How many curators does it take to change a light bulb? Well, this might be a crucial question with the work of the American artist Dan Flavin, who for more than three decades pursued the artistic possibilities of fluorescent light. A strategic aspect of contemporary art -- taking an everyday object and transforming it through placement -- fed Flavin's work, as he used lights of varying lengths and colours and arranged them to create sculptural fields of light, breaking down and defining the spaces around them. Much of his work was site specific, so given the chance, travel to Marfa, Texas to experience his work alongside eminent minimalist Donald Judd in a 24,000-square-foot gallery space. Strapped for travel cash? Then check out this comprehensive show of his work, including drawings, sketches and early constructions, a rare chance to immerse yourself in the astonishing beauty of banal hardware, the utilitarian converted to the profound. (Runs till 02/04.)

NB: on Thu 19/01 (6:45pm) at Bloomberg SPACE catch David Batchelor, Spencer Finch, Erwin Redl and Sacha Craddock discuss Dan Flavin's legacy (admission is free but booking is essential via gallery@bloomberg.net). On Sat 21/01 (3pm) at the Hayward Gallery catch Leo Villareal as he explores developments in illumination technologies, and how Flavin's minimalist forms have inspired a generation of younger artists (admission is free with exhibition ticket for the day).

Giveaway: we have five pairs of tickets to give away. They'll go to five randomly picked Flashers who can tell us the name of the London gallery which recently showed works by Dan Flavin.

Husband and wife team Agnes Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri have been writing scripts and acting together for 15 years, working with great directors such as Alain Resnais. More recently Jaoui has also taken to directing, including the exceptional Comme une image (Look at Me), which won the Best Screenplay award at Cannes in 2004. The film follows a group of Paris-based writers, musicians and their agents as they became tangled in each other's lives. Ingeniously, Jaoui and Bacri play characters who are totally opposed and different to one another, making their real-life partnership all the more intriguing. Also showing in the retrospective is Le gout des autres (The Taste Of Others), Jaoui's Oscar-nominated directing debut. Other highlights include Resnais' On connait la chanson (Same Old Song) and Un air de famille (Family Resemblances) by Cedric Klapisch. (Runs from 18/01 to 26/01).

NB: on Fri 20/01 (7:45pm) Agnes Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri will be a taking part in a cinema masterclass on scriptwriting, as well as joining a round-table discussion "Writing Dialogue for Films" on Sat 21/01 (4pm), with Les Triplettes de Belleville animator Sylvain Chomet. Also on Sat 21/01 (6pm) catch Chomet as he gives an intro to a script reading of The Illusionist (Jacques Tati). These events are part of the Cine Lumiere's Scenario3! programme dedicated to French and British scriptwriting (runs from 19/01 to 21/01).

Before the Jamie Hewletts, the Spirited Aways and the birth of the mighty G5s, animation was, well, just more damn difficult! More a labour of love, than a career route that allows you an XBox in your reception, the opportunity to dress like a 14-year-old boy till way into your 40s and the pleasure of being able to smoke at your desk. Yuri Norstein, on the other hand, came from Communist Russia, had to pass everything by scary censors and worked with materials like glass -- yes -- glass. His work is beautiful, crafted and really quite genius, putting some of those media hoodies in studios across west London to shame! Tale of Tales (renamed after a poem by Nazim Hikmet after censors scrapped the original title) is his masterpiece -- in 1984 this semi-autobiopic story set in a Moscow neighbourhood was proclaimed the best animated film of all time. A must-see followed by a must-listen with a talk from ("Dame" no less) AS Byatt and Channel 4's Commissioning Editor of Animation Clare Kitson whose book on Norstein was recently published.

The multicultural and multidimensional world that open-minded architect Nigel Coates brought to life in his Ecstacity book and film projects was, as the author himself explained, fundamentally global: a city made up of all cities in the world, unfolding in a breathtaking juxtaposure of space and time similar to Italo Calvino's made-up cityscapes. Ecstacity is a travel guide to a "half-real and half-imaginary" metropolis, a place built on "the increasingly global outlook of existing cities" and conceived as a giant 4D collage surface, in which the Chrysler Building lies a few blocks away from St Paul's and Vauxhall is a single stop away from Ipanema on the "Ecstametro". When not busy making films and writing books about fantasy cities, Coates not only runs his own office (with long-time collaborator Doug Branson) but also works as professor within the School of Architecture + Design at the Royal College of Art. Who could be better suited than Coates, then, to get the debate going as the RCA invites Dutch architects Adriaan Geuze (West 8) and Rients Dijkstra (Maxwan) to discuss architectural responses to globalisation? List of buzz words to drop in the Q&A: glocality, inclusivity, e-lasticity, city branding, pixel playgrounds, micro-design, blandscapes, post-industrial void.

