Indie music has been getting a bad rep. In theory, though, indie music is supposed to be the good stuff -- music that hasn't been streamlined into a series of hits by a mainstream record label. But mainly, it's supposed to be fun, and a little (or a lot) different than what you would hear on the radio. Bands that haven't been picked up by the big crowds yet, so you can still hear them in small venues, dance to their music even, should you feel so inclined. Moshi Moshi music has a consistent selection of unusual bands that maintain the dirty, gritty indie sound to some degree while also taking a more intricate, experimental and, yes, fun approach to making and performing music. Moshi Moshi's showcase night at the Old Blue Last features the maniacally happy (and tap dancing) Tilly And The Wall, who are currently kicking off their debut tour, and Liverpool's harmonic Hot Club De Paris. Both bands have tracks on the new compilation album Can You Hear Me Clearly that is due out later this month.

NB: Tilly And The Wall also play at The Windmill (16/02), The Wolfgang Bopp (17/02), the Buffalo Bar (19/02), The Dublin Castle (21/02) and the Barfly (02/03).

The NFT's tribute to the maverick Czech director Pavel Juracek reaches new heights this week when it takes on recreating the interactive film Kinoautomat in which the audience decides the plot. Screening for the first time in 30 years, the NFT has given film artist Chris Hales the chance to update the experience, which is based around a character called Mr Novak (played by Miroslav Hornicek), who finds himself caught up in situations that present moral dilemmas. Audience members will be able to alter the trajectory of the film at key points by voting on what they want to happen next. In the original late '60s screenings, audiences had the added bonus of the lead actor Hornicek acting out the role of moderator, adding to the interactivity of the experience.

NB: The Cinema Of Pavel Juracek season runs at the NFT until 25/02. Highlights include the brilliantly funny and innovative The Jester's Tale (24/02) and an adaptation of Milan Kundera's No Laughing Matter (22/02). Also featured is a film version of Juracek's popular diaries called The Key To Determining Dwarfs, Or The Last Voyage Of Lemuel Gulliver (15/02) which includes a Q&A with Juracek's son Marek who stars in the film. Though none of Juracek's films are available to buy in the UK, a DVD version of Kinoautomat authored by Chris Hales is planned for release later this year.

From the perceptual manipulations of Michael Haneke's Cache to the documentary Searching For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus (out on DVD), which mythologises the world of alt-country singer Jim White's Louisiana, embalming facts in a strange and highly cinematic story-telling aesthetic, a recent trend for films which play with our notions of reality has unwittingly emerged. This week, Irish photographer Perry Ogden makes his directorial debut with Pavee Lackeen (Traveller Girl), an accomplished and intimate portrayal of a traveller family living on a road side in Dublin's industrial outskirts. Shot on video, with long scenes of improvisation, Ogden's film -- directly influenced by filmmaker Alan Clarke -- follows the Maughan family, focusing on 10-year-old Winnie, and her difficulties of assimilating into "settled" life. A bleak, unsentimental slice of life outside mainstream culture, where bureaucracy and a lack of education keep Winnie's family living in extreme poverty, the film is all the more telling when you realise that Ogden's cast is mostly made up of two families of non-actors, all real travellers, and the boundaries between the reality of their lives and the loose, fictional narrative that the film offers are almost non-existent.

NB: Pavee Lackeen is released in London on 17/02. Another film of note released on the same day is Good Night, And Good Luck.

Boston-based multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter Chris Brokaw's CV reads like a history of American underground rock: Codeine, Come, The New Year, Pullman (with members of Tortoise), Consonant (with members of Mission Of Burma), Evan Dando. According to his website he has even played with legendary punk nihilist GG Allin. Despite this history, his solo stuff has acquired its own majestic attraction, mixing twinkling jazzy instrumentals somewhere between flamenco guitar and the ever-name-checked John Fahey and more straight, wry, singer songwriting. We personally recommend his 2003 album Wandering As Water as a good place to start. It's a struggle to give "the hard sell" on such a gig: those who have heard him know he's brilliant, those who haven't don't know what they are missing. It's rare that he comes over to England and the intimate live environment is the ideal place to be converted.

