A dark-haired, skeletal figure at the piano, growling and screeching her way through the blues... not it's not Amy Winehouse, but a totally different animal (lizard queen?) of a far more horrifying stripe. Diamanda Galas is one of the few artists to take avant-garde extended techniques and use them in her own style, taking the darker elements of blues, country and even industrial music and deliver them via one of the most powerful and versatile voices in music today. It's not just technically impressive: her vampiric stage presence has been known to send chills down many spines. On both London dates of her tour she is due to perform songs from her upcoming album, Guilty Guilty Guilty including songs made famous by Johnny Cash, Timi Yuro, Tracy Nelson and Edith Piaf, and we have a feeling her renditions may be somewhat different.

NB: Diamanda Galas will be signing CDs in the QEH foyer after the show.

Australian trio plus synths plus cosmic references could well equal a serious case of deja vu for anyone who has had the pleasure of an acquaintance with Cut Copy this year or The Presets last. Perhaps in part due to that easy conclusion, Midnight Juggernauts prove a lot about themselves up front. First off, the trio's debut, Dystopia to , achieved major success in Australia and then fell into the record box of Busy P from a label that's not, for once, Modular, but their own -- Siberia Records. Having caught the attention of Winter, force majeure in anything that includes the words "electro" or "Paris" these days, they proceeded to go on tour with Justice last year, providing a psychedelic counterpoint to all the Durrrs. By and large it's a pleasing creative mix that they've come up with -- and at the very least worthy of attention if not lionisation. Busy P is in support in person too (along with Metronomy), the combination of which rarely makes for a dull night out.

Being married to Matthew Herbert must be difficult at the best of times -- for example, not having any vegetables for the Sunday Roast cos he's done nicked them for sample fodder for one of his albums. We must be grateful, then, that Dani Siciliano can find solace from such trivialities in her own musical career which, over the course of several albums, has seen her develop one of the most recognizable voices in electronic music. While the wait for new material continues, you can get your fix of Mrs Siciliano by checking out the launch of new venture Minimalism, where she is performing live. Thankfully, the musical policy of the night encompasses more than the clicks and bumps of the techno genre by the same name -- indeed, the fact that the highly regarded Dub Kult shares the bill tonight and that Isolee is just one of the guests confirmed for future events, should be seen as a statement of intent to get the attendees' feet moving.

Ryan Gosling, of cheesefest The Notebook and 2007 Oscar contender Half Nelson, is the eponymous Lars, a geeky social misfit stuck out in the snowy sticks, living in the garage of his brother's house. Shy and awkward, he goes into recluse overdrive when his sister-in- law becomes pregnant. Enter stage left (or by post, more accurately) Bianca, an Internet sex doll, whom Lars confides in (no sick plastic nookie here, no siree). Lars completely humanises Bianca and to the horror of his family introduces her to the local community as his girlfriend. Both comical and ridiculous, the situation calls for some emotional sensitivity as Lars' tortured mental state becomes ever more acute. The film deftly manages to nurture both elements. It's an ambitious balance to maintain, but the film is incredibly rich for it, mainly because of stellar turns from Patricia Clarkson (his psychologist) and Emily Mortimer (the sister-in-law). It's a strange film, but one that doesn't pander to kookiness, standing up artistically without having to rely on left-field oddity.

NB: Lars And The Real Girl is released in London on 21/03. Other new films of note are The Orphanage, You, The Living, Beaufort and The English Surgeon.

The Guy Hilton Gallery heads south of the river to Sun & Doves, one of Camberwell's art bars, to present the month-long season Live On Stage. Curators Mark McGowan, Stella Scott and Guy Hilton have assembled a truly diverse, even eccentric assortment of talent, crossing visual art, music, literature, comedy and the spaces between them. Every day, from 20/03 till 18/04, a different group of individuals will take the stage at varying times during afternoon as well as evening offerings, so check the schedule in advance. There are spots from writers Will Self and Stephen Micalef, artists David Medalla, Brian Catling, Bob and Roberta Smith, Marcia Farquhar and many others. Bands include The Fucks and The Forest Fires, and there is even an appearance from self-styled comedy terrorist Aaron Barschak.

NB: runs from 20/03 till 18/04.

