"Man is wider than all the sea," wrote the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda in the mid-20th century. With his "recondite truths", he inspired the Latino New Yorker Martin Espada, who runs one contemporary workshop in this six-day long starburst, Poetry International. Like Neruda, this festival captures the vibrancy of the human spirit rippling across the globe: from exciting world premieres to your favourite British poets; energetic performances to philosophical debates and, above all, workshops, in which poetry comes alive in all shapes and colours. On the opening night, you can explore Kwame Dawes' prophetic account of hardships faced by women from South Carolina. Then, touch on the legacy of the Marxist and innovative outsider Bertolt Brecht; get the attitude of an Arabic rap duo; listen to the meditative poetry of international luminary Tomas Transtromer, together with the views of Elizabeth Alexander (who brings history alive in American Blue), and sample England right now in the new collection of Simon Armitage. Participate in debates on the environment at the heart of John Burnside's poetry and chill out with Tua Forsstrom's musical evocations of fragile Scandinavian landscapes. You can reflect upon this wide choice, chat to poets about inspirations and enjoy the atmosphere of this festival in a special Poetry Lounge. Why not take a dip?

NB: Poetry International runs from 25/10 till 29/10.

Think you know Andy Warhol? Ric Burns directs a four-hour epic film on this pervading household icon of the twentieth century. The Warhol of the popular imagination may be synonymous with Marilyn, Mao or Edie Sedgwick, of Campbell's and Brillo. The silver screen of Hollywood and the shimmer of celebrity are readily equitable with the immediacy of his painted surface or film screen. But what of the man himself? Effacement and assertion haunt every crevice of his work and self, a perpetual unknowing that binds the mystique of this remarkable man. A life that in his own words has produced "a series of images that change, that repeat themselves". In its totality the film creates a fascinating cycle of constructs and consequential destructs of Warhol's selves. The linear narrative that charts the man of "anti narrative" is punctuated with a revolving archive of images and voices, featuring Jeff Koons and Stephen Koch to name but a few. Most memorable and poignant are the dizzying array of personas that surrounded Warhol, who time and again in both archive footage and posthumous interviews fill the impenetrable vacuum around the artist.

NB: admission prices includes beer and popcorn.

Janet Cardiff likes to whisper in your ear as you walk through cities, libraries and museums. Thankfully, she doesn't have to follow you around to do so as her collaborative practice with George Bures Miller has resulted in an impressive body of multimedia works renowned for their unique use of film, video and sound. Their audio-walks ally fiction with description, allowing for absorbing and often intimate experiences. They've led their public by the ear through New York's Central Park (Her Long Black Hair), through the alleys of London's East End (The Missing Voice (Case Study B)) and among the shelves of the Carnegie Library (In Real Time). In this lecture entitled "The Migration of Obsessions" they will discuss the ways in which research and obsessions migrate from one work to another.

NB: this talk is the keynote lecture of the symposium Encounter, Curiosity and Method: The Making of Practice, which aims to explore the particulars of practice-based research. Other speakers include curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, artist Susan Pui San Lok and artist Jamie Shovlin (27/10 from 10am - 6pm).

Whilst we like to maintain some kind of rep at KultureFlash as avant-garde cultural stormtroopers, never more at home than when kicking back at a private party listening to digitally processed white noise performed by scarily modernist architects, every now and then we crave earthier delights. This Thursday, for instance, at the Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes is a night that should prove to be more fun than anything involving rented shoes really has a right to be, for not only will we be able to partake in the sport of king(pin)s but the night will be soundtracked by Tom Middleton (Cosmos / Global Communications) and Fred Deakin (Lemon Jelly) in their Cosmic Fury guise. Judging by the pair's festival appearances this summer the evening should involve rictus grin inducing selections that have little or nothing to do with prevailing trends or tastes and everything to do with having a good time. So we say go out, bowl, party hard and have so much fun you end up snorting beer out through your nose, then next week we can all go back to listening to music composed by snails crawling across mucous sensitive sensors.

This week Dance Umbrella brings two major revivals and provides us with a good excuse to check out whether contemporary dance is as cutting edge now as it felt like it was 10 or 15 years ago.