January is typically a static month for live music fans. Gigs are sparse whilst most musicians prefer to sit back and wait for the music industry to arise from its bloated and complacent post-Xmas slumber. In such smug and lazy times it's reassuring that indie collective Artrocker -- the paper, label, website and clubnight promoters -- are bringing a host of great bands at minimal cost for their annual festival. Leeds based !Forward Russia! had a very busy 2005, bringing their beautifully frenetic and impeccably fractured indie rock all over the country and gaining clusters of new fans wherever they played. They play alongside the edgy post-pop Ladyfuzz on Thu 19/01 (perhaps the pick of all the nights), who along with The Young Knives (headlining on Fri 20/01) are on new and exciting label Transgressive. It would be impossible to detail all the talent on display over the five nights; it's more relevant to highlight the positive benefits associated with such an event. The music will be fresh and exciting and more than anything, it should be a testament to the drive and enthusiasm of independent collectives, who provide when most needed.

NB: the festival runs till 20/01.

An enjoyable messing-with-the-medium film-of-the-making-of-a-film of a book-of-the-writing-of-a-book (if you see what we mean), Michael Winterbottom's latest film with Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon and the cream of British comedy is a tremendously good-humoured movie indulging the audience in a comic take on the making of a movie and the in-jokes so familiar to those who saw, and enjoyed, 24 Hour Party People. Coogan plays the roles of Coogan, Shandy and Shandy's father -- experiencing problems with all three -- while Brydon's two roles (himself and Shandy's Uncle Toby) are only hampered by his inability to resist pricking Coogan's vanity and his hopeless feelings towards Gillian Anderson. Don't go expecting to see the kind of film which renders reading the book unnecessary -- go to see Brydon and Coogan continuously bickering over their abilities, status and size of their parts, go for the whole of the Gillian Anderson storyline and go for the Al Pacino impressions.

NB: A Cock And Bull Story is released in London on 20/01. On Thu 19/01 (8:30pm) at Cine Lumiere catch Andrew Eaton (the film's producer) give a Q&A after a preview screening. If you cannot make that Q&A catch Eaton and other surprise guests on Fri 20/01 (6:40pm) at the Curzon Soho.

Here's something you don't see too often. A classical accordion duo playing contemporary works. Inaki Alberdi, professor of accordion at Barcelona Conservatory, and Inigo Aizpiolea, a well established duo, bring us a selection of work, framed with versions of Stockhausen's "easy listening" Tierkreis and a movement of Stravinsky's ballet Petrouchka. The concert also features work by the modern Spanish composers Luis de Pablo, Joan Guinjoan and Diego Dall'Osto. This should be an education in what can be done with the accordion and what's going on at the sharp end of classical music in Spain. We're not sure what to expect from this concert but it should certainly be different.

Once again, Britain's premier chamber music venue hosts a series of top level performances in the form of a short song series. The programme is entirely comprised of 20th century British composers with a lot of work by Benjamin Britten, one of the most famous British composers of this era. From earlier times we have work by war poet/composer Ivor Gurney and more modern work by Michael Tippett and Thomas Ades, famous for possibly the first "bl*wjob aria" in opera. Delivered by the well respected soprano Patricia Rozario and joined by Paul Turner on piano.

It takes something special to entice the public out in January, a major reason that most club promoters can be found topping up their tans on a beach this month. Fabric, though, is relentless, an unstoppable techno juggernaut that has no breaks and no sense of when to take its foot off the pedal. This Saturday sees the first truly desirable night of the year as disco-house legend Francois K makes the trip across the pond to add a touch of New York glamour to proceedings. Tipping the balance of the evening from hot to scorching, however, is the presence in room two of the incredible Clone Records, one of the finest labels around today pushing the italo-disco-acid-electro agenda, with label boss Serge on the decks joined by the mouth watering likes of Legowelt, Duplex and Unit 4. Fabric has once again come up with a line-up to tempt even the most jaded, post-Christmas clubber.

