Fashion shows in reverse, clothes worn upside down, models bearing scaffolding down the catwalk, some call it avant-garde, others, double-dutch. It's extraordinary, that's certain. Dutch design duo Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren have been attracting global attention since they began working together after graduation in 1992 from the Arnhem Academy Of Art And Design. In keeping with their signature brand of irony, Viktor & Rolf are physically identical even down to their designer stubble, and have been described as "joined at the mind". It is no surprise then that their bi-annual collections in Paris continue to baffle and excite fashionistas in equal measure with their surrealist designs and hard-hitting concepts. In their 1999 Russian Doll show, supermodel Maggie Rizer was famously dressed by Viktor & Rolf in nine layers of jewel encrusted dresses in reference to fashion's exclusivity and unavailability and in 2005 the designers opened their Milan boutique in which a neo- classical interior had been installed upside down. An array of their most iconic designs and key moments will be showcased in The House Of Viktor & Rolf at the Barbican along with specially commissioned huge doll house.

Debate: on 19/06 (7pm) catch Penny Martin when she chairs a debate entitled "Does Fashion Belong In A Gallery?" Participants include Professor Christopher Breward (Deputy Head of Research, V&A), Lou Taylor (Professor of Dress and Textile History, University Of Brighton) and Jose Teunissen (Professor of Fashion Theory at ArtEZ Institute of the Arts, Arnhem).

NB: The House Of Viktor & Rolf runs till 21/09.

"Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it", so wrote Isidore Ducasse in the 19th century. But where is the line drawn between theft and appropriation, especially within an artistic context? Sampling in popular musical culture has become a trend -- the interlacing of histories through another's musical language. In 1912 Picasso and Braque constructed works out of newspapers, playing with the ideas of representation, followed closely by Duchamp and his Fountain urinal, feeding into the early '80s where Richard Prince re- photographed magazine adverts of the Marlboro Man, and Jeff Koons transformed another's photograph into a sculpture (with legal ramifications). We live in a knowing age of concepts, irony and information at the click of a mouse, but how are these ideas impacting upon creative practices? To debate this, as part of Past-Forward, a gallery show that questions the means and ends of artistic production, are Zowie Broach and Brian Kirkby of fashion house Boudicca; Jan Verwoert, Contributing Editor at frieze; Robin Rimbaud, aka Scanner; and Professor Robert Eaglestone. Then again, as Picasso confirmed: "Good artists borrow, great artists steal."

NB: Past-Forward runs till 03/08.

This play explores the inevitable fact of life: death. It's impossible to avoid. As you walk into the theatre you'll find the word on stage -- even before Hugh Hughes shares his monologue on the death of his father and neighbour's pet rabbit. But this "emergent Welsh multimedia artist" (the alter-ego of Shon Dale-Jones) will cheer you up. He welcomes his audience with cups of tea, a wide-eyed, scruffy but likeable character who stirs you to consider the wonder of things. "Around the time that people die, people drink a lot of tea," he reflects softly. To the accompaniment of music from his best friend Aled Williams, he invites the audience to sing, shares multimedia projections of his memories and gives funny impressions of a rabbit. Aside from the mundane comedy of his actions, he moves into philosophical territory, blurring fantasy and reality in the vein of Luis Bunuel. His show is strikingly visual, with its screening of contemplative images -- from a church clock tower to poetic landscapes and starry constellations. Co-produced by Hoipolloi and The New Wolsey Theatre, and the winner of a Fringe First Award, the play will warm your cockles and shake you alive.

NB: runs till 21/06.

In a climate where the music industry fat cats are bemoaning the impact of those naughty mp3 bloggers, there is a certain irony in the launch of a new music label, catchily titled This Is Music whose roster contains some of the most talked about artists on the interwebs of late in Lord Skywave, Barringtone and Little Boots. "Who are they", you say? Here is a cheat sheet for those who don't spend their lunch break plundering Hypem. Lord Skywave is the side project of Simon Lord, the voice of gothic electro band The Black Ghosts -- the recent Lord Skywave album sounds like what Jamie Lidell should be doing instead of descending into some nightmarish Jamairoquai tribute act. Barringtone rose from the embers of the failed musical beast Clor with a slew of remixes for the likes of Late Of The Pier and Infants and the promise of new material is very exciting. Little Boots is the new project for Victoria Hesketh, front hottie from art rockers Dead Disco, and the crisp electro pop of "Stuck On Repeat" and "Meddle" sounds like something la Minogue would kill for. You can catch all three in Hoxton (where else?) with Barringtone and Lord Skywave playing live with Little Boots DJing alongside David P and JDH from FIXED, the best night out in Brooklyn.

The London Architecture Biennale is dead -- long live the London Festival Of Architecture! It's a very different event though, being bigger, and much longer (a whole month) than its predecessor. It's also more structured; the festival is based geographically around five "Hubs", and integrates other related events including the City of London Festival and The Hayward's 40th Anniversary celebrations. One of the real strengths this year looks to be the huge quantity of guided walks, cycle rides, and other tours -- but beware of bands of cyclists hurtling toward you, none of them may be looking at the road!

As ever, it's virtually impossible to pick a best of list so better to trawl the site for your own personal choices. But if we really, really had to...

Explore Sites And Sounds
Sat 21/06 (10am - midnight)
Kind of the main launch event -- a midsummer celebration in Exhibition Road of music, performance and architecture, with numerous installations by big names, including Penoyre & Prasad's interpretation of the Crystal Palace, using, er, helium weather balloons.

Underground Style On The Picadilly Line
Sun 22/06 (11am - 1pm)
A rare chance to catch a genuinely expert guided tour of Charles Holden's best works.

