It goes without saying that the increased popularity of all things culinary -- "gastrobation", perhaps -- has its roots in the changing tastes of commissioning editors, the viewing and reading audiences and the enthusiasm of the supermarkets and gastropubs to introduce their salivating market to the delights of new and unusual flavours. While we're not sure that replacing pop music and innuendo with cooking as a Saturday morning hangover cure is entirely well-advised, people are at least thinking a little more about what they eat, even if they end up throwing money at manufacturers with scant idea of what they're going to do with their juniper berries, Gressingham duck or green peppercorns once they get them home. The Dana Centre presents a buffet / talk to explore how certain tastes affect others, meld together well and affect the body in certain ways. Pre-booking is essential (some of the food sounds quite nice, too) and this should be a fun way to explore not only what you can do with those unloved ingredients knocking around your food cupboard but also provide enough interesting factual and anecdotal evidence to lubricate the dinner-time conversation when you serve the results to your friends.

NB: to attend this event you need to pre-book by calling 020.7942.4040 or by sending an email to tickets@danacentre.org.uk. For those of you out there interested in the benefits of drugs and their positive and negatives sides catch the Drug Users And Abusers talk the following night (14/09 at 7pm).

Ground Zero should, apparently, have been called the Hypocenter, since this is the proper expression for describing the impact point of a bomb that explodes above ground. Post-9/11 rescue workers referred to the collapsed World Trade Center buildings as "The Pile". But Ground Zero sounds better to a nation in desperate need of reassurance, remembrance, and, perhaps, revenge. Today, it is a much more recognised term than when it was first coined, at the Trinity Site where the first-ever nuclear weapon (later dropped on Nagasaki) was at point "zero". Google gives you over 50,000,000 hits for the two words. Now, here's the point: if even the name of the site is charged with that much meaning and repressed history, how complicated will things get when three renowned architects -- Richard Rogers and David Adjaye, plus Spencer de Grey from Foster and Partners -- discuss "the impact of cultural diversity on inner city regeneration" and "the cultural imperatives for architects when developing commercial and community spaces" at Ground Zero and elsewhere? Almost as complicated as trying to follow the power game between Daniel Libeskind and David Childs about rebuilding the space, is our guess. Get a good night's sleep before this one.

NB: admission is free but booking is essential, please call 0207.490.8830 for full details.

The Big Issue is celebrating its 15th birthday this month amongst various celebrations including a re-designed magazine, a short 90-second film (by Paddy Bird, son of Big Issue Editor-in-Chief, John Bird -- on YouTube soon), a street level advertising campaign by ad-agency Pd3 and a Big Issue inspired eco-friendly trainer (called The Bigger Shoe) made completely of recycled fabrics by Terra Plana. The B Club, the brainchild of Ruby Warrington (Style Editor at heat magazine), and Marmalade magazine's Francesca Gavin are holding one of their literary parties of readings, drinking and music in honour of The Big Issue's birthday, and what a line up. Nick Hornby, Alexei Sayle and Will Self will all be reading new works they have written inspired by the lives of Big Issue vendors.

NB: to attend you must RSVP by sending an email to librarian@great-eastern-hotel.co.uk.

The emergence of online music dissemination -- let it be via netradio or websites such as last.fm or the massive commercial expansion of digital downloads -- has been astonishing in the past two years. Some of the most prominent visionaries of the digital trend have been netlabels, or online music labels offering free music as downloads. As such, the distribution is made available and legal through the Creative Commons licences, pushing for a greater flexibility on copyright protection. Netaudio'06 is London's first festival dedicated to free internet music with the intent to "celebrate the creative output of netlabel activists and musicians". It will include talks, workshops, concerts and more divided between Candid Arts Trust (with a Media Lounge and a Fair) and Electrowerkz with both day and evening programs showcasing UK, European and international artists. The festival will end with an after-party at The Pool on Sunday (12pm - 12am).

NB: Netaudio'06 runs on 15/09, 16/09 and 17/09 (for the full programme click here).

Welcome to Kansas where there's a post apocalyptic air in the wake of the abduction of the parents of the Springer family. The wholesome Jesus loving reality of the Springer children is disturbed by the discovery of a pregnant alien on the lawn, (who threatens to be Mexican), a sharp suited New York business woman tumbling from the sky like Dorothy from the tornado and the ghost of Bobby Kennedy, the white hope of liberal America, rising from the ground. The TEAM, winners of the coveted 2005 / 2006 Fringe First Award, present a thrillingly surreal mediation on American identity. As liberal America turns the mirror back on itself its idealism teeters on the edge of despair, as if in a double take directed at the current administration. As old and new paranoia of America converge on stage, realities merge and chaos ensues through a vibrant and playful tone, which is cut through with sharp political insight. Content and performance function in perfect synthesis as the audience are drawn into participation. Prepare yourselves to sing, throw eggs and join in with a rallying chorus of The Stars And Stripes.

