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Frank Zappa’s nude harem: Racy photos of The Runaways, ABBA & more from Swedish mag ‘POSTER’
01.07.2019
08:54 am
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The Runaways in Swedish magazine POSTER.
 
If you were a kid during the late 70s and early 80s, I’m gonna hedge a hefty bet you probably owned a few too many posters which covered your bedroom walls. As it pertains to the youthful pastime of murdering your parent’s wallpaper, POSTER magazine founder Hans Hatwig was once quoted saying his magazine “papered the walls of a whole generation.” Hatwig actually took many of the photos himself during the magazine’s six-year run in Sweden, and Hatwig seemed to have no difficulty convincing acts from The Runaways, to KISS, Frank Zappa, and Alice Cooper to strike a pose for POSTER.

Hatwig’s affable nature led him to develop friendships with some of the musical luminaries he photographed. According to his bio, he hooked up with Angus Young early on while the band was in Stockholm in July of 1976. Hatwig and Young headed out to the Red Light District where he photographed Angus “pretending” to purchase condoms from a Durex dispenser, with other shots taken in front of the local sex shops and adult movie theaters. In all, Hatwig took about 40 images of Angus “on the loose” in Stockholm, and they are all fantastically candid, while remaining certifiably rock and fucking roll.

Earlier in 1976, Hatwig would photograph the ethereal Agnetha Fältskog of ABBA with a giant red and white lollipop clad in a barely-there white satin top and matching knee-high boots while surrounded by a gang of look-alike baby dolls. The instantly infamous images still burn retinas (in the best possible way) to this day. Just like the shot of Frank Zappa (though it appears not to be one of Hatwig’s photographs) wearing an animal print banana hammock taken in 1976 along with eight women—six of them topless—in a studio made to look like an exotic jungle scene. You can never unsee this image of Zappa and his nipply friends—life is beautiful that way sometimes.

Posters from POSTER and vintage issues of the magazine often fetch over a hundred bucks online. Thankfully, in 2008, authors Fabian H. Bernstone & Mathias Brink published the book POSTER: Nordens största poptidning 1974-1980—a 256 volume of images from POSTER, some of which never made it off of the cutting room floor. Images from POSTER follow, some are NSFW.
 

A shot of ABBA rocking matching tinfoil outfits from POSTER magazine.
 

 

Agnetha Fältskog of ABBA and her lookalike doll army. Photo by Hans Hatwig.
 

AC/DC.
 

Alice Cooper.
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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01.07.2019
08:54 am
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Swedish TV accidentally puts children’s subtitles over political debate, and it’s f*cking hilarious!
05.22.2017
01:54 pm
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Civic-minded Swedes who tuned in to a political debate early last year didn’t expect to witness an interplanetary underwater battle involving dinosaurs, but thanks to an innocent mixup at the SVT2 TV station, that’s what they got.

It was probably more entertaining, not to say true-to-life, than what was actually happening in the debate, which involved Environmental Minister Åsa Romson, Liberal People’s Party leader Jan Björklund, Education Minister Gustav Fridolin, and Urban Ahlin, Speaker of the Riksdag, the national legislature of Sweden.
 

 
The subtitles depicted dialogue from the PBS children’s TV show Dinosaur Train

The head of the channel’s subtitle department, Anna Zetterson, smells a rat (or is it a dinosaur?), it seems. It turns out that on some older television models you can swap out the “teletext” page from another channel while keeping the current image. On Facebook she wrote in Swedish, “On some older TVs can still choose the old teletext page for the different channels’ subtitles, while checking on a different channel. So SVT, or any operator, didn’t send these out. But it is something you can amuse yourself with on an older television set.”

We don’t care. Maybe nobody made a mixup and it was all a plot to tickle our brains. All we can say is, mission accomplished!
 