Dutch-based Dansgroep Krisztina de Chatel revives Fold (1985), a piece that has over the years grown to be a popular and timeless classic of Dutch modern dance. Performed to Another Look At Harmony - Part IV by Philip Glass, Fold, meaning earth in Hungarian, is set on an elevated, circular bank, created from over six tons of earth upon which the dancers embark on an epic struggle between man and nature.

Last year, dance's post punk maverick, Michael Clark, brought us the electrifying OO and revived his 1994 piece O, based on Balanchine's Apollo, which formed the first part of his Stravinsky trilogy. The second part is Mmm... (Stravinsky Project Part 2), a brutal and highly physical affirmation of life born out of Clark's response to Stravinsky's The Rite Of Spring. Mmm... will be shown for the first time since its creation in 1992 with an expanded company of 12 dancers and live piano duet. Birth, life, death and renewal will be explored in a relentless and sexually charged choreography.

NB: Fold is performed at the Greenwich Dance Agency on 26/10 and Mmm... at the Barbican from 27/10 till 04/11.

When former motormouth presenter Andrea Arnold won the Oscar for short film Wasp she announced her pleasure to the four trillion TV audience by declaring her award "the dog's bollocks". America cut to a commercial but they might just have to sit up and take notice of her gripping and claustrophobic debut feature Red Road. Set around a notorious housing estate in Glasgow it focuses on CCTV operator Jackie who midway through another zombie shift happens upon a character she thought was still incarcerated in prison. Stunned by her discovery she begins to track his movements across the estate via her bank of computer screens, a very real level of surveillance that feels straight out of an Orwellian manifesto. Exquisitely shot and brilliantly acted, especially by lead actress Kate Dickie, this does indeed herald a new visually arresting talent. It's her astute use of her camera and myriad ways to jazz up the blandest scene that leaves you with the indelible tracers on the brain. Catch her while she's still speaking to her public in such intimate surroundings.

NB: Red Road is released in London on 27/10.

Who was it who said that "At twilight all things are more lovely"? We can't remember, but Michael Atavar would certainly agree with the statement. His Dusk project reflects on the phenomena of the "nowhere hour", how its unique light and shifting nature make it somehow the most human time of day. Dusk's sights, sounds and feelings are documented by Atavar in photographs and text which exalt the beauty and transience of the gloaming. On Friday he'll be performing a "piece" to coincide with the V&A's Friday Late Twilight evening which in turn is part of the Twilight: Photography In The Magic Hour exhibition (images of dusk made by eight contemporary artists, including Robert Adams' black and white tributes to the American West and Gregory Crewdson's unnerving and filmic "frozen moments").

NB: Friday Late Twilight comprises of film screenings, video installations and photography workshops (Twilight: Photography In The Magic Hour is on view till 17/12).

As we were halfway through writing this preview, we just got word that due to some slackness from the people that issue out licences for venues, the original venue for Sud's sixth year birthday party is not able to host their unique street-level brand of minimal house. So it's back to the reliable Sub Club (a stone's throw from Aldgate East station) for a night of neon-lit techno and low-end musings. This time it's the formidable Audio Werner who's leading the pack. His records on such esteemed labels as Perlon and Hartchef Discos stuck out in a sea of releases (his Just Dar It! 12" on Trapez is an office fave). In support is the excellent Shed. His unique take on the Detroit sound should be a great live act. Sterling support from Sud regulars Portable (doing a soundclash with himself!?) and DJs Marco Shuttle, Lakuti and Nick Craddock. The ties between Berlin and East London just get stronger.

The abstraction and mutation of the human form -- specifically the female form -- has long been a vehicle for the discussion of violence and ideology, and how they fit into the "big picture" of the human condition. Pierre Klossowski interrogated the relationships between art, religion and eroticism, and through his diverse artistic pursuit made an important contribution to the way we view De Sade today, bringing him out of the darkened wings and recesses of monstrosity and onto the human stage. A tenuous and controversial subject, De Sade's celebration of the "deconstruction" of the female body through cruel and creative acts of sex and violence has inspired a spectrum of diverse philosophical attitudes towards the erotic as a whole: politicising both the female body and the notion of beauty, and bridging the gap between the erotic and the pornographic. In the context of the current Hans Bellmer exhibition at the Whitechapel, Unravelling De Sade will examine the transformation of the erotic body as a response to a prevailing social paradigm.