NB: runs till 17/09.

The problem with London is that amongst all the hustle and bustle, the crowds and the fast pace of life you often forget to just stop and look around and enjoy the city for the amazing place it is. With centuries of buildings piled high on top of itself, the city is a mess of wonderful contradictions from medieval churches to today's towering glass spires devoted to the worship of money, a glorious bricolage of old and new that sadly too few of us have the opportunity to appreciate. Luckily, for the last few years we have had the Open House Project; one of the few ways that us ordinary types have had the chance to peer into this hidden London, the project throws open the doors of those buildings we might walk past every day but never get a look inside of. This weekend hundreds of hitherto out of bounds buildings such as Norman Foster's great glass Gherkin, the Horse Guards buildings, various guild and city halls and even the Argentine ambassador's residence will be open for the great unwashed to tramp through and enjoy. Just please remember to wipe your feet first or they won't let us back in.

NB: London Open House 2006 runs for two days on 16/09 and 17/09 (please note that some buildings do require advance booking).

Roman Ondak has made a cool miniature architectural model of the grey turbine hall as it looks emptied of art. The replica fills the room, but the dimensions make you feel clumsily big, too big to enter. Ondak is also in the Tate collection with the performance piece Good Feelings In Good Times consisting of people waiting in line. The Slovakian artist is inspired by the queues in front of shops before the fall of Communism: "People were capable of patiently waiting in queues and feeling good about it, because they thought at the end of it they'd probably get what they were hoping for." So, do we get what we wait for when we queue up for art? The introductory leaflet for the exhibition presents a conversation between Ondak and Vicente Todoli, the director of Tate Modern. They talk about their work place, the movies and such. The leaflet states that the conversation was coincidentally recorded when they met for the first time at an English course for beginners. We won't question the authenticity and take it for what it is. At any rate, Ondak is clearly -- and cleverly -- testing the confines of the institution.

NB: Roman Ondak's work is on view till 17/09. While at Tate Modern make sure you catch the Pierre Huyghe exhibition which is also on view till 17/09.

"It's got that mad dog's fingerprints all over it," says Ronald Reagan in Gaddafi: A Living Myth. What do you get when you mix the breakbeat and dub music outfit Asian Dub Foundation with the music of Diaspora, the innovative side of ENO, librettist Shan Khan, designer Es Devlin and choreographer Hakeem Onibudo of Impact Dance and the recent history of Libya, including its highly eccentric leader and some of the worst acts of terrorism ever? A fantastic, spectacular show that has provoked critical disdain and political controversy! Gaddafi: A Living Myth is a hugely entertaining theatrical experience that will drag new audiences into the ENO and send them out dancing -- with no pretensions that this is the definitive, political representation of Gaddafi. The music, scenography and choreography explode together, as coups and acts of terror take place. Asian Dub Foundation have previously created live soundtracks for films about conflict, such as La Haine and The Battle Of Algiers. It shows: the objectivity which gives these films their unforgettable power is also present here. The Libyan ambassador gave it a standing ovation. Don't miss. It's fantastic and will be talked about from here to Tripoli for years.

NB: Gaddafi: A Living Myth runs for three more nights 14/09, 15/09 and 16/09.

As part of the continuing Silent Film And Live Music series, the Curt Collective will perform a live score to a screening of Jean Epstein's 1929 black and white silent classic documentary-drama Finis Terrae. Best known for his Gothic classic The Fall Of The House Of Usher, Epstein's realist film is part of a group of early "ecological documentaries" that include Nanook Of The North and Man Of Aran. The film, shot on location with stunning scenery, tells the story of the rescue of a group of Kelp gatherers trapped on the harsh rocky coast off Brittany. Totally unlike the Keystone Cop plots and keyboard-pounding honky-tonk cinema scores of the silent era, to date the series has screened dramatic silent classics with live accompaniment from hammered dulcimer, saxophone, flute and percussion, among others. Strangely addictive, the combination of subtly flickering black and white images, lack of dialogue and on-stage musicians make the screenings seem a meditative -- and yet satisfyingly interactive -- viewing experience.

NB: on 02/10 catch a screening of Metropolis and a live performance of its original score by German Film Orchestra Babelsberg. For more silent films head to the NFT for its Silent Comedy season (runs till 29/09).

