This year's shortlist brings a noteworthy line-up of acclaim and experience. Walid Raad (this year's winner) realigns the antithetical paradigm of fact and fiction, offering them up as one and the same thing. Working under the pseudonym The Atlas Group, his project presents a fictitious archive based on images from the Lebanese War, including "lost" and "damaged" negatives taken at the war's outset in 1982. Conceptual engagement also underscores the work of Indonesian born Fiona Tan. In Vox Populi (Syndey) over 300 individually framed "family snaps" criss-cross two walls, 90 families interwoven into a single album of beaches, birthdays and family pets. In sharp contrast what Anders Petersen offers is disdainfully uncompromising. Around 40 photographs collectively titled About Gap And St Etienne hang across three walls. Black and white, their acidic edge references cinematic close crops, coarse surfaces and sharp shadows. Presenting torsos, tattoos and muzzled dogs they are far removed from the clinical photographs of Philippe Chancel. Well versed behind the Iron Curtain his works focus on the Communist vestige of North Korea. Their stylised interiors and architecturally imposing exteriors befit the manicured and ordered arrangement of the socialist regime. All are strong contenders. The diverse corners of photography represented enhance rather than distract, raising questions -- yes, but more importantly offering worthwhile windows on four leading practitioners.

NB: runs till 09/04. On Thu 22/03 (7pm) catch Anders Petersen discussing his nominated exhibition, About Gap And St Etienne, in relation to his wider practice and previous bodies of work, including the seminal series Cafe Lehmitz (1978).

On record !!! (pronounced as chk chk chk) are the ultimate eclectic band, fusing rhythmic disco beats, aggressive funky structures, house beats, cerebral bass lines, epic psychedelic guitars and irreverent provocative lyrics and song-titles. It can be a strange, disorientating list -- hit-and-miss at times, but ultimately rewarding. However, it is their cathartic and chaotic live show which best illustrates !!!; all seven members playing their instruments with a vigorous intensity -- it's a liberating and very honestly fun experience. They undoubtedly confused a lot of Red Hot Chilli Pepper fans when they supported the stadium band in 2006. Almost as exciting is the support bill of boy-girl drum-guitar duo Blood Red Shoes. Having made a name for themselves touring the UK incessantly for the past 18 months, high-profile support slots with Maximo Park and The Young Knives has left them with a cult following and many people are tipping them for big things. Mixing choppy riffs, big melodies and simple repetitive structures, it's poppy punkish indie that you can dance to.

Only a conspiracy of squat chic Peckhamites, Parisian electrohop miscreants and world champion wax addicts could hope to bring real credibility to a mix party based on iPods. We mean, most members of the white earphone army have undergone that Tube or boredom-induced transfiguration, dreaming of playing an apparently sublime "on the go" playlist to a braying mass of imaginary clubbers. But that doesn't mean you'd pay money to watch people struggling with a jog dial. That is, unless the people doing the fiddling were able to take DJ Shadow discoverer James Lavelle back to school (that'd be the Scratch Perverts), light a electroglitch fire under just about anything (Radioclit, Sinden) and break out some sharp rhymes du jour (Teki Latex, Cuizinier). Spare a few more headphone jacks for Queens of Noize, Gucci Soundsystem and the unavoidable Vice and you've got a crew that resembles a furniture showroom of east London electro nights. Hang on a second: won't this turbo line-up of scenesters get a bit lazy as the friendly participants let their autofading playlists do the talking? Tell you what, let's make them all compete in front of a participating audience and see if we can't make some grown men and women cry.

Winner of a Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize at Cannes last year, Australian director Rolf de Heer's new feature Ten Canoes is the first film to be completely produced in local Yolngu Aboriginal language. With an all-Aboriginal (and non-experienced) cast, this beautifully shot film is based on an ancient Aboriginal legend -- a morality tale recounting what happens when the younger brother of the chief warrior begins to fancy one of his elder brother's wives. A tragicomedy and story of revenge gone wrong, the story centres on a food-gathering expedition in the remote and harsh Arafura Swamp region. Visually referencing anthropologist Donald Thomson's 1930s Aboriginal photographs, it combines black and white images mixed with gorgeous saturated colour as the narrative weaves in and out of a surreal "dreamtime" in which the story-within-the-story is played out. Acted and cast according to strict familial relationships (with siblings playing siblings) the film is humorous and serious in equal measure. De Heer will talk about the unusual production after the screening.

