Working in contemporary composition seems the most difficult thing, that kind of music seems to have lost its public personality. In the '60s luminaries like John Cage brought a certain notoriety and sense of adventure to the venture but these days we, the audience, seem to have lost our desire for mind-expansion in that particular way. Orchestral music seems to be about sound, time, shapes of music, and repetitions and movement, all things we seem to have no space for in our busy little mediated lives. To change our ways will require a great force of will, and perhaps the radical Lachenmann (b. 1935) will offer us that opportunity. A student of Luigi Nono and briefly with Schoenberg, he's already been called "the greatest German composer since Stockhausen". Now an elder statesman, will this musician -- who's constantly involved in discovering new sounds and ways to make instruments resonate, and backed his own explorations with a lectures and writing -- elicit a grand performance from the young conductor Ilan Volkov? Here Lachenmann will be present, performing his own speaking part, and expect the performers to challenge our ears with their approach to the instruments.

NB: there will also be a world premiere by Iancu Dumitrescu and recent pieces by Luke Stoneham and Stefano Gervasoni. Entry is free, however reservations via 020.8576.1227 or radio.ticket.unit@bbc.co.uk are required.

Nighttime, a camera tracks up and down Erno Goldfinger's Trellick Tower, its lens penetrates individual window panes revealing solitary figures lost in sound waves. This is Radio Nights, a documentary film by David Blandy and Avenues Youth Project. Part of Artangel's Nights of London series of artist-led projects that explore the nocturnal metropolis, Radio Nights documents the aural ether. In keeping with Artangel's interest in artistic responses to place, Radio Nights explores the invisible communities created by radio. Local children and pensioners, underground DJs and mainstream broadcasters, workers and convicts are interviewed and observed. Their musical preferences and politics of listening converge towards a shared experience. Radio,in spite of its intangible nature, is capable of building tangible communities. Radio Nights documents the fervour for broadcast, licensed or pirate, premiering at a time when the structure of radio is being radically altered by digital and internet stations.

NB: Radio Nights will be live from 7 - 9pm on Sat 16/04 (Paddington Arts, 32 Woodfield Rd., W9) with MCs, DJs and freestyle singers from the Avenues Youth project. While on Artangel, make sure you check out Kultug Ataman's Kuba (runs till 07/05).

Radio 1 DJ and UK Bhangra pioneer Bobby Friction leads this night of debate and music in collaboration with English PEN and Xlantic. The idea is to raise awareness of the government's latest ploy to turn Britain into America by ripping the arse out of our right to free expression. Either that or it aims to provoke sensitive debate around notions of free expression. Grappling with the issue are broadcaster and novelist Candida Clark, prizewinning novelist Hari Kunzru and Palestinian activist Ghada Karmi. The panel looks fascinating, the issues they are raising deserve attention and the music from Friction and Nihal, DJ Badmarsch and Shri is well worth turning up for. In fact, it's tempting to see the gig as part of swelling social consciousness among young people, tired of bling values and conversations about trainers. There's a strong chance of consensus on this issue in Shoreditch but it would be really interesting to see Friction and PEN take their Molotov cocktail of Asian beats and radical politics to the Town Halls of Middle England.

This week, three Beck's Futures candidates are letting postmodern discourse flow with art about defining art. This is the first ever opportunity to view in its entirety 32-year-old Daria Martin's luscious trilogy of dreamy, lo-tech films that mock the wary relationships between dance, art and fashion (14/04). In a series of performative lectures Ryan Gander similarly explores how we define and divide art practices (18/04, 24/04 and 09/05). Like any absent-minded academic, Gander digresses but his anecdotes are hardly signs of early senility; instead the 29-year-old artist's intellectual meanderings illuminate connections between topics as diverse as emo-rock, the internet, conspiracy theories, family secrets and art history. Between classes, the ICA invites you (19/04) to recess in hell with 32-year-old subculture-surrealist Lali Chetwynd, who will be restaging the performance she orchestrated at the opening night fete for the Beck's Futures award. The orgiastic event involves wailing shamans, the ceremonial sacrifice of a spandex clad death-metal rocker, monsters, messiahs and a ballet of nude nymphs armed with massive paper-mache fruit who re-enact scenes from Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. Chetwynd and her team of performers joyfully cook up a steamy stew of high/low references, grotesque humour, grand theatrics and fancy-dress fun. As one enthralled viewer said -- it was as if "the Muppets and Danzig had collaborated on rewriting Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ. Now, that's POMO a-go-go!