A recent Time Out article bemoaned the lack of decent sound systems in London clubs beyond a select few. Be thankful then that one of those, The End, plays host to the launch party for Carl Craig's new Sessions mix CD which sees him segue through a career's worth of production and remix highlights. Mention of C2 is usually preceded by hyperbolic phrases such as "seminal" and "Detroit legend", and rightly so, with a career spanning nearly 20 years of music production. Joining him is established jazz beard Gilles Peterson, who will hopefully leave the 12-minute Art Blakey excursions at home. Should you require something a little less boompty boompty, the AKA lounge has the much vaunted Hercules And Love Affair, taking a break from being featured in every magazine around to lay down some of their favourite disco.

NB: next Saturday make sure you catch A Guy Called Gerald, Shinedoe and DJ Pierre at mulletover's 4th birthday.

Richie Hawtin's Minus record label has shed vast influence on the face of modern dance music, becoming synonymous with the "minimal" sound that has Europe firmly in its grasp. Originally established ten years ago as an offshoot of his Plus 8 label, Minus has long since dwarfed its counterpart, propelling Hawtin and its roster to new levels of global popularity. To celebrate their tenth birthday, Minus declared "10 weeks of silence" early this year -- the premise being that, for this period, there would be no releases and no tour dates from the key artists: minimal, indeed, but also an attempt at avoiding ubiquity? No matter: Easter Saturday sees the end of the self-enforced embargo, and a huge label party at Fabric where all three rooms will host different sections of the Minus family. Such ambition seems well within Hawtin's grasp, and the roadblock crowd it's sure to pull will no doubt add fuel to the fire.

NB: next Saturday make sure you catch A Guy Called Gerald, Shinedoe and DJ Pierre at mulletover's 4th birthday.

The classification of art is a science, taking in production, ability, general history, genre, religion, colour and countless other factors. The curators of this show have playfully undertaken an irreverent and cheeky approach to examining this alien force we recognize as "art", by suggesting that anthropologists from outer space have collated the show and displayed the art objects as simple artifacts, without reference to interpretation. So works by Sigmar Polke, Bruce Nauman, Joseph Beuys, Damien Hirst, Susan Hiller, Sherrie Levine and over 100 other artists are connected by virtue of simply being "tall objects", or categorised according to such labels as "Decent", "Magic" and "Belief". Within this logic, a Warhol print becomes a religious icon, while Manzoni's canned shit and Burroughs' methadone bottle are filed as "Unclassified Objects". Baffling and rewarding in equal measures, you are forced to view contemporary art in a fresh way, your superior intellect no measure for these ingenious aliens. In the wise words of Yoda, "you must unlearn what you have learned, do or do not... there is no try".

NB: runs till 18/05. A season of outer space films, readings by acclaimed novelist Tom McCarthy (20/03 at 6:30pm), discussions on magic and the stars, and a supernatural performance by Olivier Award winning artist Marisa Carnesky (03/04 at 9pm) accompany the show over the coming weeks.

Institution Shows: other exhibitions of note are Derek Jarman at the Serpentine, Peter Doig at Tate Britain, Juan Munoz at Tate Modern, Alexander Rodchenko at The Hayward, Alfredo Jaar at SLG, Lu Chunsheng at The Red Mansion Foundation and Thomas Scheibitz at Camden Arts Centre.

Portraits of Royals, and of Elizabeth in particular, are generally only interesting for the hilarity they provoke. And by hilarity we mean scandal. Just ask Lucian Freud. Chris Levine's light-based installations summon sci-fi hopes of a not-so-distant technotopia, but the single likeness that is the sum of its serial studies appears, for better or for worse, to provide a glimpse into the future of portraiture. A holographic image comprised of a series of photos shot over an unprecedented two sittings with HRH, Equanimity is bold and unusual if a tad on the tacky side -- call it a disarmingly ambiguous specimen of future kitsch. The portrait is only one of a plethora of studies on display: visually tasty but strangely cold works that make up the largest collection of Levine's work ever to be shown, engaging the entire hangar-sized space in a play of light and colour that showcases the finer points of the artist's signature process.

NB: runs till 23/03.

The Orphanage is a beautifully shot, amazingly well-scripted Spanish picture produced by Guillermo Del Toro, that tells the story of a mother, movingly portrayed by the quite superb Belen Rueda, and her search for her young son whom she believes has been abducted by the ghosts of children who occupy her new home, once the orphanage in which she grew up. Akin to Kubrick's excellent The Shining (in that we are never quite sure if the ghosts are of the traditional variety or the infinitely more believable figments of our heroine's emotionally tainted imagination) this superior supernatural thriller is all the better for its restrained use of either shock tactics or excessive blood and gore and will, we assure you, be remade by Hollywood starring the likes of Blanchett, Kidman or if you're lucky, Hilary Swank.