 

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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05.22.2017
01:54 pm
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Träd Gräs och Stenar: The supreme leaders of Swedish Transcendental Psychedelic Rock
02.19.2016
11:10 am
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Träd, Gräs och Stenar, as the press release tells us, “are the supreme Swedish leaders of TRANSCENDENTAL PSYCHEDELIC ROCK MUSIC.”

Believe the all caps hype, trust me on this one…

They sound like Can jamming with Neil Young covering a late period Velvet Underground song and occupy a sonic spot on the Venn diagram where the Grateful Dead’s “Dark Star” meets Ornette Coleman, the Jesus & Mary Chain and Acid Mothers Temple with an ounce of good weed and a sheet of blotter acid.

Do I have your attention? I thought so.

Träd, Gräs och Stenar (“Trees, Grass and Stones”) were a sort of hippie/communal organic vegetables-growing Swedish manifestation of the spirit of May 1968, a “New Left” inspired group with an anarchist and “free socialism” philosophy who released their own DIY records long before such a thing was common. In the early 1970s, they travelled around, playing free festivals and parties. They fed their audiences food that they had grown and cooked themselves. They would play in fields, or anywhere. Their music was improvisational. They’d begin tuning and slowly, ever so slowly, a powerful, bone-crushingly heavy-Krautrock-psych-folk-blues riff would emerge from the chaos.

These guys were fucking heavy. Imagine driving out into the Swedish countryside (in 1971) with the car windows open and off in the distance, but getting closer and closer, you hear this:
 

 
I’m sure that Julian Cope must be well aware of Träd, Gräs och Stenar, but if he’s not, he needs to get his hands on this stuff, stat. Lucky for the Arch Drude—and everyone who loves this kind of thing—April 8 will see the release of the 6 LP, 3 CD box set Djungelns Lag + Mors Mors + Kom Tillsammans from the wonderful people at Anthology Recordings. The release was put together with the participation of Jakob Sjöholm, the youngest member of the original band. The label liberated several hours of unreleased live recordings from the time from Jakob’s attic which comprises the third 2xLP in the box—and only available with the box—Kom Tillsammans (“Come Together”).

Träd, Gräs och Stenar is contemplative, cosmic, ferocious, joyful, bludgeoning and above all free. If you’re seeking a new form of sonic enlightenment, start here.
 

 
Anthology Recordings is graciously allowing DM to premiere this short video about the group, the core which was Bo Anders, Jakob Sjöholm, and the late Thomas Mera Gartz, and Torbjörn Abelli.

This film was made over a weekend in January of 2015, in Svartsjö (Black Lake), about half an hour’s drive east from the center of Stockholm, but may as well be hours as well as decades away. Jakob and his family has lived on this 18th century farm estate since the mid-1980s. Bo Anders came down from up north for the occasion. The film was shot and edited by Jakob’s son, Isak Sjöholm.

 

 
After the jump, some vintage footage of Träd, Gräs och Stenar…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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02.19.2016
11:10 am
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Groovy vintage Swedish paper dolls of celebrities like Björn from ABBA, the Monkees and Prince!
11.10.2015
10:07 am
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Prince Swedish paper doll (1989)
Prince Swedish paper doll (1989)
 
While I was in the process of my very important “research” for a post I did for Dangerous Minds last week on a vintage collection of Swedish bubblegum trading cards, I came across more curious Swedish pop-culture artifacts - paper dolls that were made in the late 60s and 70s of various movie stars and musicians. Groovy.
 
Steve Priest of The Sweet vintage Swesdish paper doll
Steve Priest of The Sweet vintage Swedish paper doll
 
The dolls originally appeared in various Swedish magazines. Personally, whoever is responsible for thinking it was a good idea to create a paper doll in the image of Prince (pictured above which is actually dated 1989) in his underwear ready to be dressed up in his finest purple paper suit, is a damn genius.

