Provocateur extraordinaire, FAT the trendy dynamic architecture practice revel in contradiction and play. Their collaborative practice works across architecture, design, and art, programming projects that are challenging, innovative and playful. Set up in 1995 by Sean Griffiths, Charles Holland and Sam Jacob, their success has started to snow ball of late, winning design left right and centre. Fans will be familiar with the Blue House, an east London residence whose joyful cartoonist facade, reflects the home/office duel function. More lately they have won the pitch for an eco-friendly affordable housing project, Islington Square in Manchester. Griffith's has been instrumental in the recently realised Sint Lucas Art Academy in the Netherlands, delivered in their fearless aesthetic and designed to reimagine the art institution for the here and now. FAT's output goes beyond their realised projects to debate and ponder the nature of the discipline, contributing to an on going discussion that feeds back into the studio, and keeping them at the relevant end of a radicalised practice.

Willie Doherty's Ghost Story evocatively presents us with a metaphor of the unresolved issues and contentions resulting from the peace process in Northern Ireland. A sense of loss, memory and trauma is conveyed in a film that follows the twists and turns of a country path, bathed in cold December light, and which leads to an unknown destination. Occasionally there are abrupt switches to other bleak vistas. The actor Stephen Rae provides the aural narrative. A spokesperson for Gerry Adams during his broadcast ban, Rae's voice is as evocative of the troubles as Doherty's haunting images. The colours of the film -- the dark blues, greens and rust -- suggest a painterly palette, while the camera's strangeley captivating movements propel us onwards. Ghost Story provides the lynchpin for Doherty's current show Replays at Matt's Gallery. The viewer is transported to other scenes and places, and into their own remembrance of things past. The juxtaposition of changing scenarios provided by the rotation of eight different films from 1994 to 2007 in the second gallery space also illustrates Doherty's painterly understanding of light, texture and uneasy suspense.

NB: post-screening Willie Doherty and Tim Marlow will be in conversation. Replays runs at Matt's Gallery till 16/03.

After eight long years away form the London stage, La La La Human Steps return to Sadler's with Amjad. Inspired by the most famous of classical romantic ballets and using elements from Sleeping Beauty, choreographer Edouard Lock attempts to liberate the human body from the idea of function, making it an abstract entity to be used in his reconstruction of the deconstructed classics. Stunning male dancers in sharp tailored suits dance en pointe accompanied by corseted ballerinas. A highly conceptual show, Amjad promises a truly amazing mix of contemporary dance and graceful ballet. The subtle and voluptuous music by Gavin Bryars, David Lang and Blake Hargreaves is performed live on stage by a quartet of piano, cello, violin and viola. The dancers move at full speed across lush projections and if we are to believe the continental press, you will be swooning at the swans in no time and only a prince charming can bring you back to reality.

NB: runs from 30/01 till 02/02.

In December Gilles Leroy had a succes fou with the esteemed Prix Goncourt, an award in French literature given to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year". He won it for his most recent novel Alabama Song which blends biography with fiction to recount the intriguing life story of Zelda Sayre, wife of F Scott Fitzgerald and muse of the Jazz Age. Named after a fictional gypsy queen, Zelda's passionate but turbulent relationship with Fitzgerald illuminated the 1920s social circuit of booze, music and frivolity and she was dubbed "the first American flapper". But their marriage was plagued by alcohol, jealousy and alleged affairs (both hetero and homosexual) and undoubtedly exacerbated Sayre's constant battle with mental illness. She died in a fire in a mental hospital along with eight other patients when she was just 47. The book's title is a reference to Sayre's birthplace but also to a poem by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht (resurrected in the '60s by The Doors and then again in the '70s by David Bowie). Leroy will be talking about the book and his career with Independent literary editor Boyd Tonkin at that cultural establishment par excellence, the Institut Francais. Bonne soiree!