NB: Daria Martin will be speaking on 14/04, Ryan Gander's performance lectures will be repeated three times (18/04, 24/04 and 09/05), and Lali Chetwynd performs on the 19/04.

Even if you've never seen any of Gregory Crewdson's pictures, you'll recognise these eerie collisions of the suburban and the sublime. Though his images are often unnerving, a woman in a garage kneeling at a towering sculpture of flowers or two naked bodies slumped on an uncut lawn, the effect is often weirdly transporting and you can see his influence in US indie films like Donnie Darko. It takes a lot of work to create these "still, perfect worlds" however. Crewdson descends on quiet suburban neighbourhoods with an entire film crew and occasionally a couple of A-list actresses in tow, and the photographer himself admits that, "at certain times, there's this sense that there's this magical event occurring. In other times, I know I am just a nuisance." New York documentary maker Ben Shapiro has filmed the chaos. After the screening Crewdson and White Cube Director Tim Marlow will discuss the work.

NB: this event is programmed by Artprojx and White Cube in conjunction with Gregory Crewdson's White Cube exhibition (pv 14/04).

For those of you that missed the London premiere of Jem Cohen's Chain back in February here is another chance to see it along with some of Cohen's other films. This week the ICA presents Chain, a sprawling representation of corporate culture's homogenisation of space. Centred around the lives of two very different women, one a business woman researching the theme park industry (Miho Nikaido), the other an illegal shopping mall worker (Mira Billotte), Chain scrutinises contemporary superlandscapes. The regionally distinct is replaced by the indistinct and anonymous, revealing a world that defies traditional locative understanding. In keeping with the ICA's taste for mini-seasons, Cohen's Blood Orange Sky and Lost Book Found will also be screened (Sat 16/04 at 5pm, Sun 17/04 at 5:15pm and Mon 18/04 at 5pm). The former a portrait of Catania, Sicily takes pride in capturing the idiosyncratic and the universal. The latter meditates obsessively on the unconsidered side of city life.

NB: Chain is screened from 15/04 till 21/04, his Music Videos from 15/04 till 18/04 and his City Stories from 16/04 till 18/04.

One of modern photography's godfathers famously said, "colour photography is vulgar", so a conversation with arguably the colour photographer with the smartest pedigree might lift the lid on the process, as well as give an unheard voice to a visual guide of a generation of angry young men and their obsession with the road. Nominated for the Deutsche Boerse Photography Prize for his recently revised publication Uncommon Places (Thames & Hudson), an unabridged account of Stephen Shore's personal travels in America over two years (beginning in 1972). With just the grainy honesty of a 35mm camera and 30 years of maturity and experience, Shore's images cannot help but cast an impressive shadow over the prize's younger nominees. Now in his late-50s, Shore is perhaps the angry sedated but a chance to hear the man that literally captured the energy of the Warhol Factory members at work and memorialised the everyday suburban vistas of '70s America that have come to be our collective visual memory shouldn't be missed.

NB: the Deutsche Boerse Photography Prize exhibition runs till 05/06.

This weekend was to have seen the return to the London stage of original soul and rare groove legend, Leroy Hutson. Unfortunately, for reasons unexplained, Leroy cancelled but the Jazz Cafe has characteristically pulled out all the stops to ensure the weekend remains packed with quality. Like Hutson, Italian maestro Marco di Marco dates back to the early days of rare groove, although his musical emphasis has always been on the jazzier side of things. Di Marco?s career on the piano/keyboards has always maintained a consistent creativity, and through the decades he has played, associated and been involved with a bewildering array of contrasting talent: from the rotund master Pavarotti, to modern Italian jazz don Nicola Conte, and most recently, Nathan Haines, with whom an acclaimed jazz album has just been completed. As luck would have it, both perform together on this occasion. Haines hails from New Zealand and has clearly established himself as a leading international saxophonist especially in areas of dance fusion, his music constantly illustrating his versatility, innovative style and unequivocal talent. To top things off the cafe will mutate into a club after 11pm, and Marc Mac will take to the ones and twos. 4hero's supremo can always be relied upon to produce and play cutting edge sounds of the most sumptuous variety.