I’ve included a shit-ton of paper dolls of famous folks like Brigitte Bardot, Bianca Jagger (?) and lollypop enthusiast Telly Savalas (!) after the jump that you can print out yourself and dress up (if that’s how you get your kicks - I don’t judge and neither should you) at home or at work if you’re bored. You can also purchase some of the actual vintage cutouts (which don’t come cheap) on eBay or Etsy.
 
Björn Ulvaeus (ABBA) vintage Swedish paper doll
Björn Ulvaeus (ABBA) 1976
 
Kojak vintage Swedish paper doll
“Kojak” (played by actor Telly Savalas in the 1970s television cop show Kojak)
 
Michael Nesmith of The Monkees vintage Swedish paper doll
Michael Nesmith of The Monkees
 

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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11.10.2015
10:07 am
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Vintage bubblegum trading cards from Sweden featuring your favorite punk, rock and glam stars!
11.06.2015
09:11 am
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Swedish gum trading card of Mick Jagger, 1967
Swedish bubblegum trading card of Mick Jagger, 1967
 
Somewhere in a box in my attic I still have a collection of Topps trading cards that I used to collect (the 80s reboot of Creature Feature and the Charlie’s Angels packs were always my favorites). You’d chuck the nasty gum and go straight away to see if you got anything new, and kept your duplicates in a pile to trade. Those were good times.
 
Tina Turner vintage Swedish gum trading card, 1970s
Tina Turner
 
Slade Swedish vintage gum trading card, 1970s
Slade
 
As I’m often nostalgic for said good times, I was pretty excited when I came across these vintage bubblegum trading cards from, of all places, Sweden. What’s really cool about these cards is that they feature a few sweet images of musical idols from Sweden like Dutch glam-rockers Tears and of course, ABBA. If you’re into collecting these kinds of vintage artifacts (and I know many of you are), they are easily had via eBay. Tons of images follow.
 
ABBA Swedish vintage gum trading card, 1970s
ABBA
 
Vintage Swedish gum trading card of
Early 70s London glam rocker, Lady Teresa Anna Von Arletowicz (aka “Bobbie McGee” and “Gladys Glitter”)
 
Thin Lizzy vintage Swedish gum trading card, 1970s
Thin Lizzy
 
Many more after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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11.06.2015
09:11 am
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Swedish high school quashes students’ menstruation-themed yearbook pic
09.23.2015
12:17 pm
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The generation gap isn’t taking quite the forms it once did, or so it would seem. Today’s kerfuffle involves a group of teenage girls in Sweden who didn’t see any harm in posing for a whimsical menstruation-themed group picture for the school yearbook.

Their principal didn’t see it that way.

According to TheLocal.se, students at a high school in the Stockholm area said that they thought of dressing up in fake blood, tampons, hygiene pads, and chocolate as a “fun thing” to promote free and open communication about menstruation.

The photographer hired by the school refused to take the picture, and then the principal agreed with him, banning the theme from featuring in the yearbook at all. So….. yeah. Lesson learned on the whole open communication concept, right?

Ida Pettersson, a 17-year-old student who was involved in the photograph idea, has taken to Twitter to express her irritation, tell her side of the story, and seek allies in the world at large. On Monday she tweeted, “Har fått så jävla mycket hat pga detta skolfoto men ännu mera kärlek och kärleken vinner alltid! Kampen fortsätter!!! (Has got so damn much hatred because this school picture but even more love, and love always wins! The struggle continues !!!)” (All translations come 100% unadulterated from Google Translate.)
 

 
The photograph went viral in Sweden after feminist television personality Clara Henry, who has long fought to break the taboos surrounding menstruation, shared it on Twitter. Many people supported the teens in their idea, but a great many also criticized the fake blood as “disgusting.” “Unfortunately we have received a lot of hatred but much, much more love from people,” said Pettersson.

The school refused the picture on the grounds of its policy that all pictures in the yearbook should be “representative and easily accessible to any beholder.” After the picture went viral, the principal told the Aftonbladet tabloid: “I wholeheartedly support what they wanted to highlight. But we have a number of opportunities to raise this issue—the school catalogue is not the right forum.”