Video Links Brazil is a survey of the experimental single-channel video scene in Brazil comprising a vast array of works that refreshingly summarise different strands of the medium. From narrative experimental video of the '80s, Cinema Novo influenced conceptual works by visual artists to anthropological documentaries featuring Brazilian aborigines, the survey, curated by London-based writer and video maker Antonio Pasolini, offers a panoramic vision of time-based media in Brazil. Video began to be explored in the South American country as early as the late '70s, when a group of Sao Paulo-based artists were employing media as varied as Minitel, microfiches, art through the telephone and mail art. Regina Silveira, an artist from that group, is present in Video Link Brazil with one of her anamorphisms in video format. This survey also encompasses television style mockeries drawn from popular culture, authorial short pieces of purely visual poetry and socio historical analyses that will somehow complete the audience's view of Brazil beyond the always revisited stereotypes.

NB: Video Links Brazil runs at Tate Modern on 23/03, 24/03 and 25/03.

"I took a note, a sawtooth wave, right off this Pantomime 4, put it back here, re-genned it through itself, looped it back, mixed it with the sound of this crab committing suicide and let it stew in its own reverb for about three hours and then I pumped it all out through this shoe to give it that oaky timbre..." Howard Moon from The Mighty Boosh. This may have more of a connection to reality than you may think: alongside AMM and MEV, Morphogenesis have been creating this kind of music since the '60s -- using a vastly expanded palette of sounds, going far beyond (and usually avoiding) what is generally thought of as music. This is a rare gig for the band, minus the late and vastly influential Roger Sutherland; although it'll be free improvised, the quality can be guaranteed. CYRK have also put together a fantastic line-up lasting until 2am of artists involved in free improvisation, live electronics and processed sounds, including Lgamble, John Wall, Dave Phillips, EVOL, Alex Ward and Steve Beresford.

NB: if you fancy a scaled down alternative to this, Scaledown is also on the same night at The King & Queen (Foley St., W1) with Iris Garrelfs performing.

Australian label Modular Recordings' pilgrimage to become an all encompassing entertainment entity continues unabated in 2007. Albums to come this year from New Young Pony Club, The Avalanches, Cut Copy and The Presets conveniently allow people to forget that they once had Jack Johnson and Gary Jules on their roster. They've recently entered the cut throat world of dance music compilations with Leave Them All Behind 2 and over the past six months have been behind some of the biggest parties across the globe. And now they are set to unleash a weekly night of mayhem in that popular little pocket of London we call Shoreditch. Modular Weekly launches at intimate venue Anda De Bridge with the premise of asking some of the most special DJs around to forgo playing to crowds of thousands for the night and instead make 200 people go crazy by playing whatever they like. To kick off proceedings, they have invited indie disco producer / remixer du jour Phones aka Paul Epworth down to join People Are Germs and the resident Modular DJs. There is also the added incentive of some splendid special guests each week -- with a hot young chick rumoured for the opening night -- and the promise of a no guest list policy and entrance fee of only a fiver.

NB: in the weeks to come catch Duke Dumont on 30/03, Rex The Dog on 13/04, Herve on 20/04 and Sinden on 27/04.