Filmmaker, writer, artist, activist, stage designer, scriptwriter, gardener...there seemed to be no end to Derek Jarman's talents. Although he once said, when asked how he would like to be remembered, that he would just like "to disappear", his genius has made that impossible. In honour of a late 20th-century renaissance man, the ICA is presenting a film celebration in remembrance of his death on 19/02/94. Best known as a filmmaker, he left a legacy of visual work that includes art films, shorts, features and music videos -- all of them experimental, poetic, exciting; many political and provocative.

This selective season presents some of his more well-known early films, including his landmark (and at the time, notorious) debut Sebastiane (17/02, 22/02 and 02/03), a visual feast of arresting images and Latin dialogue; and Jubilee (18/02, 23/02 and 03/03), crowned "Britain's first official punk movie" for its brilliant way of capturing the spirit of the late '70s; as well as later films like The Last Of England (19/02 and 24/02), which detailed the breakdown of society in the Thatcherite '80s; The Garden (26/02 and 01/03), a lyrical and dreamlike reflection on his windswept Dungeness garden; and his most commercially successful -- and utterly ravishing -- Caravaggio (19/02, 22/02 and 28/02), the film that marked the beginning of his long close working relationship with Tilda Swinton. Those already familiar with Jarman's work should not miss the two Super8 programmes -- work never before screened in London -- chosen from an archive of 62 films and introduced by his producer and longterm collaborator James Mackay. Two documentaries on Jarman -- Life As Art and There We Are John (17/02 and 25/02) -- and a collection of his music videos including his work for Patti Smith, Pet Shop Boys and The Smiths complete this retrospective saluting an enduring visionary of independent British film.

NB: this season runs till 02/03.

After terrifying the genteel hordes at the ICA, the ever-restless Adaadat crew hijack the street-level surroundings of the Corsica Studios in deepest Elephant and Castle for an all-out 8-bit audio assault. The reasonable tax of £6 gives you access to the likes of Pisstank (worth it for that name alone), the shape-shifting sounds of Ommm and broken console-music from Romvelope. But the true spectacle is the unbridled genius of DJ Scotch Egg. Mere words on a screen cannot do this man justice and his recent KFC Core album proves that recorded output cannot capture this man's ethos. Just hurtle towards south London until everything turns into pixels -- you'll know you're close.

Saturday sees the closing of Resolution! 2006. Over the past six weeks, 104 emerging contemporary dance companies have performed new work at The Place's Robin Howard Dance Theatre. The three shows in the finale sound especially promising, with choreographers who have worked with some of the world's most influential dance companies. Firstly, there's Lilith Lab's Phos, from Bessie Award-winning Swiss choreographer Celina Chaulvin, a former dancer with Sadler's Wells' regulars Ballet Preljocaj and Martha Graham. Then Ektos Dance Theatre presents Gnosis, from choreographer Lia Prentaki, who is originally Greek and trained at London Contemporary Dance School. The cast includes Raquel Meseguer of Lost Dog, whose Pave Up Paradise is to be performed by Phoenix Dance Theatre at Sadler's Wells in March. And finally, Jagged Antics in Soul Saga by former Random Dance apprentice Frederick Opoku-Addaie. He began his training in workshops at East London Dance and The Place, then LCDS where he worked with Lea Anderson and Jonzi D.

Mathew Jonson had a pretty decent 2005. His numerous records for the likes of Richie Hawtin's Minus as well for his own Wagon Repair label might have been unfairly labelled as "minimal", when in fact his music is anything but; loaded as it is with melody, intricate beats and unafraid of taking it to a larger canvas. Tracks like the incredible "Marionette" has a widescreen vista to it which makes it unique and memorable. His translation to the live stage is equally as intriguing, employing an unhurried approach resulting in one long track that mutates and contorts. It'll prove an unmissable event in Room 1. Joining Jonson is the erstwhile Steve Bug aka Stefan Bruegesch. He's been around a bit and is possibly one of the busiest men in the business. Having founded the Dessous, Raw Elements and Poker Flat labels, he's released more music than you've had hot dinners. And he's dead handy on the decks. Elsewhere, British techno hero Mark Broom has recently found a new outlet on Ellen Allien's BPitch Control label. But then, his music has always belonged to the Germanic new school: angular, sharp and loaded with hidden beauty. Expect him to drop waxes of melodic techno that you'll have never heard before, but has always been around.