Pettersson said, “We really did not think it would become such a big thing, but it did and it is so cool that our story has been spread so much and that we have been able to take up the space we have. We have received so much positive feedback and we are so happy about that.”

In the photo below, the teenagers are dressed quite differently, and the sign in the picture reads, “We are not allowed to have periods.” The text of the tweet translates as “So we took a class photo anyway because many changed their minds and wanted to anyway but we are still our thing and fighting.”
 

 
via Death and Taxes
 

Posted by Martin Schneider
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09.23.2015
12:17 pm
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The Swedes have an unusual way of teaching kids about sex, don’t they?

snippsnap1111.jpg
 
Meet Snoppen and Snippan, they’re Internet sensations.

It’s easy to see why this charming little children’s animation from Sweden has become such a massive hit there. It’s obviously the bright colors, the rather catchy tune that will have you singing along in a minute or two…and the…er…jolly bouncy characters who look very..er..well, very happy with each other. It’s all very Swedish.

Apparently, this is one way that Swedes teach their children all about the facts of life—through the animated characters “Willie” (Snoppen) and his very close friend Snippan—which are apparently slang words for something or another. This gloriously surreal cartoon comes from the hit children’s TV show Bacillakuten, and that earworm of a song tells how Willie is “full of pace” and Snippan is “really cool, you better believe it, even on an old lady. It just sits there so elegantly.” Okay, the scansion may be a bit off, but I think we all get the idea.

YouTube originally made this an “adult only” video before reversing themselves on that. Still, if they tried something like this on Sesame Street, the responsible party would probably be imprisoned. Gotta love those free lovin’ Swedes!
 

 
Via Nyheter24.
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.13.2015
09:20 am
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‘The Magnetist’: Line cook by day, cassette tape archaeologist by night
08.02.2013
12:11 pm
Topics:
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Micke
 
There are those of us who love music for the emotional, the cerebral, and the intellectual passions that exist without any tangibility, and there are those of us who also fall in love with the pure physical medium. Vinyl collectors are the obvious example, but as International Cassette Store Day approaches, it may prove rewarding to shed a little light on the eccentric musical medium enthusiasts that opt for the other analog.

Cassette collector Micke describes himself as a “kock,” (don’t giggle, you nerds, it’s Swedish for “cook.”) The documentary below translates “kock” as “chef,” which, according to my (very) rudimentary Swedish, would actually be “köksmästare,” (I said quit giggling!) I make the distinction not out of pedantry, but because while “chef” insinuates head of the kitchen, cook insinuates a working stiff—though Swedish DMers are welcome to correct me if I’m wrong (That distinction, as minor as it may feel to some, matters to those of us who’ve made minimum wage in kitchens). If Micke is as I think he is, a line cook grunt as opposed to the head of a kitchen, he’s making low wages (yes, even in the socialized utopia of Sweden), but pursues his cassette hobby as an artistically fulfilling extra-curricular activity, as opposed to the errant pursuits of a middle-class hobbyist.

The mini-documentary below is a compelling look at Micke’s analog life.  In addition to his own expeditions for lesser-known cassettes, Micke lovingly crafts playlists for sparsely attended parties, releases his own magnetically modified cassettes (also available for digital download, of course), and blogs his findings for the wider cassette community. There’s a desperate moment after the documentarians “help” him pack up his gear for a party and unknowingly demagnetize a number of his cassettes. The audience is reminded of how fragile such physical mediums used to be, and I’m somewhat relieved people like Micke are out there curating the artifacts that folks like me are so flippantly careless about.

Forgive us Micke! We know not what we do!
 