Gela Babluani's Tzameti (13) is an arresting and harrowing meditation on the ephemeral nature of luck, set in a sinister underworld of high-stakes gambling. Immigrant workman Sebastien (George Babluani) overhears his morphine-addicted employer Godon talking about a forthcoming opportunity to earn a fortune over a single day. When Godon accidentally overdoses, Sebastian impulsively steals a letter containing instructions, a train ticket and a paid hotel reservation, and sets off to take Godon's place, not realising that he is about to become the 13th player in a deadly game of chance. The terrifying concept at the heart of this film blends Hitchcockian suspense with arthouse realism as Babluani's Kafkaesque hero finds himself unable to escape the ordeal. Stark black and white cinematography beautifully crystallizes this loss of innocence, and the revelation of the exact nature of the game creates an almost unbearable tension where the manipulation of simple probability proves far more horrifying than any Hollywood monster. Tzameti treads similar ground to 2001's Intacto but Babluani (son of the veteran Georgian film-maker Temur Babluani) has created a bravura piece of filmmaking that should keep audiences riveted and make any director considering making a suspense film sit up and take note.

NB: Tzameti (13) screens at the Curzon Soho till 26/01. From 18/01 till 19/01 at 12pm, 4:10pm and 8:45pm and from 20/01 till 26/01 at 4:30pm.

The British architectural establishment has always preferred its modernism to be like its architects: reserved, polite and understated (and even, dare we say it, white). Art in architecture has its place -- a rectangle of neatly defined colour on one wall, but never too much to scare the corporate horses. So the old guard of high modernism is having a hard time with David Adjaye, particularly because, like Will Alsop before him, he's now winning major public commissions. Adjaye, they feel, is too cool for his own good. An avowed self-publicist, he's fronted a TV show (the greatest single cause of jealousy in architecture) and hangs with the East End art set rather than his architectural peers, often building houses for them -- Chris Ofili and the Chapmans rank among his clients. And where better than the Whitechapel Gallery for a show of 10 of Adjaye's major public projects -- just down the road from his new Ideas Store (a sparkling contemporary take on the public library); he'll be joined for this launch event by observer of eclectronica Kodwo Eshun.

NB: Making Public Buildings runs till 26/03. On Sun 29/01 (2:30pm) catch David Adjaye as he chats with urban theorist Richard Sennett.

It is rare that you find an artist who seems so comfortable working in a wide variety of mediums, let alone one who seems to excel in them too. Yet here is Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone doing just that. His work confounds attempts to sum up or generalise by having any particular theme or strain running through it: in previous works clowns have appeared, sometimes as sculptures, sometimes Rondinone himself was the clown; in others the whole gallery space became a walk-in installation; in others he just displayed sketches of Swiss landscapes on a blank white wall. This all comes as a breath of fresh air when so many other artists seem to be typecasting themselves. On Tuesday poet and former Rondinone clown, John Giorno, will respond to the Whitechapel exhibition of Rondinone's work. One of the foremost Beat generation poets, Giorno was behind a project to record and distribute contemporary poetry through electronic means. Being one of the Andy Warhol clique the work included that of many of the leading lights of the time. With this lineage of cool, this is an event not to be missed.

NB: Ugo Rondinone's Whitechapel exhibition zero built a nest in my navel runs till 26/03. Sadies Coles HQ is showing a concurrent show of his work from 26/01 till 11/03.

Rick Moody, the man not afraid to give every noun a harem of adjectives and every verb its equal share of adverbs -- he is the Nigella Lawson of American literary fiction -- holds forth this week at the London Review bookshop, where he will speak about Hollywood, the latest subject to which he has turned his baroque pen. A few years ago Moody was at the epicentre of a minor literary scandal involving the irascible Dale Peck, and his latest novel, The Diviners (Faber), appears to many as a belated stroke of triumph. He's surely fielding offers from studios, and we'd bet a lot on its appearing on a big screen soon, following his best known novel, The Ice Storm, the heady novel set in America's most affluent county -- Fairfield County, in southwestern Connecticut -- and made into a film by Ang Lee.

Whilst modern art has placed increasing cognitive and physical demands on its audiences, technology has enabled contemporary media to develop its own versions of interactivity. All art is, to some degree, interactive, since it requires the viewer's participation to make meaning. In an era of connectivity and ubiquitous technology, individualism and personalisation, where whole communities exist in every corner of the internet, it's natural for artists to speculate on where the rapid convergence of media technologies is headed. Blast Theory, an artists' group using interactive media to explore the relationship between real and virtual spaces, recognises that technology externalises mental processes. They create art that positions people within their work, forcing them to participate and think about what they are doing. Interactivity is a broad and problematic concept that naturally poses lots of questions. The panel tackling these big issues includes Matt Adams, founder Blast Theory; Ross Cooper, multidisciplinary designer; Lauren Parker, curator of contemporary programmes at the V&A; and Stefan Roveda, interactive designer.