NB: this course has been programmed in conjunction with the Hans Bellmer and Pierre Klossowski exhibitions (both run till 19/11).

Punchdrunk's take on Faust occupies a five-storey docklands warehouse, which you circle to find the door descending into a basement blues bar (the harmonica is a demon). From there you're called into Hell, donning a (trademark for Punchdrunk) mask to wander through the labyrinth of Faust's life. Entire worlds are meticulously created with extraordinary detail tumbling out for your inspection: old Faust exists as a Renaissance magus but is rejuvenated into a Deep South where bluesmen trade souls and old time religion is everywhere -- a setting that makes sense although its imagery can be too familiar to startle and rarely transformatory. You can choose to follow characters (with swarms of fellow audience) into scenes of muscular yet exquisite choreography cycling inexorably towards Faust's damnation. Or you can choose to explore your own personal hell. This choice can be exhilarating or frustrating -- without more structural cues, it's chance what you will discover. But as you revisit spaces to discover hidden meanings awakening, there is a creeping perception that we ourselves are all hell broke loose in the "memory palace" of a man's life. And there's no denying the achievement of one hell of an experience.

NB: Faust runs till 30/12.

Thrill seekers -- pah, a dime a dozen. But panic and paranoia junkies? Less common. That special elite will no doubt find it hard to resist the gravitational pull of Christoph Buchel's provocative and unsettling installation. The gargantuan warehouse space has been transformed into a sweatshop seemingly housing and exploiting desperate asylum seekers. The operation room (filled with hundred of fridges, piles of computer innards, and mountains of junk-yard tat ripe for "revitalisation") lurks behind a scuzzy city hotel (the exhibition entrance) and a grimy cut-price shop selling row upon row of fixed-up fridges and VCRs. In the hotel, endless put-up beds are squashed into every conceivable spare inch of space -- corridors, bathrooms, the lorry out the back. There's a post-raid feel -- everywhere are half-eaten plates of food, work stations hastily abandoned, and ashtrays filled with cigarette stubs. But it's the secret room accessed by crawling through a hole in a wardrobe, the concrete bunker located beneath the freight lorry, and the subterranean tunnels with a disused deep freeze entrance portal that generate the most acute claustrophobia and bewildering paranoia. It's an unnerving meditation on the hidden hellholes lurking behind non-descript urban facades. Unmissable.

NB: runs till 18/03/07.

The much talked about Tired Irie headline this intriguing bill; a glorious mix of US indie stylings, post-rock structures and ambitious songwriting has garnered them a cult underground following. Cats and Cats and Cats have been gradually making a name for themselves during the past year due to their explosive live show and pure originality. They are one of the more excellent indie-post-math-rock outfits around, putting you in the mind of bands like Mogwai, Youthmovie Soundtrack Strategies, Biffy Clyro and Mew. Equally epic, beautiful, melodic and intense -- it's like listening to many great bands all at the same time. Similarly Great Eskimo Hoax are a thoroughly original proposition; avant-garde and experimental, but very catchy -- entwined within their jazzy rhythms are naively catchy melodies. Hard-working London quirky power-pop indie-rockers Favours For Sailors should perfectly complement the bill with their instantly memorable songs. More than anything this gig is a showcase of the quality and variety that exists within the British indie-underground at the moment. You can't really ask much more of a Sunday evening's entertainment.

It starts with a young woman servicing an overweight man, brushing his teeth and putting him to bed. On the soundtrack, we hear the soft voice of an American actress, Jena Malone (who had written to Lukas Moodysson telling him how much she admired his work), reeling off her interests (celebrities and WW2) and fears (the Chernobyl disaster). What then follows is an uninterrupted diaristic, stream of consciousness voice-over, visiting birth, death, gender identity, sexuality, Posh and Becks, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Lopez, Bing Crosby and Kylie Minogue. In grainy, B&W 16 mm, we see the man sellotaping a foetus doll to his face, the man dressing up as a woman, the young woman French kissing herself in a mirror, the man carrying the young woman round on his back and numerous shots of wrecked interiors. Moodysson tries to capture the restless mind struggling with the constraints of the body, the built environment and life itself. Engaging as it is, we think Moodysson tries too hard and the incessant voice-over undermines the images. See what you think.