Posted by Amber Frost
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08.02.2013
12:11 pm
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From Opera and the Avant-Garde to Pop: The Musical World of Mikael Karlsson

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There are those who are late developers. Paul Gauguin was in his mid-thirties before he quit his job as a stock-broker and gave up his middle class life to paint pictures; Augustus John was twenty-eight when one summer, he dived into the sea, hit his head and emerged from the waters a genius; Mikael Karlsson was twenty-one when he decided to quit his job at the liquor store and become a composer.

Mikael Karlsson: ‘It was very late, it wasn’t until twenty-one when I dropped out of Law School. I’d always been playing piano and drawing, but I didn’t have much to say.

‘Three years into Law School, I realized I really hated it. I wasn’t performing well. So, I dropped out of Law School and found a piano teacher. I didn’t tell my parents that I had dropped out. For a year, I worked in a liquor store to pay for piano lessons, and then I started to bang things out on the piano and record them.

‘Two years later, I realized finally that here was a medium with which I had something to say with. Before then, I had pretty much succumbed to the idea that I wasn’t going to do anything artistic. It wasn’t in the cards for me, even though I had an urge. But I didn’t feel the confidence to do it until I was twenty-one and I was grown-up.’

Mikael Karlsson was born in Sweden in 1975. When he started playing the piano in the mid-1990s, it was more than apparent he had an incredible affinity with music. But without any academic grounding in music, Mikael was unable to enter any of Sweden’s music schools. He, therefore, decided to move to New York

Mikael Karlsson: ‘I’ve lived in New York since January 8th, 2000. I moved here to study. In Sweden admission to music school is centralized and as I was very much outside of that system, I would have not been admitted because I had no background in music.

‘On the other hand here in New York, you kind of pay-your-way into it. So I went to the cheapest possible stage school that would allow me to enter. I went to Queen’s College. What I loved about it was that it was easy to get in, and you could get a lot out of it. I spent 5 years doing that, getting my Masters here.’

Karlsson earned a masters degree in composition from the Aaron Copland School of Music and graduated Summa Cum Laude with departmental honors in June of 2005.

Mikael Karlsson: ‘When I graduated, I realized that the musicians I kept collaborating with lived here. So, I needed to stay.’

Since graduating, Mikael has produced an incredible array of work: writing and releasing albums; contributing tracks to the films of Bruce LaBruce; composing music for the Cedars Lake Dance Company; collaborating with designer and film-maker Anna Österlund; scoring and producing for Black Sun productions; writing music for video games; working with Lydia Lunch;  and composing an opera.

Karlsson wears his success lightly. He delights more in other’s good fortune, rather than his own achievements. He makes his life seem like a series of happy accidents, rather than the product of his incredible talent and dedicated hard work, which make him so productive, so successful and such a brilliant composer.

If this weren’t enough, Mikael has the looks of pop star and a wicked sense of humor, which sparkled throughout our interview.

Paul Gallagher: How did you first start composing?

Mikael Karlsson: ‘My friend Niklas showed me how to sequence things on a computer, and I had been writing these little musical sketches, and now I was finally able to hear them.

‘I remember spending an evening programming pieces I had written but never heard performed on his computer, and when I played it back, it was one of the most gratifying experiences I have ever had. I was just sitting in my apartment on the floor listening to it over-and-over-and-over again.

‘Finally hearing that there was something there mattered to me. It was a very different feeling. I finally felt content pouring out of me, and it made me curious. It made me wonder what the hell I was saying?

‘I was just exploring where music can go, and in a non-experimental way at first, because I wanted to figure out what the language was. I didn’t know any music theory, but it was now possible for me to replicate something that I heard. So, like any artist at the start, I learnt through copying. Eventually I accumulated a palette of what music I seemed to prefer, and my own language started growing out of that.’

Paul Gallagher: What was your early music like?

Mikael Karlsson: ‘My early pieces were very romantic, and there’s something of that even now, and there’s also that Scandinavian darkness that doesn’t seem to want to leave.

‘None of my pieces are about me. It’s not like I’m expressing something that’s just about me, I’m watching where the music want to go, and that’s what keeps it fresh, that’s how I keep wanting to do more.