Following a series of shows involving a performer (different every night) who would agree to carry out any instruction given to him/her, Rotozaza return to "rehearsed" performance with Five In The Morning, directed by Ant Hampton and featuring Greg McLaren, Silvia Mercuriali and Melanie Wilson dressed in swimsuits listening to instructions from a pool tannoy. Teeth-grinding, hilarious and addictive, their predicament will hold you rapt -- and then the switch: as though a button marked "deep sleep" is pressed, you will be released into a thick, dreamlike world which will seem, at first, totally unconnected... Five In The Morning sees Rotozaza taking us further than ever before into the vivid possibilities of a live event. This "scratch" performance at BAC is a chance to get a preview of the show that will run for three weeks at the Hackney Empire from 23/02.

NB: runs on Tue 24/01 and Wed 25/01.

This may be your last chance to catch the intervention-based exhibition of a collection of international artists currently based in Brussels. Daniel McClean has curated an exhibition of work motivated by popular media and consumer culture. What is unusual about the work in this show is the subtlety of the artists' responses to the social stimuli they choose to represent. Pierre Bismuth invokes questions surrounding our methods of observation and the ways in which we receive information, intervening in the presentation of news media by manipulating the relationship between image and text. Gabriel Kuri addresses the role of the artisan as relative to an instant-gratification system of consumerism, and his recreation of a throwaway by-product of consumer culture is an art object that takes on all of the meaning and character of an historic cultural relic. Temporal measures of art as passage are combined with performative elements in Michel Francois' work entitled The Waiting List. Open-Ended provides an understated and introspective analysis of consumer culture and its impact on identity, craftsmanship and public interactions of any kind. A refreshing alternative to the all-out assault on consumer culture that is par for the course in the contemporary art scene, Open-Ended provides a critical commentary without the preaching to the choir.

NB: runs till 28/01.

With the new year comes the London International Mime Festival. This ambitious annual festival brings bubbly and refreshing performance to those of us who have indulged ourselves a bit too much in the autumn. The festival features a mix of dance, mime, visual theatre, acrobatics and puppetry. French companies are traditionally very well represented in the festival's programme; however don't think Mime Marceau with white gloves, but instead get ready for some seriously challenging entertainment. For example check out Compagnie Adrien M's UK premiere with Convergence (Thu 19/01 till Sun 22/01), a spectacular mix of actual and virtual juggling, movement, light and sound, incorporating cutting-edge computer technology. Developed from an award winning French Young Circus Talents project and with original music played by cellist/composer Veronika Soboljevski, the show will create its own unique and intriguing universe. Or why not try the highly excitingly tilted show by Pierre Rigal/Compagnie Derniere Minute: Erection (Mon 23/01 till Wed 25/01). Inspired by Darwinist theory and science fiction, Rigal tracks the evolution of man from primitive life to Homo erectus. Directed by Aurelien Bory of Compagnie 111 (who opened the festival this year), it features stunning sound, lighting and video projection, and a dynamic performance from Rigal, a former international athlete and dancer with the Gilles Jobin Company. The festival is fun and full of surprises, and with tickets under £15 it's a bargain.

NB Mime Fest 2006 runs till 29/01.

With 105 companies and each night a triple bill, Resolution! is the biggest platform for new choreographers in the UK. From hip-hop to salsa and martial arts to contemporary dance and everything in between, you are guaranteed to get what you like and discover exciting new stuff. Resolution! is raw and tender and gives many choreographers their first footing. You, too, be brave; come and see today's young and fresh talent. Some will certainly become tomorrow's rising stars! KultureFlash favourites include: Martin Robinson (18/01), Ajose-Cutting Dance Company (20/01), Ockham's Razor (01/02), Steven Whinnery (14/02), Bottlefed Tanztheater and Twitch (15/02) and Ektos Dance Theatre + Jagged Antics as the festival's finale (18/02).