Roll Deep looked like a label's dream: bona fide genre definers, an authentic and organic fan base and an anti-gun message amongst their urgent and macho rhymes. So it seemed like cruel fate that Dizzee Rascal's former gang were dropped from Relentless last year after sales of In The Deep End supposedly weren't up to scratch ("hit" singles would seem to attest otherwise). Eski's daddy Wiley Kat et al decided to get together their own label to give a home to the war cries and massive subs dying to burst out of their E3 crew, and thus the long-awaited launch of Rules & Regulations. There to help launch this rocket up the production establishment are mixtape geniuses Ruff Sqwad -- famed for the heavy, trembling Guns & Roses cuts -- and Plasticman aka Plastician, though Chris Reed is doing all he can to bring grime and dubstep into the melting pot (with a bit of help from overlord Richard D James and Radio 1). In amongst the pulse, beeps and spat-making, there's a bit of a flipside upstairs on the same night with glitchy freeform fashionistas Tapedeck and anti-genre jokers Teens Of Thailand. So, er, good luck with flogging Joss Stone, Relentless.

Joep van Lieshout is a one of a kind zany artist / architect / radical urban planner who gives the Dutch visual arts scene a good name almost single-handedly. He revels in the artistic freedom that is offered by dealing in the perverse, in the extremes of moral imperatives and nonsensical humour. This extreme position allows his creativity to be fluidly mobile and highly productive, producing ideas that are equally controversial as they are utopian; an arena for radical transformation. His latest proposal Slave City builds on his principle of the collective as a highly efficient mode of working. Indeed his own practice operates around the idea of an artistic commune, where the lines between life and work are irrefutably blurred. Slave City offers a working model where the moral and ethical heart of the city is synonymous with its construction; form and content are not just united but are the driving force for an entirely self sufficient community. Lieshout's model buys into the current political climate surrounding the threat of global warming. Waste now has a bad name. The stretch he asks us to make is to map this attitude on to the communal efficiency of the workforce. He imagines a world where corporate management techniques are used to produce a population of waste free, highly profitable workers.

NB: this talk is part of the Hayward's 100 Ideas series of talks and events.

Long believed to be the city to which we lose our most wayward hipsters, Berlin has decided to give London a little token of its affection. Imaginary Friends, a creatively-minded collective spread across both metropoles, has culled the best and brightest of members for A Fete Worse Than Death, its debut party at the Iron Tabernacle. Live sets from The Moon Music Orchestra and Economy Wolf will present formidable alt-folk challenges to Joanna Newsom's axis-of-Medieval; Guardian darling Findlay Brown and The Springmine Disaster are also scheduled to bring some DJ heat. From the Berlin contingent, expect a "Fairytale Musical" and "The Nothing Doing Bar", destined to be far more (and seemingly less) than a watering hole. Add a cake contest, tombola, and "The Chapel of Fortune", all housed in Kilburn's most spectacularly derelict church: may this be the collective's first of many blessed bashes.

Club Motherfucker seems to have had a bit of resurgence since relocating to Bardens Boudoir (arguably London's most idiosyncratic venue); and the coup of booking DAT Politics for a one-off UK gig is testament to that. Having been around for almost 10 years now and releasing records on labels such as Tigerbeat6, the French threesome traverse a compelling mix of genres -- techno, synth, glitch, pop, new wave and minimalist electronica. What is most distinctive of their sound is a sense of fun and irreverence. Last year's album Wow Twist is probably as good a place as any to get into the band. Serious laptop fans warning, they're the sort of group who appeal to electronic music fans who believe in celebrating the most light-hearted side of the genre. Expect a suitably garish live show and an effervescent stage-presence that will encourage dancing. It's not the sort of music that's going to change the world, but they're the ideal fun live band at one of London's best Saturday clubnights.

Anyone who enjoys a bit of a snoop will appreciate having a rummage around David Blandy's show at Cell. He has successfully presented a library of cultural influences and personal possessions, as an attempt to question the extent to which the self is formed through the ubiquity of mass media. You can listen to his collection of rare Northern Soul vinyl, play Guitar Hero on his Playstation, thumb through his books and comics, and watch a compilation of his video pieces made over the past few years. Within this compendium of Blandy there are three new commissions: Barefoot Lone Pilgrim; The Man from Elsewhere: Fortress Of Solitude with an accompanying comic, The Man From Elsewhere (Issue 2); and the wonderful White And Black Minstrel. The exhibition is worth a visit just to see this latter piece, projected in a plush cinema space in the gallery. Blandy, dressed as a cross between an inverted minstrel with a painted "whited" up face and a clown in an oversize black and white outfit, lip synchs to Syl Johnson's underground soul classic "Is It because I'm Black" whilst strutting around a grand stage from an art deco theatre. If Blandy is searching for his cultural position in the world, then let's hope he doesn't find it soon and he keeps making work like this!