‘I’m interested in seeing where elements of Classical music can fit into Pop music, and where Experimental music can fit into more conventional classical music. Such combinations became more interesting as I went along and I became able to do things.

‘Because I was very insecure about what I had made, I hardly allowed anyone to listen to it. But when I did, they seemed to be affected by it, and that was a fantastic kick for someone who had spent twenty-years refusing to go there.’
 
Mikael Karlsson has made a special sampler of his music for Dangerous Minds readers, which you can download here or click on the image below.
 
image
 
Find out more about Mikael Karlsson here.
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

‘Danach’: A film by Anna Österlund featuring music by Mikael Karlsson and Black Sun Productions


More from Mikael Karlsson, after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.31.2012
11:26 am
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‘Danach’: A film by Anna Österlund featuring music by Mikael Karlsson and Black Sun Productions

image
 
Talented film-maker and designer Anna Österlund’s latest short Danach is a collaboration with composer Mikael Karlsson and queer post-industrial collective Black Sun Productions. Österlund previously worked with Karlsson on the haunting, beautiful and disturbing film Breathing, and this time she has used his composition, which is the last track “Danach” on the final album release by Black Sun Productions, Phantasmata Domestica.

Black Sun Productions is a collective centered around “artivists” Massimo and Pierce, who for the past decade have performed as sound and visual artists and political activists under the name Anarcocks. Black Sun Productions have worked with Coil (Plastic Spider Thing), Lydia Lunch and H. R. Geiger. Massimo and Pierce met on the set of an underground porn film, and their work includes explicit elements of ritualized sex magick, chaos magick and elements of fetishism and sado-masochism. Phantasmata Domestica is the last ever release from this talented and uncompromising duo.

Now based in New York, Swedish composer Mikael Karlsson, who wrote the track “Danach” for Phantasmata Domestica, holds a masters degree in composition from the Aaron Copland School of Music and graduated Summa Cum Laude with departmental honors in June of 2005. He is a multi-award-winning composer, recognized as one of the most exciting and original working today. Karlsson has worked with Lydia Lunch, Mariam Wallentin, Kleerup, Lykke Li, Benoit-Swan Pouffe, Alexander Ekman, amongst many others.

Anna Österlund told Dangerous Minds about her latest film collaboration and the music which inspired it.

‘The album name is Phantasmata Domestica which means something like house ghost and Black Sun Productions call it “an epic and emotional tale about sorrow and loss.” The last track “Danach” is about the next day, the ceremonies are long since gone - the pity with them. Waking up, being forced to move on with your life. What hereafter? What now?

‘I got to interpret these words and the music freely and came up with this video during last week. We filmed for just a few hours, in the same forest and only a few hundred meters away from where I made Breathing.

‘I made the heavy wool coat that she’s wearing and added my grandmother’s old mourning veil to the costume. The house I built on top of an old record player, so I could rotate it and the wind comes from my blowdryer. I had a lot of fun making the film, it’s quite tricky to go through with ideas when you don’t have a budget or a crew to help out, but sometimes that gives birth to new ideas.’

Danach stars newcomer Maja Mintchev, who Anna spotted for the role in a department store in Malmö, and the film was released just last month in Europe.

Danach is a film by Anna Österlund in collaboration with Black Sun Productions and Mikael Karlsson.

Phantasmata Domestica by Black Sun Productions, featuring Mikael Karlsson, Massimo & Pierce, Lydia Lunch, Othon, Cory Smythe, Fung Chern Hwei, Sirius Quartet and Michael Bates is available here.

More on Anna Österlund at Ravishing Mad and Mikael Karlsson.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

‘Clara’: A film about joy, love and struggle by Anna Österlund


‘Breathing’: A haunting and eerie short film by Mikael Karlsson, Anna Österlund and Truls Bråhammar


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.02.2012
07:53 am
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‘Adamson’: The original Homer Simpson from 1949?

image
 
Meet Adamson - a dead ringer for Homer Simpson, as published in Icelandic paper Fálkinn in July 1949.

