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Estonian choral punk song festival: Either the most unpunk OR punkest thing on the planet
08.28.2015
02:04 pm
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Last weekend in Rakvere, Estonia, thousands gathered for the third “Punk Song Festival.”

The festival, which was also held in 2008 and 2011, features popular Estonian punk songs performed by choirs.

This year’s program featured all Estonian punk songs arranged for choir and orchestra as well as the Sex Pistols “Anarchy in the UK.”

According to the Estonian Ministry of Culture’s website:

The Punk Song Festival is a symbiosis of the traditional Estonian song festival with lot of choral singers and punk rock. The idea came from Üllar Saaremäe, the artistic director of Rakvere theater in the Summer of 2007 and next year, June 7, 2008 the Punk Song Festival in Rakvere became a reality. Then the punk anthem “Anarchy in the U.K” was the only non-Estonian punk song in the repertoire.

Looking a bit like a cartoonish Quincy and CHiPs punks-comprised rendition of “We are the World,” the choir belts out an ESL, orchestrally arranged version of the Pistols’ timeless anthem.

Not much in-between here, this is either the most unpunk or the punkest thing ever:
 

 
More choral punk after the jump…

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Posted by Christopher Bickel
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08.28.2015
02:04 pm
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Family Guy: Marko Mäetamm, one of the best multimedia artists you’ve probably never heard of

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Marko Mäetamm is a multimedia artist, who works within the mediums of video, photography, drawing, painting and the Internet. Over the past 2 decades, Marko has established himself as an original and provocative artist, and his work has been exhibited across Europe.

Born in South Estonia, Mäetamm ‘grew up without any artistic influences,’ and did not consider becoming an artist until he was 18.

‘The first time I thought doing something creative was through this friend, who was a great fan of Prog Rock and Heavy Metal,’ Marko explains. ‘And the first time I felt I really wanted to do something visual or artistic was when I was looking at the these Heavy Metal and Prog Rock album sleeves at his place.

‘This was at the beginning of the 1980s, when Estonia was part of Soviet Union and you couldn’t legally buy any Western music in stores. It was all smuggled in somehow, so you had to know people who knew people who knew other people to get access to original albums of any kind of Western music. It was more common to share tape-recorded copies of the albums rather than to have the original vinyl.

‘So, my first “serious drawings” were copies of all of these album covers and bands.’

Marko jokes that these were ‘terribly bad drawings,’ but it was still enough to inspire his interest, and after 2 compulsory years in the Soviet Army, he studied study printmaking at the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn.

‘It was still the end of Soviet regime, so we didn’t get much information of what was happening in the world of contemporary art. My first influences were all these great modern artists we had to study—Rousseau, Matisse, Chagall, Picasso and so on. That was until I discovered Pop Art, at the end of my studies, and got really into it.

‘This was all happening around the same time the new wave of Young British Artists jumped on the stage, but then nobody was talking about it in Estonia. So it shows you how huge a gap there was between the art here in Estonia, and international art. It took the whole 90-s to cover this gap.’

Dangerous Minds: How would you describe yourself as an artist and how would you describe your art?

Marko Mäetamm: ‘It is always difficult to describe yourself. It is kind of a tricky thing. We never see ourselves the way like the other people do, even when we look in the mirror we actually see our image in a mirror – the eye that we think is our right eye is actually our left eye for other people and so on. And our voice we hear coming from inside us is totally different from the voice other people hear us talking with.

‘But to try to say something - I think I am quite obsessed by my work and I probably need it to keep myself in balance. I say, “I think” because I do think that it might be like that, I don’t really know. And I think that I may not function as good if I didn’t have that channel – art, to communicate with the world. I have come to recognize this by thinking of my own projects during my career. And how my ideas change. People have asked me if I have a therapeutic relationship with my work, and I have always answered that it is absolutely possible. But I really don’t know and I don’t even know if I would need to know it. I don’t know if that would make my work better.’
 
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More art and answers from Marko, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.13.2013
06:54 pm
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‘Hello, is there anybody in there?’
02.02.2011
02:21 pm
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Just watch.

(via Cynical-C)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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02.02.2011
02:21 pm
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The Simpsons in Estonia
01.05.2010
10:05 pm
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The Simpsons opening, re-imagined as taking place in Estonia by Estonia TV3.
 
Via Pandora Young/Fishbowl LA

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.05.2010
10:05 pm
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