NB: Container screens at the ICA till 17/11 and is accompanied by an installation, Inside The Head Of Lukas Moodysson: The Container Crypt, which is on view till 10/11 (Show Me Love, Together, Lilya 4-ever and A Hole In My Heart all screen at the ICA in November as part of the Lukas Moodysson Film Season).

Poetry seems to be having a revival of late. From Eminem to Bonnie "Prince" Billy to Mike Skinner to Lily Allen, it is argued that the new poets of our time reside in the music world. Yet, as musicians, their words are always married to a soundtrack and a performance. This relationship between the private act of writing and its placement in the public sphere remains an interesting one for Sue Hubbard, one of two women reading their prose at Parasol unit on 31st October. Hubbard was the first ever "Public Art poet" at the Poetry Society. She created London's largest poem for the IMAX at Waterloo, titled Eurydice, and is still interested in the way that words function differently for poets, visual artists and musicians. Twice winner of the London Writers Competition, Hubbard is also an art critic and writes regularly for The Independent. London based American writer Carrie Etter has been published in Jacket, The Liberal, Poetry Review and the TLS among others. Her writing has been described by American poet Ron Silliman as "an experience that is by turns centring and dizzying. It's quite a ride." Both literary ladies will be reading a selection of works at this event.

You never know what to expect from a Cat Power performance. Chan Marshall (aka Cat Power) is well known for her erratic performances; sometimes bantering easily with the audience, she has also been known to become crippled by her own aspirations for perfection. However, Power's performances are as raw as her music, and experiencing either is an immediately transcendental musical moment. Following the release of her latest album The Greatest (which is not a greatest hits album), Power will perform at the Roundhouse, accompanied by the Memphis Rhythm Band. The album, which is somewhat of a departure from the acclaimed You Are Free (2000), takes on a distinctly bluesy, soulful tone, and indeed features guitarist Mabon "Teenie" Hodges (from Al Green's band) and drummer Steve Potts (of Booker T and the MGs). Power's 2000 release, The Cover's Record, is a testament to her ability to choose and restyle an eclectic mixture of cover songs that she performs with particular ingenuity, and hopefully she'll throw in a few surprises for this upcoming performance. The Roundhouse's 360 degree seating plan is an ideal venue to get intimate with Power's unique blend of soulful vocals, guitar, and good ol' Memphis blues.

Yve-Alain Bois is the thinking abstractionist's intellectual. This means that today, despite being at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (a seriously cushy "job"), his words carry less weight among some artworld intelligentsia. Despite this he hangs with that serious maven of anti-paint, Rosalind Krauss herself, and has even co-curated a show with her, as well as co-editing that modern day version of Documents, October. Dave Hickey he is not. Bois is not cool but rather complex and deep; abstraction's riches come to the fore via poststructuralism's complexity. What other intellectual could be working through the greats of painting: Picasso, Matisse, and more recently Barnett Newman, whom Bois is re-considered painting by painting. And finally, who else would have dared to even conceive of trying to take apart the visual complexities of Bonnard... that risky old painter! Although he'll be speaking on such "boring" old devices like the grid, chance and the index, don't expect the usual blah blah; instead you'll find sophistication and wit.

Write about what you know they tell you. For Patrick McCabe this basic tenet of creative writing classes everywhere surely manifests itself as Ireland in all its maddening and contradictory glory coupled with a fair slice of the writer's ferociously eloquent and shocking imagination. He does "Ireland weird" you see and we can safely say he has a bottomless well of source material to draw from no matter what Jack Charlton and the Irish Tourist Board would rather have you know. On 2nd November the writer talks with Tim Adams about his writing and hopefully what sheer fun it must be for McCabe to create these strong character driven narratives. Although new work Winterwood should take precedence the talk will also be a good opportunity for Adams to tease out personal testimonies on the success or failure of the novels director Neil Jordan chose to adapt for film -- The Butcher Boy and recently Breakfast On Pluto -- and perhaps the extent of their creative relationship.