The cult of the mobile phone looks here to stay despite mutterings of health scares, the majority of which have been dismissed by the science community. On the other side, the arts have not really quite known what to do with this brave new world of wireless technology from GPS to the CrackBerry. Libido-baiting boy pop rockers Rooster performed the first mobile broadcast gig at the ICA a few months back and it's a familiar sight to see a filmmaker editing online wherever a satellite beam can be picked up. SPACE however seeks to address how this technology can be both facility and subject to artists. With workshops and panel discussions ranging from films for phones to the opportunity for public sharing of knowledge, numerous tech-embracing artists and activists represent a new map of London: one made up whizzing wireless connections.

Eva Rothschild has described her interest as lodged between the materialism of spirituality and a certain "un-systems of belief", that is the physical embodiment of "spirit" -- the hands of the Madonna being an obvious example -- has become raw material for her creations. Add to this a Modernist sculptural language, and you have an interesting triangle of relations. Here there are sculptures and her trademark lattice weaves. While her "unsystems" provide a low-key anchor to the show via the titles, the willowy sculptures with shades of Cadere manhandled by Picasso and Gonzalez, all painted black, red and green, are full of eccentric whim. Coming across all spidery, eccentric anthropomorphised, they are less concerned with the formal language of their Modernist roots, and more with the possibility of signification. It is with the imagery of her lattice tondos that the human form reappears. Piety here though is devoted to her craft, rather than "spirit" but perhaps in this post-postmodern age craft will do just fine.

NB: runs till 16/04.

Legendary DJ and king of the re-edit Danny Krivit plays a date in Plan B this week -- quite a coup for the venue keen to wear its credibility in attracting artists on its sleeve. Krivit has, over the course of his career, carved out a reputation as a DJ capable of elevating the relatively simple act of putting one record on after another into an art form -- his ability to work a crowd is legendary, so expect hordes of clubbers keen to experience the real deal in this comfortable Brixton bar. He's just completed one of his famous edits on what must, in an ideal world, be the tune of the summer -- soulful R'n'B banger "One Thing" by Amerie -- so you'll get a chance to hear it played, replayed and tinkered with over the course of the set. Be sure of the fact that no matter what's played, though, a good time will be had by all -- Plan B, with its upmarket crowd of dance music aficionados, is the ideal place to experience a to-die-for set from one of the scene's true legends.

Lee Miller was a remarkable woman. A beautiful fashion icon and photographer, she was striking in front of and behind the camera. Conde Nast himself invited Miller to model for American Vogue. After a glittering career, she went to Paris in 1929 to become the assistant and lover of Surrealist Man Ray. Among her friends and subjects of her photos, she counted filmmaker Jean Cocteau, Dadaist Max Ernst, artist Pablo Picasso and muse Dora Maar, Surrealist couple Paul and Nusch Eluard and art collector Roland Penrose (later her husband). Miller worked for leading fashion designers Schiaparelli and Chanel, yet soon after the outbreak of the WWII she became a gutsy war correspondent for British Vogue, charting women's efforts on the home front, the Allied advance and the liberation of Paris. The National Portrait Gallery's exhibition reveals the full story behind Miller's iconic portraits of the 20th century, while Curzon Soho presents two special events to celebrate the Surrealist environment that so inspired her. Through the Lense of Surrealist Women charts the rise of the earliest Surrealist female filmmaker Germaine Dulac, whose feminine interpretation of Antonin Artaud's The Seashell and the Clergyman sparked controversy amid Surrealist circles, known for their masculine ideology, in both its provocative Freudian references and spiritual attack on the Church. Also featuring is Maya Deren's experimental film Meshes of the Afternoon, a classic that inspired a whole generation of US filmmakers. Together with Miller, these Surrealist feminists defined new roles for modern women.

NB: catch the Curzon Soho's Lee Miller And The Surrealists' programme on Fri 15/04 (6pm) and the An Afternoon With Lee Miller's Friends' programme on Sun 17/04 (12pm).

