a neutral and elevated place. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
With deepfakes and decentralised information sources, the photograph’s credibility as evidence is under renewed scrutiny. Watershed, 2025
The work involved 3D-printing signal crayfish models equipped with electromagnetic sensing components. Signal_Crayfish, 2021
The exhibition featured 26 contemporary artists responding to photographs that had been recovered from the ship Svartlöga after it capsized and sank in August 2018. Depth Estimation, 2019
The installation included various nose-related works including "My Nose", "Nose detector", and "Nose Archive", alongside "Face of Russia". Putins Nose, 2018
The performance questions traditional notions of heroic bodies and monochrome histories, imagining instead non-heroic bodies in soft, feathered institutions that function as part of a collective ecosystem. Feathered Misconceptions, 2018
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
The work operated as both a functional listening device and a sculptural intervention, questioning the boundaries between surveillance, documentation, and artistic practice. Listening Without Ears, 2019
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
Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care is a twenty-minute video, one of nine works Ørum showed in FORSTADIER / Precursors — a duo exhibition with Aske Thiberg, curated by Morten K Jacobsen and Heidi Hove. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
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
The result is a fleeting, fractured archive of the collective present—an algorithmic shadow of daily events. https://oerum.org/watershed/ Watershed, 2025
To launch the project, staged reality events and a guided bus tour extended its speculative narrative into the physical city. Radiant Copenhagen, 2009
While gentrification night favour one imagined future out of all the others that could have come about, the ongoing struggle of whose imaginaries will be realised, and whose will be kept as potential or unrealistic futures, remains. Brownfield Wonderland, 2022
Kristoffer Ørum’s contribution imagines Malmö as shaped by the afterlives of its industrial past and alternative forms of civic imagination. Even the City Dreams of Being Another, 2025
The collaboration process involved both artists visiting associations for fieldwork and associations visiting the museum for workshop days that became the foundation for the exhibited artworks. Everyday Heroes, 2019
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
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
The resulting work consists of around 600 interlinked texts, images and videos. Topographies of the Insignificant, 2010
Signal_Krebs was an installation work presented in the group exhibition "Navigeringer – På kanten af en verden i forandring". Signal_Crayfish, 2020