NB: The Orphanage is released in London on 21/03. Other new films of note are Lars And The Real Girl, You, The Living, Beaufort and The English Surgeon.

It is now practically impossible to dissociate films from digital special effects but can the same be said of gaming, advertising, art and design? The potential of digital technologies has yet to be fully realized and pioneers in the field still push the boundaries of our imagination with the magic they can spin out of hardware and software. As a follow-up to the series of talks focusing on digital art organised in collaboration between Supernatural Studios and Tate Modern, this Digital Dreams is an extravaganza of two evening lectures with the likes of the legendary Mike Milne, Director of Computer Animation, Framestore CFC and Scott Eaton, founder of Armature Studios, Marc Petit, Senior Vice President of Autodesk Media & Entertainment, as well as a selection of designers and technicians. A seminar room will be open to the public in the afternoons for those who wish to meet the leading brains behind the digital revolution and play around with the technology.

NB: Digital Dreams runs for two nights on both 25/03 and 26/03. Also of note is the Digital Pecha Kucha at Logan Hall (17/04).

With her distinctive beaded hair and adventurous repertoire, Joanna MacGregor has continued to blur the boundaries separating contemporary music, classical and jazz. A roll call of her collaborators includes such esteemed figures as Pierre Boulez, Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Colin Davis, Talvin Singh and Andy Sheppard. However, it's her almost spiritual devotion to the work of Messiaen that draws her back to an atmospherically candlelit Cadogan Hall. Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jesus is one of the most exceptional piano cycles ever composed: 20 movements meditate on the mystery of the baby Jesus and the wonders of the universe, and convey Messiaen's profound and ardent beliefs: meditative, languorous, fierce and meticulous in equal parts. Prepare for a two-hour journey into this monumental work; take a cushion and prepare for the ebb and flow of a sonorous encounter.

Alan Sillitoe was one of the angry young men of the 1950s. His gritty, realist portrayal of the working classes caused a stir in literary circles, breaking with sentimental depictions of days gone by. He came to attention with Saturday Night And Sunday Morning (1958), in which his philandering, factory worker antihero Arthur Seaton struggles to contain his disillusionment towards the hierarchical society of post-war Britain. "Don't let the bastards get you down," he says. The book became a bestseller and was turned into a film by Karel Reisz. It was followed by The Loneliness Of The Long-Distance Runner (1959), narrated by a rebellious Borstal boy, that won the Hawthornden Prize. In this talk celebrating the author's 80th birthday, Sillitoe will talk about his seminal works including novels such as A Start In Life (1970) -- republished to coincide with his birthday.

NB: this event is free but you must email events@foyles.co.uk to reserve a ticket.

One of the best signings that Warp have made in several years, Flying Lotus, aka LA resident and nephew of Alice Coltrane, Steven Ellison made waves last year with his Reset EP. Much like Warp's other new signing, Glaswegian Hudson Mohawke, FlyLo mixes up J Dilla-esque hip-hop with grainy electronica, broken beats and plenty of invention. Now with his debut album Los Angeles in the can he's over in London for a show at Plastic People alongside dubstep pioneer Kode9, ready to showcase his new material. Perfectly suited to the venue's monster sound-system and dark dancefloor, expect a pulverising, bass-heavy experience from an artist capable of finding new life in several genres that have been looking a little stale of late.

NB: catch Hudson Mohawke along with Rustie at the Numbers' night on 22/03 (10:30pm - 3am) at Gramaphone.

Arguably one of Huddersfield's most famous literary exports, Simon Armitage (poet, novelist, dramatist, translator and all-round erudite) comes to Foyles this week to read three commemorative poetic commissions that take recent and not so recent world events as their inspiration. Though no stranger to epic heroes (having written a version of Euripides' The Madness Of Heracles and recently translating the baffling Middle English poem Sir Gawain And The Green Knight), Armitage has put himself in the shoes of a lowly trader in the North Tower of the World Trade Centre, in a piece called Out Of The Blue, commemorating the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Also being read are We Will Allow Ourselves A Brief Period Of Rejoicing, based around Winston Churchill's victory speech at the end of WWII, and Cambodia, a radio poem set in present-day Cambodia, 30 years after Poll Pot's terrible regime wreaked havoc on the country. Let's just hope a poem commemorating an end to war in Iraq is on the cards.

NB: this event is free but you must email events@foyles.co.uk to reserve a ticket.