Showtime at Sadler's Wells brings together performances that Jerome Bell has made from 1994 to 2005 and gives London audiences a long-overdue chance to see the work of this Parisian choreographer who is a mainstay on the international circuit. Bel's shows are witty, conceptually tight and typically provocative, guaranteed to trigger conversation and argument after and sometimes even while they unfold on stage. They are imbued with a deep sense of irony that he smartly packages in palatable form. At the forefront of the first wave of conceptual dance in the '90s, he influenced a generation of younger European choreographers. Indeed, many have also passed through the ranks of The Show Must Go On (09/02), which features a large cast staring out at the audience and dancing to pop songs. Pichet Klunchun And Myself (15/02 and 16/02) is a duet of Bel and the traditional Thai dancer Klunchun in which they showcase their attempts at cross-cultural artistic exchange. The problems of power, language and Bel's sizeable ego all rise to surface in this and his other works; it is the work of the audience to unpick and take sides.

NB: this retrospective runs from 01/02 till 16/02. On 16/02 (4pm). Catch Jerome Bel in conversation with Jonathan Burrows.

A cursory glance through the many predictions of who will be big in 2008 would suggest industry pundits made a group decision to hype up a barrage of less self-destructive, and less interesting, clones of Amy Crackhouse . Fortunately there are some acts bubbling under whose repertoire stretches beyond a nice voice over a throwback Motown arrangement. A perfect example of this may be witnessed at the London leg of the Vice Live tour down Brick Lane this Friday. Showcasing their talents are some transatlantic acts in the shape of Black Kids and Friendly Fires. Florida band Black Kids have been compared to The Go! Team minus the annoying tweeness and arrive in London with the weight of great expectation on their young shoulders. Friendly Fires were wrongly lumped in with the whole neu rave non-movement due to their cover of a Chicago House classic, but this St Albans trio has never been about throwaway lysergic sounds and questionable sartorial tastes, instead focusing on honing a layered post-punk sound that destroys dancefloors. This being a Vice event there is the inevitable element of potential shambles in the shape of Ipso Facto, a band whose career stretches to four gigs and several demos on garageband.

NB: this event is free but you have to register here (at vicelivetour.com) for tickets.

There are few good reasons to head into W1 on a weekend night. With the exception of the weekly Push night at the Astoria, most of central London is a circus of bad taste. Strangely enough it is here that east London arty party types Snap Crackle And Pop have chosen to spend their first birthday, taking over the three floors of Sin on Charing Cross Road and packing it with a variety of live acts and DJs that will probably mean precious little to you unless you spend far too much time hanging around Hoxton. Not that you shouldn't take notice though, as DJs such as Crookers, Milan's answer to the likes of Sinden and Switch, and our own Zombie Disco Squad, know how to get the party going with their bass heavy fidget house, baile funk and baltimore club sounds. Over in room two, among the various oddly named bands are two genuine contenders for London's electro/rock crown: The Ghost Frequency and Dead Kids, both of whom you'll be hearing a lot more of this year. And if you need any more persuading consider that the whole affair will set you back less than what most of the perma-tanned chumps are paying for a bottle of beer in the nearby bars: bargain!

At the turn of the millennium, Anthony McCall's oeuvre existed, much like history itself, between concept and lore. Though he stopped making work for 20 years, documentation and accounts continued to circulate of his groundbreaking "solid-light" films -- deceptively simple 16mm projections of stop-frame animation that no less than exploded the "monolithic" experience of the cinematic screen. In the seminal Line Describing A Cone (1973), the film of a dot becoming a line becoming a circle becomes, in space, a "real-time" growing cone of light. Shifting the focus of the viewing experience from the image to its material and spatial qualities, McCall moved the audience, in all senses of the word. Not only have these works been described as beautiful and magical, something akin to a communal experience has also been said to materialise. It's not difficult to see the value of McCall's work, with its prescient and spectacular criticality, re-staged for a contemporary context. Fortunately for us, he has also returned to his art practice and the Serpentine has mounted a retrospective of early (16mm) and more recent works (digital). Time doesn't often throw up a second chance so don't miss out.

