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Greedheads, preying priests and oligarchs: The politically-charged surrealist paintings of Ole Fick

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‘Red Alert.’
 
You may have heard of Postman Pat or rather, “Postman Pat, Postman Pat, Postman Pat and his black and white cat.” If you know what I’m talking about, then you’ll know how goddamned difficult it is to say “Postman Pat” without singing the show’s catchy little jingle.

Anyway, Postman Pat is a kids’ series on British TV that’s been running long enough for the big-nosed puppet Pat to claim his pension. It’s been so successful the series has been sold to who knows how many different countries across the world. One day, no doubt, there will a gathering of all the world’s bigwigs at the UN who will suddenly agree on global peace and prosperity after bursting into several rousing renditions of the Postman Pat theme tune.

Ole Fick is the Danish actor who provides the voice for the series in Denmark where it’s known as Postmand Per. Fick has voiced a whole bunch of kids TV and movie imports as far back as Disney’s The Aristocats,. As an actor, he’s starred in quite a few big screen movies and acclaimed TV series.

But acting is just one of the many things with which Fick (b. 1948) has achieved great success in his life. He’s also well-known as a comic who has worked alongside comedy duo Monrad & Rislund—think Rowan and Martin or Morecambe and Wise. He writes kids’ books and draws cartoons. But Fick’s probably best known in Denmark as singer and guitarist with the jazz-funk-prog rock band Burnin Red Ivanhoe—who coincidentally celebrate their 50th anniversary this year.

If this weren’t enough to make you want to re-evaluate your own productivity, Fick is a painter who since 2010 has been exhibiting his surreal and satirical paintings across Denmark to considerable success. Fick paints pictures of the various kinds of deluded men who seem to have an overly large part in running the world. The men who feast on havoc and chaos, exploitation and greed. Fick’s paintings are chronicles of the world in which we all live—between the devourer and the devoured—where manners and etiquette don’t soften the damage done. See more of Fick’s work here.
 
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‘Something is Rotten.’
 
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‘Soft Cut.’
 
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‘Epiphany.’
 
See more of Ole Fick’s paitnings, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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11.10.2017
08:36 am
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Mabel: 1970s Danish disco glam rockers go all hair metal & take some bad advice from David Lee Roth
06.23.2016
10:33 am
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An early promo shot of Danish band Mabel with a shirtless teenage Michael Trempenau (aka Mike Tramp of hair metal band White Lion) second from the left.
 
Hailing from a part of the world that seems to produce more blonde-haired people than anywhere else, Danish glam band Mabel got their big break sometime in the mid-70s when their vocalist Gert Von Magnus caught the eye of Tam Paton—a man who was overseeing the burgeoning career of the Bay City Rollers and got the band the opening slot for his teenybopper idols at a gig in Copenhagen.
 

Mabel, 1978.

But poor Magnus never got to taste the success Mabel would go on to have as he was quickly replaced by another Dane, fifteen-year-old Michael Trempenau who was going by the name “Mike Tramp.” And if that name has got your heavy metal bells ringing it’s for good reason as Tramp would eventually go on to front early-80s hair band White Lion. With Tramp’s addition to Mabel the band started their slow slide toward a more disco sound—a move that made the band a hugely popular attraction in Germany and Spain. In the late 70s Mabel moved their operation to Spain after gaining more notoriety when their catchy number “Boom Boom” was chosen as the official Danish selection for the Eurovision Song Contest in 1978. Things were going well for Mabel but their young vocalist wasn’t super into the band’s pop-music vibe and was instead digging heavily on bands like Van Halen and AC/DC. Tramp convinced his bandmates to switch things up by changing their name from Mabel to the more manly sounding “Studs” and trying their hand a more rock-oriented sound.
 
Keep rockin’ after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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06.23.2016
10:33 am
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Artist creates riverbed that fills an entire wing of museum
08.22.2014
04:31 pm
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Olafur Eliasson’s installation, humbly titled “Riverbed,” covers the entire South Wing of Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. The Danish-Icelandic artist did a similar work in 2008 where he covered the floor with lava-rock rubble, but the rooms used weren’t entirely cleared out, giving the space more of a “dirty floor” effect. That rubble floor is also very similar to Walter De Maria’s 1977 “New York Earth Room”—which is still exhibited, and is literally just a dirt floor covering a few rooms in a museum.