NB: runs till 15/04.

Aaah... that arch-thinker of the postmodern building is back: Charles Jencks. This time he's not , rather he's rebranding it as "critical modernism". No doubt the debate will revolve around this notion of criticality. Perhaps he's following in Lyotard's idea of the postmodern? Certainly 9/11 has presented another view of the building and its symbolic nature. And John Gray, not to be confused with the Gray of Mars and Venus, rather the political philosopher, should be the appropriate interlocutor for Jencks. LSE's Professor of European Thought, Gray, who was a supporter of the New Right before turning to New Labour, is certainly a thinker very much involved in the constantly shifting sands of our political and ideological landscapes. Rather than just considering architecture, Jencks is using that as a point of departure to meditate on our global culture and society.

NB: this event has been programmed in conjunction with Charles Jencks' new book Critical Modernism: Where Is Post-Modernism Going? What Is Post-Modernism?.

Director Katie Mitchell last showed at the National with Waves, showcasing groundbreaking multimedia where actors armed with cameras and Foley swarmed around the stage to create a continuous montage for a central, unifying screen. A live film in a theatre, it was technically impressive but form seemed dryly at slight odds with the material. Those same techniques now flower into her triumphant take on Attempts On Her Life. Martin Crimp's brilliant text has 17 different attempts (in both senses) on the life of a contemporary self -- Anne might be a terrorist, a porn star, an artist obsessively staging her suicide or even a car -- and Mitchell's hyperactive yet rigorous staging sweeps through continuous (re)construction via shot and counter-shot. It's not afraid to be funny -- there's a riotous Newsnight Review reconstruction and a pastiche of ponderous cop dramas -- and the highly accomplished ensemble also muster a pretty kicking rock band. But it's not just a comment on the media; it demonstrates how a fragmented media itself reflects the corporate and political structures that truly fragment the self. And unlike Waves, it embraces its theatricality in a thunderous opening as the stage spills outs its innards and in the effortless interplay in the moments in between this trapped band of actors. Exceptional -- although the traditionalists will hate it...

NB: runs till 10/05.

Special Offer: buy £10 tickets and get a free bottle of beer by calling 020.7452.3000 and quoting "KultureFlash offer" (valid from 05/04 till 11/04).

Conceptually, the exploration of throwaway culture and the inevitable obsolescence that is encoded within every object we consume is hugely relevant. Unfortunately, the disposability of Western culture and its illusions of grandeur are cards often played by artists in an attempt to shield incomplete ideas or to justify poor craftsmanship -- a conceptual riddle that has been the undoing of many a Saatchi "boy artist". It seems that the concept itself has ingrained within it the formula for its own redundancy. But while we may be sceptical of the vast and varied attempts to convey it, the concept itself is sound. Ian Monroe's work is unique in its approach; his collages are painstakingly well put together, and huge. The new works in Planit represent the most recent phase in his continued stripping away at the content of his work, further secreting the subject in the ever decreasing margin between the simple and the complex. Although some of the larger works seem frustrated by the architecture of the space, the objects and images work well as a whole. With geometric impossibilities obscuring and revealing secret messages encoded in the work itself, the large-scale collages elevate the notebook-pondering to the scale of a philosophical colossus, if only by eluding your interpretation.

NB: runs till 31/03.