Last time Matmos came to London with Zeena Parkins they managed to turn technical problems into spanking good fun. Now, Parkins joins as a full member of the band, on her unique electric harp with MC Schmidt and Drew Daniel probably playing various electronic devices, microphones, objects, liquids, body parts (live or dead), animals and anything else they can lay their hands on, and Nate Boyce on visuals. They've also announced they may be joined onstage by some of their former collaborators on select dates of this European tour, of which this is the only UK date... so who knows, it could include a certain Miss Guomundsdottir. The tour coincides with the release of Matmos' latest release The Rose Has Teeth In The Mouth Of The Beast, 10 songs dedicated to historical figures, some famous, others less so.

NB: the Boyd McDonald celebrated on the album started the publication Straight To Hell and was not a Canadian composer. Who said live electronics was about sitting behind a laptop checking emails?

So you won't really learn anything new in this documentary by the "former next president of America" (cue chortle from the man himself) -- aerosols are bad, eco bulbs are good etc etc, but somehow ol' Al manages to pull it off. Yup it's all pretty basic, but that's the point -- there's loads to do and more to shout about so the powers that be are forced to get there arses in gear and do something decisive. Who cares if it's all publicity circus pomp if something actually gets done? That's the preaching bit. Then there's the images. The clips of ice caps melting, seas shrinking and fires rampaging across the globe have maximum impact on the big screen, and like horror film atrocities, you'll be shading your eyes. And there's the rub. It's a horror film that we're scripting. It may be old news, but Jesus, if we have to keep being told...

NB: An Inconvenient Truth is released in London on 15/09. Other films of note out on the same day are Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia, The Queen and Destricted.

Debate: on 18/09 (7:15 - 8:45pm) participate in We Must Embrace Nuclear Power To Solve Global Warming sponsored by The Economist and taking place at One Great George St., SW1.

It's difficult to imagine what contemporary dance would be like these days without Wendy Houston, a radical and highly individual choreographer and dancer, best known for her work with DV8 (her performance in Strange Fish, 13 years ago, remains unforgettable). Like that company, her own creations manage to blend humour with unsettling insights into contemporary experience, no less so with Desert Island Dances where dance, theatre, performance art and stand-up constantly take turns in being the dominant discipline. Her renowned trait of speaking while she dances brings an extraordinary power and is the perfect strategy for her main concern: interrogating and interrupting the movements and thoughts she naturally "falls back on" or as Adrian Heathfield puts it in his brilliant essay on her, "a kind of creative de-programming of her body memory".

NB: Desert Island Dances is performed on both 19/09 and 20/09.

XBXRX occupy an almost mythical musical reputation within the underground music scene. The Alabama-spawned outfit began in '98 when the members were teenagers, steadily defining the blueprint for progressive post-hardcore that has since been adopted by bands like The Blood Brothers. Their 24 releases have been released on a range of labels, most notably Polyvinyl, who released their 2005 album Sixth In Sixes. It's a testament to their cult impact that iconic musician Wesley Willis wrote a song dedicated to the band in 2002. Anyone with the slightest interest in chaotic, inventive and energetic hardcore should already have a ticket. The curious will be greeted by a sound and style that is so concentrated and intense that it's practically impossible to observe passively -- expect to either be enthralled or alienated. Noisy lo-fi New York band Blood On The Wall and Lovvers, featuring Shaun Hencher from the much-missed The Murder Of Rosa Luxemburg, will be the perfect warm-up for the chaos that will ensue.

In Lodge Kerrigan's latest film Keane a distraught man, muttering and clutching an article torn from a newspaper, endlessly roams New York City's Port Authority Bus Terminal searching for his abducted seven-year-old daughter. Last seen wearing a purple jacket she was snatched at the bus station, at 4:26pm, six months earlier -- or was she? Did this actually happen, or has William Keane (Damien Lewis) only imagined it? Does he even have a daughter? A claustrophobic study of guilt and grief, the film is both incredibly suspenseful and ambiguous, the events being filtered through Keane's fog of schizophrenia. Completely focused on Lewis' character, it documents his continuing search and the lead-up to a possible replay of the child's disappearance -- is it a form of elliptical circle of hell for Keane, an alternative outcome to the original event or a coincidence? A brilliant and intense performance from Lewis, the film is unsettling and enigmatic, and yet you reach the end really hoping things work out for him.

NB: Kean is released in London on 22/09. Films of note released this week are Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia, An Inconvenient Truth, The Queen and Destricted.