Adamson was created by Swedish cartoonist Oscar Jacobsson, whose work was published successfully around the world. In America Adamson was known as Silent Sam, and had a considerable following. Was Adamson a possible influence on the look of Matt Groening’s Homer Simpson?
 
image
 
More pictures of Homer, d’oh, Adamson, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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10.19.2012
10:54 am
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‘Clara’: A film about joy, love and struggle by Anna Österlund

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After the success of Breathing, her haunting collaboration with composer Michael Karlsson, film-maker Anna Österlund has returned with her latest short, Clara - a beautiful and impressionistic film examining the conflicting pressures of motherhood.

‘I made the film after hearing designer and musician Jenny Grettve‘s music and seeing her collection which drew inspiration from the 19th century composer Clara Schumann.

‘Clara was a mother of 7 children, and yet, she was considered one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era.

‘In the eyes of society, being a performer and the main breadwinner for her family, Clara was in direct conflict with the expected role as a wife and mother. Some of the hardships she must have gone through in combining the two, I also see in my friend Jenny’s life. She’s had 3 kids within 3 years, while at the same time she started her own fashion brand.

‘I see the joy, the love and the struggle, the wish to drop everything, yet embracing it, and the fantastic creativity that comes out of being under such a pressure.

‘So I asked her to just act herself in her own collection and I put her in contrasting situations involving her, her kids, music and creativity, and let the camera roll.

‘I worked with symbols from classic paintings such as the apple symbolising temptaition, and other symbols showing struggle, hard work, restlesness and love. I’m leaving it up to the viewers to make their own interpretations, but everything is there for a reason.’

Prior to film-making, Anna set-up her own highly successful design company Ravishing Mad in 2007, which she described as a contrast of things she loves: ‘being outrageous and yet stunning, clean but not strict, dirty and oh so powerful.’

Anna was born and raised just outside Stockholm. She had a rather lonely childhood, and was often bullied by other kids. To escape Anna spent much of her time alone in her room drawing and sewing, while listening to music. It was the kind of existence that focussed her talents and ambitions.

Once Ravishing Mad was a success, Anna wanted to find new outlets for her cretaivity. ‘I bought a camera and got back into filming, photographing and writing, collaborating with musicians and dancers along with my work in fashion. Now I’m enjoying myself like I never thought possible and my biggest joy is the mix of doing everything.

Anna describes Clara as a mix of music video, fashion video and short film.  ‘Call it whatever you like, but it’s not very typical of the first two. What I’m interested in is awakening emotions and adding an expression that is different to what you see every day.

‘There is an indie feel to most of my work and I have a weakness for the unpolished. I grew up during the 80’s and 90’s and remember how I as a child and teen I recorded films on top of each other until they were completely worn out. I’m so in love with the faults and beauty in old VHS copies and it’s probably a way for me to romanticise the moments when I saw some of my favorite films for the first time. I think my past is quite visible in my work and I try to be honest and to create my own magic world that I can invite fantastic people into.’
 


 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

‘Breathing’: A haunting and eerie short film by Michael Karlsson, Anna Österlund and Truls Bråhammar


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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08.29.2012
07:42 pm
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‘Breathing’: A haunting and eerie short film by Mikael Karlsson, Anna Österlund and Truls Bråhammar

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Breathing is a beautiful and affecting short by Anna Österlund (Ravishing Mad) and Truls Bråhammar. The film is based on an original composition by multi-talented composer Mikael Karlsson, taken from his series of “Talk Pieces” called Traps.

The film shows two little girls seemingly at play in the forest, but as we linger with them we start noticing that they’re measuring time and behaving in irrational, robotic or animal ways. They’re on a very strict and hectic schedule somehow, and [our] watching them worries them.