As a self standing communal collective, the Slow Sound System aims at exploring "ambient listening, new electronica and pixel manipulation". DJs iMax and Albert launch their springtime SSS season. For this session the menu will include two Aussies now based in London. John Chantler has an approach to the guitar as subtle as that of his other peers -- such as Oren Ambarchi or Dean Roberts. Having released his first album Monoke on the Room40 in 2002, he recently self-released Locked in Hands on a limited CDR. One of his live performances was highlighted at the 2004 edition of the London Placard, during which his 20 minutes were summarised as "melody on hammered strings" by Wire's Clive Bell. Chantler will be joined on the bill by Matt Nicholson, a third of the Aussie outfit Function who played last year in London as part as the Staubgold showcase. On his first London solo appearance, Matt will be showing off an hour set of new sound pieces and collages of field recordings taken from his various journeys. If you don't come, you won't be counted... come and lie down to the new sounds of down under.

How do you fight the power? How far do you have to go to keep it real? Can you cope with free love? Two friends have answered the first question in their own way: they break into the houses of the rich and, stealing nothing, re-arrange the furniture, staking bits into absurd columns or moving the stereo into the fridge -- a sort of crimeless burglary -- always leaving a note "your days of plenty are numbered -- the Edukators". The other questions, however, are raised after one friend becomes involved with the other's girlfriend and ends up taking her on a job. The job goes disastrously wrong and childish vandalism turns into kidnap. Completely unprepared for this escalation of events the friends take their victim to a relative's house in the country and are thrown into a situation which, though idyllic in many ways, provokes some serious soul-searching. They say that if you are under 30 and not liberal then you have no heart and if you are over 30 and still liberal then you have no brain -- Hans Weingartner's film attempts an explanation.

NB: The Edukators is released in London on 15/04.

Five years ago CIA documents were de-classified to publish the name and work of the "anonymous hero" of WWII, Fritz Kolbe. Driven by a hatred of the Nazi Party, Kolbe became wartime's most important double agent, refusing payment for passing over 2,500 documents to Allied intelligence from inside the Nazi regime where he worked as a diplomatic courier. Kolbe's efforts weren't recognised until 2000 (he died in 1971 branded a traitor by post-war German governments) and Lucas Delattre is the only journalist with access to the CIA archives describing his movements, which include passing information on Japanese plans in SE Asia, V-1 bomb and V-2 rocket programmes and German knowledge of the D-Day landings. It is quite a story, particularly poignant with the release of Downfall and questions about passivity, wilful ignorance and obedience to Hitler's regime. Fritz Kolbe's actions stand out bold and clear cut against these grey areas -- he played a real and practical part in ending Nazism.

NB: questions of responsibility are debated at the Everyman Cinema on Sun 17/04 following a screening of Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary. The confessions of Traudl Junge after a 60-year silence provided hitherto unheard verbal footage of Hitler. Experts on Jewish history will discuss whether acknowledging the "human face" and appeal of Hitler makes compliance with Nazism easier to understand.

There are two "facts" about techno that are routinely trotted out as immutable truth: 1. Girls aren't keen and 2. It's a faceless genre, unsuited to live performance. While the first is clearly erroneous bs, only a fool would argue that watching the Hartnoll brothers in a pair of funny specs makes for a compelling "ahem" spectacle. Ladies and gentlemen, for anyone who's ever stared at a bald man operating a PowerBook, we give you Jamie Lidell... Performing eponymously, Liddell has perfected the funk alchemy his Super_Collider collaboration with Cristian Vogel promised. Live this translates as the man -- in a jacket made from video tape, natch -- vocalising in a wild stream of whoops, lupine howls and not-embarrassing beatboxing like some demented funk glossolalia. Sampling, processing and mixing his voice on the fly, he comes up with a sound that references the P-Funk of Parliament and Sly and The Family Stone, but is utterly contemporary. You can watch his extraordinary performance from last year's Ether festival here (be patient... it takes a long time to load). Or, for those of you who can't tear yourselves from the bad old ways, get the forthcoming album Multiply (Warp) and listen while smiling like a grateful moron at your washing machine.