Bugged Out!, the night synonymous with eclecticism and hedonism, returns to take care of the capital's hangovers and sore feet with another stellar line-up. Electro-house pin-up, sometime chart-bothering popstar, wearer of smart linen and all-round handsome devil Tiga will be plugging his new album. Those of you who've frequented Trash and similar nights will know that his sets are something else, incorporating the kind of analogue-heavy house and funk he's famous for and the kind of showmanship normally far removed from the po-faced, elderly electro house scene. He's joined behind the decks by Erol Alkan, founder of Trash and a stellar DJ who, if we're to believe the hype, was selecting records before he could even read. Alkan's brand of heavy, tuneful tech-influenced house -- dotted liberally with surprises and stone cold party classics -- should keep the massed feet stomping until the early hours of the morning. Don't let the slightly rarefied air of fashion which surrounds the scene put you off at all -- this should be an evening for all and is shaping up to be unmissable.

Somehow -- alongside his acting gigs, running a production company with Soderbergh, directing five episodes of a reality TV show and even acting as cameraman for an HBO series -- George Clooney's managed to co-write and star in Good Night, And Good Luck, his 2nd feature film as director. The envy's made worse when you learn it received four Golden Globe nominations and six Oscar nominations. But while Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind offered a biopic of a maverick TV talkshow host (Chuck Barris), GN&GL depicts the seminal moment in TV history when an anchorman brought down Senator Joe McCarthy. David Strathairn lights the screen with his portrayal of the principled veteran CBS reporter Edward R Murrow. Clooney plays producer Fred Friendly with whom Murrow aired the risque broadcast that brought a chain of confrontations with McCarthy, and eventually their mutual destruction. Murrow's eloquent original words thread through the rich textured dialogue of newsroom conversation. Endless wafts of smoke and strains of jazz from Diane Reeves punctuate the stylish black and white claustrophobia as the reporting team battle with their nerves, bosses and national leaders. Brutal but adoring close-ups and subtle racking focus oscillate with abundant archival TV footage. Not just fascinating, beautiful and wonderfully judged, it's important and unmissable.

NB: Good Night, And Good Luck is released in London on 17/02. Another film of note released on the same day is Pavee Lackeen.

They cite their influences as Smog, Low, Mogwai and Sigur Ros; they've been compared to Belle and Sebastian, Tindersticks, Arcade Fire and late-Velvet Underground; have recently supported British Sea Power and The Dears; and been signed to Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde's label Bella Union. This should start to give you a sense of what My Latest Novel are about. Melancholy folk-edged melodies are inventively twisted with soaring post-rock epicness, and a glistening helping of xylophones and percussion, giving the Glasgow band many a reason to celebrate the release of their new single "The Reputation Of Ross Francis" at one of London's newest live music gems. Released in advance of their hotly-anticipated debut album, Wolves, in March, the band are supported by the playful, ramshackle and wonderful New York anti-folk storyteller and comic book fanatic Jeffrey Lewis and his brother Jack, whose autobiographical tales of the Lower East Side are currently touring the UK.

It's some small mark of brilliance that saw balletLORENT's la nuit intime put on at British Dance Edition recently, a festival where pained hatred of regulated seating could be fully realised over three days of largely auditorium-bound performances. Then housed in smoky jazz haunt The Wardrobe in Leeds, and now at the Spitz, Liv Lorent choreographs her collection of performers (albeit loosely, at times) in a socialised cabaret environment so that space is negotiable. Reminiscent of burlesque and tapping into the new variety scene, sexual narratives are (re)examined through social performances (tango, roller-skating) and theatrical forms, in a textural space where dances spring up suddenly -- behind you at the bar, for example. Long time collaborator Paul Shriek has created the costumes: crinolines and a great bell of a dress which deposits two naked males in a post-coital arrangement. Ben Ponton's sound concept sees the DJ play on as the public are invited into the performance space and the event turns into a fully-fledged disco.