An effective society sometimes forces people into apathetic behaviour in order to cope with everyday life and the sense of being trapped in a treadmill can be frightening. What do we do in situations when inexplicable routines traps us like animals, do we manically continue forward or do we protest?

”A creature in captivity is often driven to pointless, repetitive behaviour.”

Starring Ada Bråhammar and Olivia Holmgren, with Karlsson’s music is performed by the Sirius Quartet.
 

 
With thanks to Joanna Pickering
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.05.2012
11:14 am
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Guest editorial by ‘L’: one woman’s story of transphobic abuse in Russia and Sweden

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This is a guest editorial by “L”. It was brought to Dangerous Minds by Elizabeth Veldon, who writes this short introduction:

“There has been a lot of news coverage recently of homophobia in both Russia and Sweden, including the forced sterilization of gender variant people in Sweden. This piece is written by a friend of mine, a woman with a transsexual history, who has experience of life in both countries.

She is currently fighting extradition to Russia where she faces open discrimination and probably death. Myself and 36 other underground artists contributed to a release for her. If you want to hear the music I urge you to read her own words first.

This is her story, her voice.”

My name is L., and I am a woman with a transsexual past (male-to-female, MTF). I have had gender dysphoria since my early childhood, so I always had a lot of problems with socialization.

I have never seen my father because he left my family before my birth. I grew up with my mother and grandmother, who were extremely transphobic and authoritative and did not pay attention to my mental difficulties. I had to hide my real self from everyone from when I was 11 years old. It wasn’t until I was 21, in 2007, that I decided to stop hiding, and took my first attempt to bring my appearance in accordance with my self-perception.

This gave me other troubles, and I’ll only give one example: in October 2007, I was stopped on the street by a police officer, who took my IDs and took me to a police station. So-called “state authority representatives” made me strip nude and began to beat me and to urinate on me, laughing and shouting “fags must die!” When they put my head into the toilet bowl and cried out, “Drink Russian water you queer,” I lost consciousness. Eventually I woke up in an unfamiliar yard, my clothes torn and dirtied with urine and faeces. After this, I attempted to commit suicide. Thanks to my friends with the same problems, they helped me to find strength to withstand. But, I was hiding my real identity again for almost a year, and this was a real torture. I couldn’t stand it.

I learned that Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) in the Russian Federation would require a conformance letter from the Moscow Scientific Research Institute of Psychiatry, and in order to obtain one, a psychiatric examination was necessary. My friend in the transgender community told me about terrible violations of human rights in such clinics (unsanitary conditions, mobbing, rape, tortures, etc). Nevertheless, I could not live ‘as-is’ anymore, so I began Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) at my own risk. When my mother and grandmother discovered what I was doing, they threw out my female dress and hormones, but I continued with HRT secretly.

In September 2009, I met Anton, the man who totally understands me. Our relationship grew rapidly, but when my mother and grandmother found out they turned my life into hell. So, I left them for him, and we started living together.

Unfortunately, the problems connected with my transgender identity followed me through all my life in Russia. My boss – who was the head of the IT department of the local Federal Tax Inspection Office – told me (quote), “You have the choice – resign or face big problems. Fags are not welcome here.” I was forced to resign.

You can read the rest of L’s story after the jump…

The forced sterilzation of transgender persons and those with a transgendered past has now been abandoned by the Swedish authorities, but Russia still actively discriminates agains its LGBT community, as this video demonstrates:
 

 

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Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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03.15.2012
10:29 am
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Johnny Thunders: ‘Banned’ TV performance, Stockholm, 1982
10.20.2011
06:35 pm
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There’s an edge here you never see on TV anymore. Actually you couldn’t see this on television when it was first recorded - Johnny Thunders ‘banned’ performance from Swedish TV in 1982.  Even looking death-warmed-up,Thunders had that edge, an urgency that makes you sit up and take notice.
 

 
Bonus interview with Johnny Thunders plus performance, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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10.20.2011
06:35 pm
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