Celebrating parade and pageantry Amy O'Neill's work beats the death knoll of Americana as Wild West, Golden West, spectacle and site. Taking its cue from California's annual Pasadena Rose Bowl Parade, the show mixes large-scale construction with original film footage and silk-screened reproductions of reclaimed posters and souvenir prints, refashioning relics of a past whose ghosts lurk in the present. Distorted by politics, Disney and Pop, O'Neill wryly adopts nostalgia and archive to oust the deeper, darker social unease that these paradigms of celebration unwittingly contain. Black and gold pom-poms adorn the sculptural centrepiece in a darkened main space while a documentary plays behind. In O'Neill's hands the energy of these often vast and ornate constructions is zapped; her reproduction is of heavy build and staid due to its limited rotation. The scratched 8mm footage adds further to this, replicating the depredated wastelands of carnival floats from which the half-wheel like construction either rises up in defiance, or sinks into in submission. Its dry obtuseness befits this ambiguity, O'Neill offering no firm directive or clear-cut narrative. Like the sprawling graveyards of Las Vegas, here yet more of America is gracefully laid to waste.

NB: runs till 31/03.

Tom Dixon admits he's a maverick. He dropped out of art school to become a musician before setting up his own industrial design business. So, how did he reach the level of creative director at Habitat? Through a vision that mixes utopian function and organic form, a combination that is ideally suited to the modernist ethos of the global furniture maker. Yet, despite his affiliation to the corporate giant, he has maintained his entrepreneurial streak (a catalyst for his initial success with the S-chair for Cappellin and series of multifunctional pieces for his launch of Eurolounge). In 2002, he set up an interiors company with David Begg, and he is now creative director at Artek, the furniture manufacturer established by Finnish architect Alvar Aalto in 1935. Dixon has revived the humanistic approach to colour and line that once sustained Aalto's position at the cutting edge of modern European architecture and design. To coincide with the Barbican's retrospective of the luminary, curated by contemporary Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, Dixon will talk about Alvar Aalto and his creative vision.

NB: Alvar Aalto: Through The Eyes Of Shigeru Ban runs till 13/05.

Reading the papers, you may well have decided that Karen Kilimnik is not a great painter. Truth is, unlike footballers, she's still far too young to be considered great; rather what one discovers is the untrammelled joy of youth, specifically the "happy happy joy joy" variety, when confronted with these paintings. With horses, theatres, pop stars, posh old mansions and pastoral scenes, Kilimnik's iconography is most surely a girly one! And in this most male of preserves, why shouldn't we fete one so girly? Finally, what could be more feminine, or for that matter more romantic, than a night at the ballet? It must be every girl's fantasy... and Kilimnik is most surely a girl, and definitely going to have that dream come true. She is, together with choreographer Tom Sapsford and musician Kaffe Matthews, choreographing and collaging together sequences from famous ballets like Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake. What will it be like? We're not sure. It will certainly not be Balanchine or Nureyev, nor a night at the Royal Opera. But more than Picasso's interventions with Diaghilev, it will probably recapture the energy of her early scatter installations. Hence, dear Flasher, we're certain that it'll put a smile on your face.

NB: this event has been programmed in conjunction with Karen Kilimnik's exhibition that runs at the Serpentine till 09/04.

The Design Museum is hosting the first retrospective of under-rated Berlin-born multi-national designer Luigi Colani. Architect Nigel Coates' witty exhibition design (including projected aquariums of "fish" which include Colani's boats amongst real tropical specimens) showcases Colani's work at all scales, including the big red record-setting Ferrari Testa d'Oro itself (posed in front of a projection of "nighttime in LA" roads, as if idling at a light for you to admire). Mid-size work like the compelling man-merged-with-his-skis hybrid sculpture is accompanied by lots of trains, planes and automobiles, plus small objects (such as the Rosenthal tea sets, knock-offs of which became de rigeur in German cafes in the '70s). Colani's work is organic form before organicism as a formal gesture became paramount: when he references a shark for a sailboat, it's appropriation of aerodynamic principles rather than for use as ideology or as a visual experiment. Small cavils are the trivial Squint/Opera Berlin live feeds, and the Tom Dixon, Jan Kaplicky and Ross Lovegrove interviews, obliterated by being shown on three screens simultaneously and inaudibly. Somebody should have taken Muriel Cooper's advice, painted onto the Design Museum stairwell: "Information is only useful when it can be understood." That said, do make time to see this often-beautiful collection of work deserving wider recognition.

NB: runs till 17/06.

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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