We're all "kidults" until we're at least 45, whereupon we're ready for a rebellious mid-life crisis and then cosy senility. No wonder, then, that the market for toys has expanded to appeal to a wider age group than the traditional "suitable for ages 6-10". And pioneering the sort of high-design toys that wouldn't look out of place in a loft apartment is James Jarvis. Jarvis' toys, first created for fashion company Silas and now for Amos, were first conceived as characters in his fictional universe the World Of Pain, which was modelled conceptually after Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings. No doubt with a Nathan Barley-type audience in mind, Jarvis' latest creation is a motley crew of potato-head misfits called the In-Crowd. Bikers, metalheads, punks and zombies, these weirdly lovable toys are given very real personalities in addition to their tribal status: Ezra the young ruffian will take off his hoodie if you ask him nicely, William the heavy rocker dislikes poor manners. So go ahead, buy a few toys and invite your neighbour round for an updated Barbie and Ken session! Or else be a grown-up and go and hear Jarvis talk about what all this might mean for today's society.

Could Peter Fischli and David Weiss ever become Switzerland's Gilbert and George? Do you know which is Gilbert and which George? Are the Swiss duo interchangeable as well? It doesn't really matter, the closest that G&G have ever come to F&W is perhaps their early video self-portrait: nothing happens, one of them smokes a cigarette... life stands still. Likewise some of F&W's work sprawls so much that they approach boredom... but it is the attractive boredom of everyday life -- that thing that reality TV is trying to glamorise and turn into narrative -- they are Swiss after all. There is no doubt that their work is funny, and if you have the right funny bone, then they're darn right hilarious. What they offer us seems so simple, yet consider it: life is really more complicated. Take a hard look, they seem to say... think about it, then enjoy! With a Tate retrospective on hand, no doubt to offer us a fresh view at reality, they're in town, in discussion with that other London-based Swiss and Flash-fave, uber-curator Hans Ulrich Obrist.

NB: Peter Fischli And David Weiss' Tate Modern retrospective runs till 14/01/07.

Doug Fishbone is the well-deserved darling of curators for his video works that mix Woody Allen-style comedy with the look of a naff corporate PowerPoint presentation. Deceptively juvenile and obscene, the videos cleverly chronicle the weird behaviour, paradoxes and conspiracies of Western society: fat people, smoking, terrorism and mind-blowing ignorance. So it's a surprise that he hasn't been snapped up by more commercial galleries. Perhaps it's due to copyright infringement; his videos are created from hundreds of internet grabs, from fast-food restaurants to porn sites. No matter: Gimpel Fils has stepped in to prove that even this established gallery has a decent sense of humour. For this exhibition, Fishbone is showing storyboards of jokes, some quite funny, most cringe-worthy: there's a classic gorilla-goes-into-a-bar joke, one about a monkey who's so addicted to fags that he can't bear to leave the lab, and a seriously distasteful joke about how Polish girls get pregnant. There's also a random joke generator, a must for every bachelor party, and two videos: Stand-up Guy (anyone here from New Jersey?) and a spoof charity video in which Fishbone begs his viewers for money to fund his next project.

NB: runs till 18/11. Doug Fishbone is sharing the Gimpel Fils gallery space with Spanish artist Muntadas, who is showing a striking addition to his On Translation series, which will be familiar to those who saw last Venice Biennale's Spanish pavilion.

"It's time the tale were told of how you took a label and you made him bold" -- with apologies to The Smiths, this is really the tale of the last thirty years of British indie music. Chronicling the birth of a fertile period in lyrical creativity, a random picking of acts could feature The Pop Group, The Fall, Ivor Cutler, Scritti Politti, The Strokes and The Libertines. With Geoff Travis at the helm, it captures a time before musicians were restrained by marketing strategies, image refiners and media representation, which ironically might explain in a naive way why the label itself subsequently collapsed, then was reborn via Sanctuary Records, but typically with less independence and control. Sumptuously illustrated with record sleeves, posters and period photos (and some rather frightening hair don'ts) it's almost enough to let the images speak for themselves. More reportage than critically analytic, the book clearly has to pass over some seminal acts like the Virgin Prunes, but offers the story of a time when Pop Idol and X-Factor were mere nightmares of the future.

To buy Rough Trade online click here.

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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