NB: we originally published the above last year on 29/11/07 but have decided to re-run the piece as this week is your last chance to catch this retrospective (ends on 03/02).

Interview: we recently chatted with Anthony McCall, to read our interview click here.

Darren Almond explores the world via the lens. He uses video, cinema, photography and installation to scrutinize bodies, landscapes and human habits alike. The resulting works are usually quite unsettling as, thanks to the marvels of long exposure, pronounced grain and slow camera movements, they look both luminous and obscure. With a double exhibition at Parasol unit (Fire Under Snow) and at White Cube (Moons Of The Iapetus Ocean), we get to familiarise ourselves with his eerie and desolate works. Fire Under Snow is a perfect convergence of the themes he has been investigating as an avid traveler: notions of time, memory and human labour are embodied in two films shot in Asia, a series of photographs shot in Siberia and a time-based sculpture. His stark black and white bromide prints of tortured trees (Night + Fog) on snowy wasteland offer a striking contrast to the crisp colors and movements of his In The Between three-screen video installation shot in China and Tibet, yet they perfectly echo the slow death witnessed in Bearing, a single screen projection depicting the plight of an Indonesian sulphur miner.

Symposium: Geographies Of Passage, the accompanying symposium, just might be a good way into what can only be described as superb yet alienating oeuvre. Speakers will include TJ Demos (UCL), Tadeusz Skorupski (SOAS), Andrew Fisher (DESTIN) and Lucy Reynolds (filmmaker, academic and content manager of LUXONLINE). On 06/03 (7:30pm) catch Darren Almond in conversation with Tim Marlow.

NB: Fire Under Snow runs at Parasol unit till 30/03 and Moons Of The Iapetus Ocean runs at White Cube till 23/02.

Wang shift up a gear this year, switching to a monthly schedule and moving to Corsica Studios, with its excellent Funktion-One sound system. After a quiet patch, the crew are back with a vengeance, hosting some killer line-ups of late. February's party is no exception and sees a conscious move towards the electro sound -- a genre close to their collective heart. Topping the bill for their live UK debut is Florida's Jackal & Hyde, who feature one half of '80s electro pioneers, Dynamix II. Ed DMX can be counted on for a crowd-rocking DJ set and J Saul Kane (aka Depth Charge) also makes a rare appearance behind the decks, but the night could well belong to Skam Records man, Rob Hall. For evidence of the man's versatility and impeccable taste, check his website, where he adds a fresh downloadable mix on the first of each month. As always, the residents will be holding things down, and support in second room comes from Lukey Roots, Disco Dave and Ben Lyford.

A must for anyone with a penchant for the glory days of old Hollywood, this two-part documentary, directed by Kevin Brownlow, charts the rise, fall and then rise again of one of cinema's most intriguing and controversial characters. Cecil B DeMille was born in 1881; the former actor cut his teeth in the sensationalist New York theatre and moved to old Hollywood in 1912 to direct a slew of silent motion pictures in the then fledgling film industry that he in part created. Before long he was the biggest name in the industry, directing pictures such as The King Of Kings (1927), reputed to be the most viewed film in history. But when talkies became de rigeur he fell out of favour in Hollywood and left for Europe, only to later return with a wining formula of sex, sadomasochism and religion that hoisted him to the top of his game. His last (and most familiar film for many) was the -- at times ludicrous -- Ten Commandments (1954) starring the ridiculous Charlton Heston. This splendid documentary, features a great archive and a plethora of talking heads including the marvellous Gloria Swanson, Sam Goldwyn and Henry Hathaway, all recorded before many of these "heads" were dead and buried.

NB: after the screening catch Simon Louvish (author of Cecil B DeMille And the Golden Calf), director Kevin Brownlow and producer Patrick Stanbury in conversation.