Not so much a tragi-comedy as an apt if washed-out portrayal of the absurdities of life, Roy Andersson's latest film is unmistakably Scandinavian in its quirkiness and vague subtlety. You, The Living brings together the stories of a non-community somewhere in Sweden: a group of urbane malcontents, hopelessly introspective and isolated. Some of their stories are sweet, some ridiculous, sharing common threads of needless desperation and the sentimental inconvenience of social life. The film, like Andersson's previous work, diverges from a conventional narrative -- each character finds him or herself persistently confronted with the others, who continually resurface in a series of unavoidable incidents as they meander through their daily routines. The film's peculiar ambience is striking, created via a series of bizarre sets that call to mind IKEA's straight-laced civil-servant older brother, if it had one. The effect is dimly institutional, as though each scenario takes place in a waiting room of one kind or another, celebrating the plainness and universality of its 57 component stories.

NB: You, The Living is released in London on 28/03. Other new films of note are The Orphanage, Lars And The Real Girl, Beaufort and The English Surgeon.

A rare opportunity to see two of Allan Kaprow's most important "Happenings" being re-enacted. Fluids, first staged in 1967, involves assembling blocks of ice and allowing them to melt; Scales will involve constructing steps made of concrete blocks being placed over the existent steps of the Tate's stairwell. Both works depend on the active participation of a group of people to function. Acknowledged as the pioneer of performance art in the US, both as theorist and practitioner, Kaprow's events introduced radical questions into art -- of the temporality of art, its relation to life and communitarian aspect, notions of authorship and so on. Kaprow felt that "the distinction between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps as indistinct, as possible", an idea that would go on to influence the pioneering offspring of event-based art, including the Fluxus group.

NB: institution shows of note are Derek Jarman at the Serpentine, Peter Doig at Tate Britain, Juan Munoz at Tate Modern, Museum Of Terrestrial Art at the Barbican, Alexander Rodchenko at The Hayward, Alfredo Jaar at SLG, Lu Chunsheng at The Red Mansion Foundation and Thomas Scheibitz at Camden Arts Centre.

Christopher Isherwood's life was a microcosm of the 20th century. Friends with literati including Edward Upward, Stephen Spender, Aldous Huxley and Virginia Woolf he was WH Auden's mentor (and lover) and the pair collaborated on several plays. In 1929 Isherwood joined Auden in Berlin, gaining an outsider's view of the simultaneous decay of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazism. Here he wrote Goodbye To Berlin, considered one of the most significant political novels of the century. In 1939 he emigrated to the US in the looming face of war (a controversial move in the eyes of some patriotic Brits in his set) and was subsequently one of the first internationally known figures to admit that he was homosexual. In the '70s he became a leading spokesman for gay rights and his relationship with the much younger Don Bachardy was the subject of several paintings by David Hockney. His biographer, Peter Parker, joins The Last Tuesday Society to discuss Isherwood's Berlin, books and boys.

NDT1 returns to Sadler's Wells with the UK premiere of Jiri Kylian's Tar And Feathers, a piece staged dramatically with a pianist perched metres above the stage. Inspired by Beckett's poem What Is The Word, which he wrote on his deathbed, six dancers move between black and white scenes and deliver super-fast gestures and frozen poses to live fragments of Mozart's music. This will certainly remind us of the sumptuous One Of A Kind presented to great acclaim at the Wells in 2005. Kylian's second piece, Wings Of Wax, opens with a stunning image -- a tree hanging upside down above the stage and swaying to the music of Bach and Philip Glass. The programme is completed with Signing Off, which won its choreographers Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leon the international dance prize Benois de la Danse in 2005. If you've never experienced NDT1, don't miss your chance this time. With movements, sets and music to die for, they are one of this season's treats.

NB: NDT1 perform at Sadler's Wells from 02/04 till 05/04. Also of note is Sylvie Guillem and Russell Maliphant at the Coliseum from 04/04 till 07/04 (there are not many tickets left so get yours asap) and Les Balets C de la B at the Southbank Centre on 03/04 and 04/04.

The swirling melodies of Copenhagen's Efterklang put them at the forefront of the post-rock scandinavian pop vanguard. Playing together since 2001, the five core members create an emotionally charged combination of multi-layered vocals, electronic rhythms and string arrangements. Joined for their live performances by additional instrumentalists, they'll showcase many of the tracks from their latest album Parades (Leaf). Describing their writing and recording process as "one... of sculpturing; adding, stretching or subtracting the pieces of each song, finding the right melodies to guide the different pieces and instrumentation of it all", they produce pieces that are at once intimate as well as panoramic. Also performing at this Arctic Circle evening are Leaf label-mates Wildbirds & Peacedrums from Sweden, and fellow Danes Our Broken Garden, both swathed in Nordic pop melancholia and soul.