The notion of discourse has long replaced bricks and mortar as the intrinsic site of meaning in the architectural discipline. The Royal College of Art's series lays testament to the chronological movements of British architecture from the '60s, tearing open the internal consciousness of the medium. This week features the young practice Newbetter; a collaboration between four forces in the field of cultural production, Shumon Basar, Joshua Bolchover, Tom Coombs and Parag Sharma. An impressive scope of expertise lies at the heart of the movement, from curation to editorial, with a healthy array of big names (Zaha Hadid and Diller + Scofidio, naming a few) being thrown into the mix. NewBetter's backbone and integrity at this cultural juncture seems to lie in the sum of its dissonant parts. Here is a collective that relishes in the frayed edges and messy overlaps of today's cultural modal, offering a position in which meaning is generated from the perpetual state of distraction that we inhabit.

NB: this event is free but booking is essential.

As part of a somewhat earnest campaign to Get London Reading, the South Bank Centre is hosting intellectual (and probably profane) banter between three of contemporary literature's most verbose reprobates. DBC Pierre came clean about his dirty past when his Texan vernacular Vernon God Little won him the Man Booker Prize. Real-life tales of swindlings, shootings and sordid addictions quickly made his story more famous than the book. SPIN writer Chuck Klosterman's Killing Yourself To Live tours America's most famous rock 'n roll death sites in a brilliant treatise on life and death, fame and music. British born Michael Smith created a modern Beat classic (in an Essex setting?) with the self-illustrated The Giro Playboy, which he advertised himself through pamphlets in pizza boxes. It's a fucken eccentric trio -- the three most unlikely and unpredictable voices in modern writing.

Giveaway: we have one book from each writer to give away courtesy of Faber and Faber. They'll go to one randomly picked Flasher who can tell us DBC Pierre's real name and in what country was he was born in.

Artists and art galleries are constantly defending their right to criticise the role of government and to keep any state-sponsored do-gooders at bay. Indeed, the think tank Policy Exchange has just published a new book of essays by leading cultural thinkers, Culture Vultures: Is UK Arts Policy Damaging The Arts?, warning Britain's arts practitioners not to be seduced by New Labour's "cash-for-art-as-social-regeneration" scheme. Yet, the Serpentine Gallery has invited Tony Benn, the longest-serving Labour MP in the party's history, to be the main apologist for its brilliant Elmgreen & Dradgset exhibition, the title of which is the very New Labour The Welfare Show. Having retired from Parliament in 2001, however, might Benn actually agree with Elmgreen & Dragset's pessimistic view of the ineffectual, bureaucratic nightmare that is welfare provision today? Or might he, as a good old-fashioned socialist, prefer to offer listeners a utopian vision of a future fair and benevolent welfare state? With his frankness, warm manner and incisive wit, Benn's lecture is sure to entertain and inspire in equal measure. Just remember to treat Benn as an exception; be careful of stray politicians lurking in a gallery near you!

NB: The Welfare Show runs at the Serpentine Gallery till 26/02.

Giveaway: we have five pairs of tickets to give away. They'll go to five randomly picked Flashers who can name the museum that commissioned the Elmgreen & Dragset sparrow.

With an upcoming appearance in this year's Tate Triennial and a recent nomination for Beck's Futures 2006, it looks to be an exciting year for London-based artist Pablo Bronstein. First up, though, is his debut UK solo show at Herald St. Bronstein's art explores the architectural styles of the '80s and of 18th-century Enlightenment, mixing the two in drawings and sculptures to create strange hybrids of buildings and eras in history. He uses all the varying styles of architectural drawing, from the rapidly drawn sketch to the more grandiose diagram, and mixes crumbling ruins with the geometric designs popular in the '80s, all to playful effect. Rather than using the walls of the gallery, the drawings here are presented on a series of boards, mimicking the temporary nature of the Herald St gallery itself, while the other sculptural works are also embedded in the architecture of the space.

NB: runs till 05/03.