With “Riverbed,” it’s the harsh contrast of the sterile (fluorescent lighting, blinding white walls), against the organic (remarkably natural-looking floor), that makes for an uncanny ambiance. Viewers are encouraged to wander the landscape and interact with the environment, crawling through low entrances to other portions of the exhibit and possibly getting their shoes a little soggy. Little explanation is given for the exhibit, but I’d argue the vibe is distinctly portentous, hinting at a bleak future where nature is scarce, or has to be synthesized by man in order to be experienced safely.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Via Hyperallergic

Posted by Amber Frost
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08.22.2014
04:31 pm
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Danish gov’t creates perfect Minecraft Denmark; hooligans promptly blow it up, plant American flags
05.09.2014
12:37 pm
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Mincraft Denmark
 
I love everything about this story. I love what the Danish government did, in creating a perfect 1:1 Minecraft simulation of the entire country of Denmark, and I love what the users did, which is, by sheer inventiveness and determination, circumvent the Danish government’s well thought out measures to prevent people from messing with it. Well, maybe I don’t love the jingoistic instinct of the American gamer… Well, what are you gonna do?

About a week ago the Danish government made the meticulous simulacrum available to users. You can download sections of the Denmark map here. The simulation involved the use of “trillions” of Minecraft bricks, and although there have been similar real-life Minecraft simulations before, from all appearances this is one of the most ambitious and detailed areas of this sort yet achieved.

The Danish Geodata Agency, the creators of the simulation, intelligently disabled the use of dynamite so that users could enjoy the pixelated Scandinavian land unmolested. But the innate human need to fuck shit up prevailed. You see, the Danish Geodata Agency had neglected to disable the “minecart with dynamite” item. Oops. Users figured this out, blew up parts of a number of Danish towns, and put American flags over the main train station of Copenhagen (pictured above). In this reddit thread about the incident (in Danish), a Swedish user wrote in, “As a Swede, I’m happy to see this…..” (As usual, the Swedes and the Danes always get along under all circumstances…..)

Initially, the Danish government announced that it would reboot the map with add new restrictions to prevent the possibility of virtual vandalism. However, further investigation revealed that “only MINOR areas” of the map were destroyed, so they would leave the simulation intact. The simulation has been quite popular, having been downloaded 200,000 times already, so all in all it’s PR coup for the pleasant European nation that gave the world LEGO and Lars von Trier.

Here’s a little tour of the Minecraft Denmark (pre-vandalism) so you can see what it’s like.
 

Posted by Martin Schneider
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05.09.2014
12:37 pm
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We built this city on plastic bricks: The first Legoland opens in 1968
05.15.2013
11:19 am
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This is a jolly little film on the opening of the first Legoland Park, Billund, Denmark, in June 1968.

More than 50million people have visited Legoland since its opening, and 1.9m people visited the park in 2011, making it the most popular tourist attraction outside Copenhagen, in Denmark.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Lego my video: Tim Pope reacts to seeing one of his videos for The Cure recreated in Lego


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.15.2013
11:19 am
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Led Zeppelin: Rocking the Gladsaxe Teen Club for Danish TV in 1969

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Roughly 6 months after their first gig (where they were billed as ‘The Yardbirds med Jimmy Page’) this is Led Zeppelin giving a hint as to why they will dominate venues and stadia across the world during the 1970s.

Recorded at the Gladsaxe Teen Club, Denmark, for TV Byen / Danmarks Radio on March 17, 1969, Led Zeppelin perform “Communication Breakdown”, “Dazed and Confused”, “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”, and “How Many More Times”. Impressive and tight, this was what I considered as “grown-up Rock ‘n’ Roll” when I was young - the kind of music you studied after achieving good grades in Bowie and Bolan - and forty-three years on, it is still a cracking masterclass.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.14.2012
06:30 pm
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Denmark: The Land Of Consequence-Free Sex!
01.06.2010
12:52 pm
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More mixed signals from the wild world of Danish advertising.  First came this highly questionable campaign to combat violence against women.  Now comes the video below.

“Karen” is an attractive young mother who’s looking for the father of her child, the product of a one-night stand.  She’s not obsessed, a bimbo, or looking to assign blame.  She simply wants to alert the baby daddy—whomever he may be—that their child “exists.”  But as Sociological Images points out:

The video was actually produced as part of a campaign by Visit Denmark, a Danish tourism agency.  The idea is, apparently, to market Denmark to male tourists with the implication that it?

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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01.06.2010
12:52 pm
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