Quartet For The End Of Time; if ever there were a title for a piece of music that implied a dystopian nightmare this would be it. This, combined with the fact that it was written in 1941 in a Nazi concentration camp, adds up to an insurmountable abundance of fear and loathing. Quatuor pour la fin du temps on the other hand seems a little more playful, more of a provocation than a statement of fact and this to our minds seems to be exactly what is played out in its eight movements. Naturally, the epic themes of faith, morality and love are all present, but so too is an irrevocable playfulness and wit embodied by Oliver Messiaen's notation of birdsong and its transposition across all of the instruments. Here, in the darkest hours of civilisation's meltdown was something that was irrefutable; the simple beauty and freedom of the birds. It is a theme to which Messiaen returned to throughout his life, most notably in his opera Saint Francis of Assisi, but which is perhaps never as poignant as it is in this setting.

NB: the study day starts at 2:30pm and culminates in a complete performance of the Quartet For The End Of Time by the Nash Ensemble at 6pm. This event is part of the Southbank's Oliver Messiaen festival that runs from 01/02 till 10/12.

A surprise candidate for the vast amount of critical aclaim it has received since winning the Golden Lion in Venice (2006), Jia Zhang-ke's Still Life describes the painful process of transition and loss in the lives of seemingly unrelated characters, drawn to a demolition site in search of loved ones. Set among the ruins of Fengjie, a 2000-year-old city being demolished to make way for the widening Yangtze River as part of the controversial Three Gorges Dam project, Still Life combines in equal measures a quiet humanism and starkly pragmatic ethos. Whether seeking reunion or closure in the city's final days, the two couples at the centre of the story, and the web-like assemblage of characters from the site, are calmly aware that they are being propelled forwards, caught in the relentless campaign of progress currently driving the Chinese economy. This film is slow and quiet with an understated grandeur that sets it apart from most Chinese film of recent years, its fantastical elements instead being relegated to the background, highlighting the complexity of the human condition in transit.

NB: Still Life is released in London on 01/02.

Fabulous Beast return to the Barbican with James Son Of James, an epic rural tale of accidental heroism, sadness, hero worship, love, power, betrayal and revenge, told through dance, song and slapstick. James is late for his father's funeral and misses the burial but becomes embroiled in the lives of ten local characters played with panache by an extraordinary international cast of performers hailing from Slovakia, Ireland, England, Laos, Nigeria, Tanzania and France. Artistic Director Michael Keegan-Dolan has brought us The Bull, a muddy family legend and the hyper-real psychotic Flowerbed. His work mixes accomplished contemporary technique and very elaborate theatricality to produce the most amazing pieces of physical and emotional drama. It is no surprise that in 2007 Keegan-Dolan was winner of the Best Modern Choreography at the Critics' Circle National Dance Awards. This year's offering is as mouth-watering as previous shows featured here and if you have not yet had the chance to discover what gravitates on the edge of dance in Europe, don't miss James. Book now as he is renowned for bad time-keeping!

NB: runs till 09/02. On 06/02 catch Michael Keegan-Dolan and the company in conversation with Louise Jeffreys, Barbican Head of Theatre.

Ex-adman Peter Carey is probably Australia's most renowned literary export. He is only one of two writers to have won the Booker Prize twice and has won every major Australian literary prize more than once. Despite having lived in New York for 20 years, his work constantly re-discovers and portrays his homeland. He comes to the Southbank to read from and discuss his latest novel, His Illegal Self. This tells the story of Che, eight-year-old son of radical activist parents on the run from the FBI, who lives in New York at the height of '60s activism with his rich grandmother (who shrewdly calls him Jay). Not permitted to watch television in case he sees his parents on the news, Che spends his time speculating about who and where his parents are. One day he is kidnapped by a woman who he takes to be his mother (though not permitted to call her so) and goes underground across the US only to settle in a hippy commune in Queensland. A novel about an adult and child fighting for survival in a hostile environment -- it was no doubt inspired by Carey's own time in one of Australia's "alternative" communities.