Yoshitomo Nara's very particular brand of "anti-cute" -- saucer-eyed, egg-headed children brandishing knives and demonic smiles -- and painterly critique of kawaii-culture are well known. His latest exhibition at Stephen Friedman articulates the lesser-known Romantic vision that informs his production. The exhibition opens into a makeshift labyrinth in prefab, plywood and tin. Grafted to the corner of the gallery, and peering awkwardly through a copious window into the street, Nara's My Drawing Room installation -- a recreation of the artist's studio in Japan -- acts as the conceptual engine-room for the exhibition. Littered with sketches, drawing materials and trashy ephemera, the inaccessible room conjures a picture of the artist-genius furiously beavering away. Nara's canvasses and drawings all seem to breathe this Romantic spirit. Each painting is thickly layered, their abstract backgrounds the product of tens of coloured, pearlescent, washes applied over and over. Beneath each central image lie hundreds of sketched forms which mostly go unnoticed by the naked eye. According to Nara, his final vision emerges "automatically", unassisted by his own intentions. An automated "truth" is presented which elevates his menacing toddlers to almost iconic status and each figure has the posture of "a vision" not dissipated by paint.

NB: Yoshitomo Nara's "Gesamtkunstwerk" and its cast of childlike devils, disgruntled Xmas trees and fibreglass dogs runs till 11/03.

There are few animals besides humans that indulge in what we often refer to as a "killing spree". It would seem that human beings derive a particular thrill from violence, and have been known to let the violent act carry them away into a sort of gleeful delirious frenzy, spilling innards and splitting skulls, emulsifying their opponents and the scenery that surrounds. The Vikings referred to those who excelled at this sort of mass-destruction as "Berserkers", but warned that the rage of these warriors, once unleashed, would not discern friend from foe, and would often cost the warrior his own life in battle. It is in this spirit of war and discord that Diann Bauer has recklessly assimilated styles and themes, gratuitously mixing human material with ornament, architecture and technology to achieve a sublime state of disarray. Culturally, Bauer's work focuses specifically on the Japanese warrior, her vast paintings often depicting scenes of spectacular violence and surreal beauty. A mix of manga, traditional Japanese imagery, Baroque and Surrealist painting, bludgeonerator maps the transition from one state of matter and humanity to the next.

NB: runs till 12/03.

Hot on the heels of Tropicana, Shunt are back in the cavernous vaults of London Bridge with Amato Saltone. This evolving production takes inspiration from the pulp fiction of Cornell Woolrich. Upon entering, you are given a key and name card on which you find out your identity for the evening. You drop your key into a bowl and enter a penthouse swingers party. A heavily pregnant lounge singer reclines on the piano, uniformed girls offer trays of olives and pass notes. A butler distributes tubs of Vaseline. There is a power cut and you witness a murder. We were separated from our friends and sent to a grubby kitchen. We were left to our own devices until a nervous man entered and propositioned us. His stony-faced wife then appeared to announce a terrible accident and we were ushered out the back to cinema seats to watch the next group re-enact our scene. You spend the performance in a state of disoriented and self-consciously excited confusion. There is no one narrative just a collage of perspectives. After a powerful start Amato becomes a sequence of atmospheric tableaux that peter out, but this is still sociable worlds apart from West End theatre.

NB: Amato Saltone runs till 26/03.

The V&A has developed a particular penchant over recent years for fashion love-ins -- exhibitions that showcase work by some of the most flamboyant and brilliant names in the business (Vivienne Westwood, Gianni Versace, Ossie Clark...) accompanied by commentaries and contributions by equally weighty insider luminaries. Flavour-of-the-month is Jean-Charles de Castelbajac with his iconic designs -- the inflatable poncho, teddy bear "fur coat", Campbell's soup dress and Keith Haring jumpsuits. You might wonder who could ever wear such outlandish ensembles but round the corner and up the stairs (in another exhibition) is your answer. Anna Piaggi has a wardrobe (a selection of which is on display) that is a creative maelstrom of jaw dropping intensity. creative consultant of Vogue Italia since 1988, it was in one of her famous monthly double page spreads (doppie pagine) that she coined the word fashion-ology (moda-logia), for which she is the poster girl. Doyenne of all things vintage, updating past classics has become her metier and whilst the results are completely off the wall, they all retain a militant sense of style that the creme of the crop (Karl Lagerfeld, Manolo Blahnik et al) have queued up here to praise.

NB: Popoganda: The Fashion and Style of JC de Castelbajac runs till 01/05 and Anna Piaggi: Fashio-ology runs till 23/04.

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