Kristoffer Ørum
An artist who makes things up about real places.
Local. Copenhagen and Aarhus, mostly.
Not local. Boston, Vancouver, Riga, Kraków, Oberhausen, San Francisco.
Nothing digital about it. A screen is an object, and objects sit in rooms.
Works with machines that are confidently wrong.
A record-keeper. The website is the work.
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 opening included a performance component set in an alternative past, presenting counterfactual work that narrated fictional relationships between political movements and cultural expression. Mr. Spray, 2024
The project draws inspiration from the largely forgotten history of ternary computing—an alternative to binary systems that operates on three states: true, false, and unknown. Diffused States (Boston), 2025
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
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
*AutoBiography* is a video installation by Anders Bojen and Kristoffer Ørum in which the artists rewrite their biographies through a mathematical system that continuously generates unstable interpretations of their identities. AutoBiography, 2011
The opening performance on 30 May 2024 was paired with Linnea Langfjord's work on alternative presents focused on care and slowness in the art world. Mr. Spray, 2024
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
The exhibition featured video projections, 3D-printed sculptures, wireless transmissions, two-dimensional works, and an augmented reality component that allowed visitors to view "monsters" inhabiting the gallery through their phone cameras. Mundane Monsters, 2022
It weaves together factual history, fiction, and AI-generated imagery to imagine a meeting between hip-hop’s pursuit of individual freedom and the labor movement’s collective struggle for better conditions. Aalborg Is The Future, 2024
At the neighbouring Museum Østjylland, speculative objects were integrated into the historical displays, including a model of an "oyster home" and interventions within exhibits about Grenå's local oyster history. Djurs Øhav, 2020
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
Installation took place aboard Svartlöga ship functioning as gallery space. Ebeltoft After The Flood, 2021
The signs Prognose eller kaos (Prognosis or Chaos) and a second Leddyrsomsorg in the gallery. Leddyrsomsorg / Arthropod Care, 2026
The project also speaks to a transitional moment. Watershed, 2025
Inside the exhibition space at Sydhavn Station (housed in a former DSB kiosk), the walls were painted with abstract graffiti and AI-generated videos showed various demonstrations and concerts related to this fictional history. Frihed, Lighed Og Hip-Hop, 2023
The exhibition opening coincided with Brattleboro's monthly Gallery Walk and was followed by an outdoor screening of skateboarding and surfing documentaries. Mundane Monsters, 2022
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 work functions as a digital rendering where Putin's face operates as an isolated entity, functioning similarly to orthodox religious icons. Vladimir's Tongue, 2020
The game turns on how the concept of gravity is embedded in language, metaphors, and everyday actions. Disbelieving Gravity, 2013
A book, "Kolindsund fremtidsturistguide," was published by forlaget majlund in 2022 (ISBN 9788793882096) in connection with the work. Djurs Øhav, 2020
The project began with an unusual anecdote: "I look down into the shopping bag at some beetroots. Putins Nose, 2018
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
Exhibition hours: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday 17:00-20:00 and Saturday, Sunday 12:00-17:00. Ebeltoft After The Flood, 2021
The work utilises the props and techniques of an academic presentation in a playful and open-ended manner, examining present-day culture of classification and the potential of letting go of control. It Sings for Us of What We Might Become, 2019
This approach shares a lineage with experimental practices such as Surrealist automatic writing and collage. Watershed, 2025
Simultaneously with the physical performances, stories of The Ballehage Woman were disseminated across media including a website, YouTube video, Google ads, newspaper articles, and emails. The Ballehage Woman, 2009
Participants borrowed nose-shaped masks equipped with audio guides from Lokale, taking them on walks through the Nørrebro area around Griffenfeldsgade 27. According to the Nose, 2021
The question it starts from is what kinds of monuments we need today. Monuments of a Fictional Past (Kraków Edition), 2025
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 postcards extend this blending of eras, presenting scenes where identity, memory, and cultural imagination converge and transform. The Good, the Lost, and the Beautiful, 2025
On the other hand, these systems are still trained on global datasets full of bias, stereotypes, and inequality. None of These Images Are of Me, 2025
We are steered by algorithms that curate which images reach us. Watershed, 2025
Historical facts, such as names of kings or weather reports, were interwoven with stories of the Rosicrucian Order, royal lizards, and extraterrestrials landing on the outskirts of town. Roskilde Parahistory, 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
This computational process was then used to create a 3D printed object in corn starch. Depth Estimation, 2019
Recognised Faces unfolded publicly on a dedicated Tumblr, where the daily composites accumulated into a year-long portrait of both an individual and the internet’s visual culture at large. Recognised Faces, 2014
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
The project builds on Ørum's ongoing work "Freedom, Liberty, and Hip-Hop," which envisions alternative Danish histories. Monuments of A Fictitious Past, 2024
The centralised gatekeeping of 20th-century journalism has given way to fragmented, unstable formats. Watershed, 2025