In this film, Michael Redgrave stars as a classics tutor at a boys' boarding school, in an adaptation of a Terence Rattigan play. Despite starting his career with a youthful idealism and a passion for his craft, the now middle-aged Andrew Crocker-Harris confronts his failures as a teacher and a husband when he is forced into retirement due to ill health. He is disliked by his fellow staff and students, and even his wife has been unfaithful to him. Yet all is not lost. He is moved when his pupil Taplow gives him the present of Robert Browning's translation of Agamemnon -- inscribed with the Greek phrase that translates as "God from afar looks graciously upon a gentle master" -- and he becomes a changed man. Redgrave plays the role splendidly, with characteristic British restraint and he shines under the subtle direction of Anthony Asquith, who is best known for his expressionist silent movies.

NB: the film is part of the Barbican's Michael Redgrave Centenary and it is introduced by another luminary of that great acting dynasty, Vanessa Redgrave.

Following Paul Pfeiffer's immense sound installation of football crowds cheering the England team in a warehouse next to Wembley Stadium, two new video works draw on similar themes of appropriated voices and exploitation. The cheering crowd was actually voiced by hoards of Filipinos directed by the artist to accurately mimic English football chants. In the installation Live From Neverland, another group of anonymous Filipinos lend their voices to Pfeiffer, this time in the guise of a Greek chorus. They perfectly recite the infamous confession Michael Jackson made on the TV show Living With Michael Jackson, where he admitted sharing his bed with children. In unison the females on the right speak the higher, more hysterical parts of his speech, while their male counterparts utter the lower, more controlled words, creating a strangely split voice-over to Jacko's silent monologue playing on the TV monitor opposite. Dressed in white and standing on tiered staging, the chorus eerily suggests a class of school children that might normally be reciting Shakespeare. In the second room a tiny screen and oversized speaker play Koko: the film depicts a gorilla responding to a human companion, who's appearance is all but erased but for a flitting pair of hands, digitally duplicated in mirror-image, coercing the captive ape to perform for the camera.

NB: runs till 16/02.

Working alongside a somewhat familiar framework of '70s conceptual art, Pavel Buechler presents new works that exemplify a contingency between happened upon objects and conceptual thinking. But his creations, collections of material fragments and ideas are by no means sparse or visually dry. The series Modern Paintings transforms pieces of painted canvas -- scraps cut from paintings bought at flea markets, scavenged from bins and street corners or donated from friends -- into new works. The artist is interested in the reclaiming of fleeting materiality: everyday objects, other peoples' paintings, film footage and photographs, as well as the time that seems to slip by unnoticed in cigarette breaks, reworking them into perfect quasi-masterpieces. But he is also dedicated to disappearance and what it might mean to de-value: his series of precise drawings of hands reminiscent of instruction manuals and shadow puppetry on carbonless copy paper are attached delicately to the wall. The mark of these hands will eventually fade, leaving only a trace of the artist, on a worthless (?) piece of paper.

NB: runs till 23/02.

At the turn of the millennium, Anthony McCall's oeuvre existed, much like history itself, between concept and lore. Though he stopped making work for 20 years, documentation and accounts continued to circulate of his groundbreaking "solid-light" films -- deceptively simple 16mm projections of stop-frame animation that no less than exploded the "monolithic" experience of the cinematic screen. In the seminal Line Describing A Cone (1973), the film of a dot becoming a line becoming a circle becomes, in space, a "real-time" growing cone of light. Shifting the focus of the viewing experience from the image to its material and spatial qualities, McCall moved the audience, in all senses of the word. Not only have these works been described as beautiful and magical, something akin to a communal experience has also been said to materialise. It's not difficult to see the value of McCall's work, with its prescient and spectacular criticality, re-staged for a contemporary context. Fortunately for us, he has also returned to his art practice and the Serpentine has mounted a retrospective of early (16mm) and more recent works (digital). Time doesn't often throw up a second chance so don't miss out.

NB: this week is your last chance to catch the Serpentine show (ends on 03/02).

To read the interview click here.

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