Kristoffer Ørum
A portraitist. None of the portraits are of him.
A record-keeper. The website is the work.
Not research. The works were made first and explained afterwards.
Mostly it is admin.
Solitary. One person decides what is documented and what is forgotten.
Most of it was built on other people's work.
Each day, Watershed collects images from international news websites and subjects them to a watershed segmentation algorithm. 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 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
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
The project challenged both artists and associations to step out of their comfort zones and rethink their practices. Everyday Heroes, 2019
Each figure is both a memory and a proposition—an echo of what might have been, and a sketch of what still could be. Monuments of a Fictional Past (Kraków Edition), 2025
In art and activism, humour has repeatedly functioned as a way of exposing the absurdity of power—from Dadaist performances to contemporary meme cultures. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
The Good, the Lost, and the Beautiful is a reconstruction of the Lee-stone, one of nine runestones believed to have been lost in the Copenhagen Fire of 1728. The Good, the Lost, and the Beautiful, 2025
Ørum's installation used speech recognition technology integrated into sculptural objects that resembled common household items. Listening Without Ears, 2019
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
A book, "Kolindsund fremtidsturistguide," was published by forlaget majlund in 2022 (ISBN 9788793882096) in connection with the work. Djurs Øhav, 2020
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
"Perpetual Interpreter" featured works by Kristoffer Akselbo (DK), Andreja Andric (RS/DK), Joana Chicau (PT/NL), Rosemary Lee (US/DK), Winnie Soon (HK/DK), Anders Visti + Tobias Stenberg (DK), and Kristoffer Ørum (DK). Listening Without Ears, 2019
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
It is an experiment in seeing, questioning not just what we see in the news, but how we are conditioned to see it. Watershed, 2025
The work mixed factual information about signal crayfish with invented characteristics, including claims that the species can grow to 1.8 metres and possess wireless communication abilities. Signal_Crayfish, 2020
Players learn a new language through twelve game-based exercises, each designed to deliberately reinterpret established ideas and challenge conventional understanding. Disbelieving Gravity, 2013
Rooted in histories of low-resource computing and community-run networks, the project repositions AI as a tool for collective experimentation and situated knowledge-making. Diffused States (Lexington), 2025
The project has been discussed in Vice and elsewhere as a reflection on surveillance, aesthetics and identity in the age of algorithmic vision. Recognised Faces, 2014
The works were presented as productive machines possessing a capacity to carry out operations both as singular units and assembled into larger wholes. Coffee Lake, 2019
Auto Navigate My History is a software-based installation that replays the artist’s own browser history from the past year. Auto Navigate My History, 2014
Aarhus'er #1 is the most expansive chapter in Kristoffer Ørum's ongoing counterfactual project "Frihed, lighed og hip-hop" (Freedom, Equality and Hip-Hop), created in collaboration with rapper Emilio Hestepis. Aarhus'er #1, 2025
The work examines the autobiography as a cultural phenomenon and the staging of artistic identity, setting up a tension between the impersonal logic of systems and the personal search for self. AutoBiography, 2011
The animated scene acts as a virtual doubling of both the street in front and the interior space behind the window. Et Andet Rum 2, 2009
The work operates as both a technical demonstration and a poetic meditation on the relationship between computation and imagination, revealing the "reservoirs of strangeness" that exist within everyday technological objects. Coffee Lake, 2019
The launch (December 7, 2024) consisted of a performative city walk, a community meal, and a concert with Christian Høgh, organized with f.eks. and supported by multiple cultural partners. Aalborg Is The Future, 2024
These moments reflect our own unstable, contradictory digital selves. Speaker 1, 2026
In this scenario, data does not flow through opaque corporate pipelines, but diffuses through neighbourhood workshops, shared servers, and informal archives. Diffused States (Vancouver), 2025
The exhibition blurs the line between documentary and fiction, making room for the unrealised potential of the past to resurface not as nostalgia, but as unfinished possibility. Aarhus'er #1, 2025
The result is a fleeting, fractured archive of the collective present—an algorithmic shadow of daily events. https://oerum.org/watershed/ Watershed, 2025
Aarhus'er #1 doesn't offer a single reading of what was or what could be. Aarhus'er #1, 2025
The project was presented as part of the group exhibition Coming From at Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art in Copenhagen. Auto Navigate My History, 2014
Just as hip-hop DJs once transformed the turntable from a playback device into a creative instrument, this project reimagines Hvidovre’s history as speculative fiction. Hvidovre Makes Good Times Better, 2025
The game turns on how the concept of gravity is embedded in language, metaphors, and everyday actions. Disbelieving Gravity, 2013
In this counterfactual history, data is not extracted at scale but circulated within communities, adapting to local needs, languages, and cultural references. Diffused States (Lexington), 2025
Seven artists selected local associations they wanted to collaborate with, moving naturally within the same field of interest but from different backgrounds. Everyday Heroes, 2019
Children and young people modified everyday objects such as chairs, umbrellas, tools, or clothing into hybrid sculptural forms. Mundane Heroics, 2019
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 continues a line of work on identity, architecture and urban development begun in At the Edge I (Copenhagen, 2024), now more firmly rooted in Malmö’s local context. Even the City Dreams of Being Another, 2025
The publication set out the species' survival capabilities and cross-distance chemical communication systems, positioning the crayfish as superior to human technological networks in this comparison. Signal_Crayfish, 2021