Reacquaint yourselves with the bleep, the beats, the rock and everything in between this weekend courtesy of Eat Your Own Ears. The first of double-headliners is Caribou aka Dan Snaith. Formerly Manitoba, Snaith was forced to change his nom de guerre due to the litigous attention of Handsome "Dick" Manitoba of NY punk outfit The Dictators. (How unfair to get nailed when Oasis has thus far escaped the attention of Status Quo's legal department.) Caribou's The Milk Of Human Kindness proves the change is only nominal, bearing all the immediacy, roaming influences and psychedelic uproar that marked out Snaith's previous work as remarkable. Sharing top billing is Lex Records' Boom Bip, whose recent Blue Eyed In The Red Room is a similarly diverse accomplishment. The highlight promises to be "Do's And Don'ts" -- a mystic morality tale featuring incanted, vaguely Arabic-sounding vocals from the Super Furry Animals' Gruff Rhys. Rhys will be double-handing the ones and twos with the seemingly ubiquitous Four Tet, whose forthcoming Everything's Ecstatic will stake a persuasive claim on your attention this summer.

The La Linea festival at the Royal Festival Hall gives us a chance to experience some of the cutting edge talent of Latin American music; and Juana Molina's appearance is sure to be one of the highlights. Renowned in her native Argentina as an on-screen comedienne, Molina shall exhibit her musical prowess at this event. Her music flows as undulating acoustic guitar and captivating vocal, with only subtly applied moody dabs of colour from synthesiser and percussion. The quality of the song-writing is comparable with the likes of Beth Orton and Ani Difranco, whilst other crossover comparisons have been drawn with the ambience and depth of Aphex Twin and the Gotan Project. Her awards in the categorical colossus that is "world music" should give many folk the stimulus to put their feelers out and discover how Molina has firmly implanted herself next to other greats on the music map... This show promises to be both relaxing and enriching.

NB: the La Linea festival runs till 28/04.

Subverting the power that advertising holds over us today, the CutUp crew do as their name suggests and turn posters and billboards into beautiful mosaics of startlingly different imagery. Showing at the Kemistry Gallery are bus-stop posters by brand behemoths including Kellogg's, Calvin Klein, Bacardi and Benetton, all elegantly rearranged by the artists and displayed on lightboxes. Alongside these is a film that demonstrates just how laborious the process is, as CutUp takes on one of the massive billboards in nearby Shoreditch. One of their public works has already been covered up with the next round of consumer sales but keep an eye out for more: alongside the smaller works at the gallery, four full-size billboard images are planned for the area during the run of this show.

NB: runs till 30/04.

Autechre -- aka Sean Booth and Rob Brown -- first came to the public's attention in 1993, with the release of their album Incunabula on the then-fledgling Warp label. A gloriously melodic mix of washing synthesisers and taut, intricate drumbeats, it set the standard for many subsequent releases, spawning the genre "intelligent dance music" and inspiring a slew of imitators. Subsequent releases such as Amber and Tri Repetae cemented their reputation as pioneers of electronic music, and all the while they have been consistently thoughtful and experimental in their line of work, releasing several EPs and a MiniDisc album designed to exploit the format to its fullest potential. April 2005 sees the release of their eighth album, Untilted, and a series of live dates. We caught up with Sean Booth to discuss music, performance and the disciplines such as architecture that have informed their complex sound structures.

To read the interview click here.

In Temporary Discomfort, both exhibition and catalogue, Jules Spinatsch reminds us of something we frequently forget: that there are higher powers constantly at work. This is no reference to either religion or physics; instead the book documents the quiet activities taking place during various World Economic Forums and G8 Summits. Bodyguards, venues, security hoardings and road blocks are all documented, rather than the more spectacular journalistic images from the protests or even frolicking diplomats. In one exhibition a live-feed via surveillance technologies from the point of view of the authorities provided panoramic views... landscapes of power? The Swiss commercial photographer and artist has documented nature as well as various aspects of his country's day-to-day life. However the technical innovation from his stills, turned into panoramas, is both document and formal innovation, and for the more Foucaultian-minded also a meditation on the security state that currently surrounds us. Unlike the beauty of his commercial work, with Temporary Discomfort the BMW-Paris Photo Prize winner is offering us something altogether more complex, albeit from an oblique angle. Martin Jaeggi has contributed an essay ruminating over Spinatsch's contribution to documentary photography and more generally over images of power.

To buy Temporary Discomfort online click here or buy it through Walther Koenig Books at the Serpentine Gallery (020.7706.4907).

KultureFlash is a free, weekly newsletter covering contemporary culture in and around London. Each week we track down some of the more unusual and interesting events taking place in the Capital and deliver them straight to your inbox. Featuring art, gigs, films, talks, clubs and more -- we are committed to bringing you an eclectic mix of the most stimulating events in London.

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