Merce Cunningham's colossal, monumental performance Ocean comes to the newly renovated Roundhouse soon and we wanted to mention it a little early in an attempt to beat the sell-out. Conceived of in 1991 as the last collaboration between MC and John Cage, Ocean involves every dancer in the company and no less than 150 musicians (from The Guildhall School) who surround the audience. Cage never actually managed to write the score and died in '92, but his ideas were taken on by David Tudor who added an electronic score involving marine sounds. Cunningham said of Ocean's creation, "When I was putting it together, I had a multi-second thought of what Einstein meant about curvature of space." It would seem there couldn't be a better place to share that moment with him.

NB: Ocean runs at the Roundhouse for four nights from 21/09 till 24/09.

Although The Frankenstein Set is not for the squeamish, you don't have to be a horror film buff to get something out of this exhibition. In fact, Christian Jankowski's photographs, sculptures, and three new film works question and challenge the genre as much as they get down and let heads roll and blood spurt. In a video entitled Angels Of Revenge, Jankowski asks costumed attendees of a horror convention in Chicago two questions: "How were you most wronged in your life, and what is your revenge fantasy against the person responsible?" The responses vary widely, but perhaps more interesting than the potential for gore incited by responses like "split him up the middle, maybe with a chainsaw", is the way these works invite us to consider a society that is saturated with images of horror in movies and video games and real violence in the media. In another work, Violence Of Theory, Jankowski collaborates with a real horror production company, yet interjects quotes from cultural historians in between the slow severing of limbs. The exhibition is visually stimulating enough to take your kid brother to, just thought-provoking enough to satisfy the philosophising set, and trendy enough for the fairweather art-goer, but it might be best to leave granny at home.

NB: runs till 30/09.

Chatter suggests a noisy tete-a-tete over a bar table, but in an age of monitoring and surveillance, electronic chatter is the buzzword. US sonic artist Stephen Vitiello lives in Virginia, an area that combines a natural beauty with a heavy military presence. For his first solo UK show, he's introduced an elegant reading of this dualism through a combination of environmental recordings, animals calling to each other at night, a symphony of creature chatter in woodland, and video works, Polaroids and a disruptively unsettling installation with transformed speeches of Bush and Blair at a G8 Summit secreted in ivy that creeps up the gallery wall. Immersive, transformative, with both a physical and emotional impact, this work engages you in a re-definition of the spatial environment.

NB: runs till 01/10.

What happens when the Serpentine attempts to make a survey of recent developments in American art? Complete chaos orchestrated by Daniel Birnbaum, Gunnar Kvaran and Hans Ulrich Obrist. The overcrowded hang and the preponderance of large scale works, such as the Kippenberger-esque Wade Guyton / Kelley Walker installation, is an overload of trends and competing visions. What purports to be "the result of the curators' intensive research into the preoccupations of artists emerging in the United States" demonstrates no consensus, but constitutes a real test of the gallery's limits and the visitors' tolerance. Indeed, the "uncertainty" of the title could be said to refer to the attitude to adopt towards the works. You may play a tune of your choice (but only one!) on Christian Holstad's Freeplay (2005), a vintage jukebox. You may tread on the artificial snow that covers Kori Newkirk's Win Slow And Raft, a little room transformed into a disquieting winter wonderland, but you are not allowed to touch the giant snow globe or the white shark that all children gravitate towards with a twinkle in their eyes. Uncertain States Of America is a playground with unclear rules, therefore a frustrating experience.

NB: runs till 15/10.

Everybody knows the feeling of travelling to a foreign country and knowing only a spattering of the language; while it's possible to survive, one never really understands the essence of the place, and exists only as an outsider to that culture. Japanese For Travellers is not a phrasebook, although its title could mislead one into thinking that. Instead it's a book about personal dislocation, about the mixture of confusion and elation of coming home. While this book would delight any reader, it's especially poignant for the expat, who understands that once you leave, the idea of "home" is never fixed or straightforward. Returning to one's native country one can suffer worse culture shock than travelling to a new destination.

The book begins with Kitamura on a bullet train, speeding towards Osaka to visit her family. Unlike a fictional or chick lit book, Japanese For Travellers winds its anecdotal tale in a meandering and anti-climactic fashion as she travels through Japan. Through the course of it we learn about the author's cultural schizophrenia between Japan, where she was born, and the West, where she was educated and still lives. Never at home in either country, one feels the palpable effects of being a stranger with one's homeland. She also weaves into the tale her father's battle with stomach cancer, the devastating effects of the downturn in Japan's economy and humorous experiences at Sumo matches and parlours. The book doesn't fit into any clear category: more intelligent than chick lit, and not quite a travel log, it nevertheless is beautifully written and is a touching and memorable read.

To buy Japanese For Travellers online click here.

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