This unmissable season screens Jean Renoir's complete filmography, from the early silent films, to the classics of the '30s, including La Grande illusion, Le crime de Monsieur Lange and La Regle du jeu, and the later, more experimental work, including the poetic masterpiece The River. The groundbreaking naturalism, intense narration of overlooked aspects of humanity, and complete lack of drama or artifice (including formal "refinements" of technique) within his films have led many to consider Renoir as the precursor to the French New Wave and Italian neorealism of the '60s. He presents us with astute examinations of moral codes of conduct within and between various social strata framed by the dramatically changing political climate in the post-WWI era, masterfully combining satire, comedy, tragedy and irony in an intimate and sensual manner. This is irony without bitterness that expresses the deep, if tragically concealed, morality of man. As the heir to both the tradition of the naturalistic novel (Renoir made adaptations of works by Zola, Flaubert and Maupassant among others), and the tradition of its contemporary, Impressionist painting (whose principles, as the son of August Renoir, he would have been well familiar with), Renoir created for himself the position of the first great master of photographic realism.

NB: this retrospective runs till 02/03.

Apparently The Wrong Gallery aspires to be a misfit to the clean art mastodon Tate. In that case it was spot on to pick Dorothy Iannone's piece from 1975 in a re-make made fit the dimensions of the glass door. Tabloids and art press alike have commented on the acclaimed "orgasm box" by now 72-year-old Iannone who filmed her face while pleasing herself and shows the looping in a box with psychedelic pattern and a nude couple. Iannone is the first to exhibit in Tate Modern's TWG which is but a space of approx one square metre behind a locked glass door. Little things can surely draw a lot of attention. Does it deserve the attention? The "orgasm box" was originally made at a point in time where everybody talked of free love and as such the piece supports this thinking. There is not much more to it than that. But it will be interesting to see future exhibitions at TWG that until September last year was situated in New York, on West 20th Street, next to the Andrew Kreps Gallery. It is this very door that has been installed at Tate Modern to host six annual exhibitions. TWG, which was initiated by Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni (Fondazione Nicola Trussardi) and Ali Subotnick, has also been made into a limited art edition promoted with the phrase "now everyone can be a dealer" -- private collectors can then install the 1:6 replica in their home. Cattelan and co. will also organize the Berlin Biennial this March.

NB: The Wrong Gallery will be at Tate Modern for approximately three years (till 21/12/09).

While You Are Free made Cat Power accessible to a wider public, this one's for her die-hard constituency, the ones who put up with her wildly inconsistent live shows knowing that when she's "on", Chan Marshall can pull endless complexity and depth from the simplest melody as she keeps delving into it. No Cat Power album has captured this progressive deepening until now, but on The Greatest, each song feels like a further unfolding of a single musical kernel. Clearly, this notoriously skittish Cat has found an ideal setting in the stellar Memphis ensemble she's convoked for an album full of echoes of Southern Black churches and Tin Pan Alley, doo wop, Woodie Guthrie, and the blues, an album whose super-risky title earns out to the penny. Musicians on the order of guitarist Mabon "Teenie" Hodges (from Al Green's classic band) and drummer Steve Potts (of Booker T and the MGs) uncoil a sinuous musical filigree around Marshall's more rough-hewn piano and guitar playing to weave an atmosphere of melancholy magic behind her unsettlingly restrained yet deeply soulful voicing of bleak, yearning meditations. Some may find them monotonous but these 40 hypnotic minutes will leave the faithful feeling bereft when they finally end.

To buy The Greatest online click here.

There are movements during this micro-tonal extravaganza that are so wholesome that we badly want to damage some sound systems playing this out. The genius here is that Ryoji Ikeda has taken this genre of music away from academia and nudged it ever-so-slightly towards the dancefloor. The first ten or so pieces sound like typical Raster-Noton fare, as if Carsten Nicolai himself was present in the room whilst Ikeda was made to adhere to house rules. But it's during "Microhelix" that some form or rhythmic voodoo takes over and the ear-clipping glitch makes way for bandwidth-consuming sub-bass, granular glides and, wait for it, melody. The levels dropping to out-of-ear frequencies on "Vertex" are startling enough, but when singular bleeps morph into playful tones on "Flex", it's an even bigger jolt. "Matrix" is the album's climax as all the data dives head-first into a digital freefall. If you've ever glided across the Arctic, watched the glaciers melt and wished you had an accompanying soundtrack... your wait is now over. Breathtaking.

To buy Dataplex online click here.

Live, work, pray, play and stay are the five pillars of architecture according to Jonathan Lee, whose book 50 Great Adventures: Extraordinary Places and the People who Built Them was launched recently in London. Based on this principle and international in its outlook, the book takes us on an amazing journey to truly astonishing architectural creations, with brief but succinct information on the making of each of them, quotations from the people behind them and even up-to-date, detailed directions should we want to go and check them out ourselves. More than just an excellent guide, 50 Great Adventures is a source of inspiration and can even serve as point of departure for further research.

To buy 50 Great Adventures 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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