For this tour, and the accompanying album released this month, the band playing at The Scala are operating under the somewhat ridiculous alias Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band, though they have recorded and performed as several variations of this moniker over their eight-year career. Essentially starting as a side project by members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the band has long since established permanence on the scene and a distinct identity. However, like Godspeed, the spirit of collaboration is strongly felt in their frequently shifting personnel. One of the most notable differences in the two bands is the inclusion of vocals in the work of TSMZO. Indeed, this element has come to the fore on their latest long player, which has a distinctly more rocking feel -- making these live shows an undoubtedly appealing prospect.

NB: The Silver Mount Zion Orchestra perform at the Scala on both 07/04 and 08/04.

Pecha Kucha -- a forum for to meet and discuss ideas -- returns to London, at the Logan Hall in Bloomsbury. If you are new to this novel presentation idea it's really quite simple: on this occasion 12 excellent creatives from similar digital design and advertising backgrounds will talk freely about a project they are currently working on, or perhaps something that's simply on their mind. Diversity of subject matter is most welcome at a Pecha Kucha night. The rub lies in the fact that each person is limited to showing just 20 slides and commenting on each one for just 20 seconds. Unless everyone here lacks the relaxed and confident sass required for engaging public speaking, there is a good chance these austere info blams will prove entertaining and revealing. Among the speakers are some of the hottest names in the industry, including visionary Florian Schmitt from Hi-ReS!, the versatile Liz Sivell from Profero, the innovative Laura J Bambach from Glue and the peerless Nat Hunter at Airside. Now pay attention at the back!

NB: also of note is the Digital Dreams symposium at Tate Modern (25/03 and 26/03).

Discreteness is part of the strength of this exhibition and Robert Barry has been quietly raising the stakes on the process of looking for over 40 years. Starting out as a painter, by the '70s he focused his work on a preoccupation with the relationship between language and form. This current exhibition gives us several stencil on coloured paper text works from the '80s as well as more recent text on mirror works, a canvas, a video using a talk from a world expert on ants and a new wall-piece created for the gallery. Barry uses words with lightness and precision, in a way similar to his contemporary Lawrence Weiner. There is also a hesitant figuration in Barry's work, with the recurring motif of a leafless tree seemingly visualising the idea of a pattern of thought. The mirrored vinyl wall text is also printed on the invitation card, so that nothing can be missed. It reads "EXPECT, CHANGING, REMIND, REAL, CONTINUE, WAITING". If only we too could pay attention to the world in this way.

NB: runs till 19/04.

Institution Shows: other exhibitions of note are Derek Jarman at the Serpentine, Peter Doig at Tate Britain, Juan Munoz at Tate Modern, Museum Of Terrestrial Art at the Barbican, Alexander Rodchenko at The Hayward, Alfredo Jaar at SLG, Lu Chunsheng at The Red Mansion Foundation and Thomas Scheibitz at Camden Arts Centre.

At the entrance of Established & Sons, the venue for architect and designer Amanda Levete's first solo exhibition Around The Corner, we press a discreet buzzer and a sliding glass door reveals a cool white interior befitting a gallery dedicated to design. A white cube has been constructed within the gallery to house four limited edition pieces titled North, South, East and West, each so expertly crafted that they make beautiful sculptural objects as well as fully functioning pieces of furniture. Levete's exploration of the often neglected corners of a room results in an organic American walnut bench, undulating blue corian shelves, a futuristic fluorescent wall-mounted console and a sleek black desk that seems to float in mid-air. The designs on display here have the same exhilarating curves as Levete's architecture, which expresses a femininity and surreal imagination similar to that of Zaha Hadid. As one half of groundbreaking architectural practice Future Systems, Levete's current projects include an underground station in Naples, a hotel in Bangkok and a bridge in Dublin.

NB: runs till 30/04. Also of note, close by, is the Marc Newson show at Gagosian Davies Street (till 19/04) and the inaugural show at Carpenters Workshop Gallery's new Mayfair space (till 22/03). And, for serious design fans, be sure to see Jean Prouve's retrospective at the Design Museum and his Maison Tropicale in front of Tate Modern (both till 13/04).

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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