Bike Tour: Bikes And Bridges
Sun 29/06 (10:30am - 5pm)
Unfair perhaps to pick out one cycle tour, but this one covers all five Hubs in one day, and will leave you saddle sore but architecturally satiated.

David Chipperfield Lecture
Thu 03/07 (6:30 - 8pm)
Another of Britain's finest architects, who hardly ever gets to build in Britain.

Noho Square Site Tour By Make Architects
Fri 04/07 (4 - 5pm)
Go for a tour of Make's first major London building (plus you can hear Make main man Ken Shuttleworth talk, and visit their office).

Contemporary Architecture At Kew Gardens
Tue 08/07 (10:30am - 12:30pm)
Kew is currently London's best kept architectural secret, with new work by Ted Cullinan, Marks Barfield, Walters and Cohen and Wilkinson Eyre (with a stunning high-tech take on a greenhouse).

Saint Etienne: This Is Tomorrow
Fri 11/07 (6:15pm)
Another chance to see the film made by the Saint Etienne when they were "Band in Residence" for the RFH's refurbishment.

Rogers Stirk Harbour -- Talk On The Leadenhall Building
Wed 16/07 (1 - 2:30pm)
Set to be London's newest icon, Andy Young will tell us about "the Cheese Grater" (it must be an icon, it's already got a silly name).

Cheapside Market
Sat 19/07 (10am - 4pm)
Yes, an actual medieval market, recreated for your pleasure in London's very first high street. But with improved hygiene, we're assuming.

Clerkenwell Village Fete
Sun 20/07 (12 - 4pm)
And finally... what better way to round off the festival? Torrential downpour not guaranteed.

NB: LFA 2008 runs till 20/07.

Sandrine Bonnaire burst into the international cinematic consciousness in 1985 in Agnes Varda's Vagabond, an examination of the downward spiral into homelessness of a troubled young woman. Although only 18 at the time, Bonnaire's performance was breathtakingly real, earning her a Cesar and winning the film the Golden Lion at Venice. She has continued to repeatedly work with the cream of French directors -- Patrice Laconte, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette -- often portraying tormented characters. In her directorial debut, she has put her long years of observing those talents to work in order to examine the possible source for her characterisations -- her younger sister Sabine. Battling all her life with autism, Sabine -- who is shown in early home movies as young, quirky and beautiful -- increasingly fell out of the normal rhythms of life as she grew older, resulting in a disastrous five year stay in a psychiatric hospital, before eventually being moved to a small group home. The documentary is a very perceptive and personal look at the effects of different approaches to mental illness, as well as an examination of the effects of the emotional pressures, and search for understanding, of both of those being treated and those who love them.

NB: Her Name Is Sabine screens at the ICA till 20/07. Also of note is the re-release of Killer Of Sheep, the John Maybury Q&A screening of The Edge Of Love and the special screening of My Winnipeg with a live narration by Guy Maddin.

Drawing on the current climate of international terror, where you could be detained for 42 days without a charge, where you are under constant surveillance, and where one of the sources of terror is like a fictional character from a movie (only appearing in video tapes on the internet), Bock & Vincenzi bring together emblematic characters Dr Mabuse and King Lear. In this production they use CCTV to blur the boundaries between fiction and reality and create an infinite closed circuit of terror and the unknown. Behind a black screen part-concealing the stage, seven performers respond to Fritz Lang's The Testament Of Dr Mabuse, as it is played to them in real time. Surveillance cameras record the behind the scenes action, projecting this back onto the screen, thereby creating a new live film. Since 1995 Frank Bock (performer/choreographer) and Simon Vincenzi (director/designer) have explored the relationship between the language of movement and the mystery of the image; they have also individually worked with companies such as The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs and Duckie. So don't be coy; let yourself be seduced by The Infinite Pleasures Of The Great Unknown.

NB: runs till 21/06.

The last time Sunburned Hand Of The Man came to London it was to support Four Tet at the indigO2, in what might have looked to a lot of people like a familiar tale of a mentor surrounding himself with his latest acolytes. Furthermore, given their recent collaboration on last year's Fire Escape, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Sunburned are just another band barking up the same tree Hebden has already reached the top of. In reality, it seems things are in fact rather different. Truth be told, Sunburned have been stirring up a rather special aura of their own since 1994, something which was reflected by the legions of people who left the indigO2 raving about them that night and has now come home to roost in the form of them curating their own mini festival for one night at the ICA. It's an evening that promises to unleash the full eclecticism of their method, something which involves abandoning stage times and eschews clearly directed line-ups. Instead, Sunburned and their collaborators -- U-Sound (aka Tom Greenwood), Joanne Robertson, Martin Creed, The Rebel, Bad Bat and David Cunningham -- will improvise the proceedings in a feast John Cage would surely have been proud of.

It's festy season. With the sun not only do bare legs and shoulders suddenly emerge into the daylight, but around the city there begins to crop up a reason to be outdoors listening to music almost every day of the week. The Exhibition Road Music Festival returns this year with an eclectic mix of inoffensive/easy listening and discordant indie-rockers. British Sea Power will head-up the main stage at the Natural History Museum (9:30 - 11pm). We suggest you get your tickets early -- these boys are earmarked for "next-big-thing-dom" and, since they're free, tickets are going like hotcakes. Over at the Serpentine KF favourites EYOE will be serving up some ever so slightly juicier synth-pop and bleep-core with Late of the Pier, tempered with a bit of gritty blues from relative newcomer Florence And The Machine and some experimental jazz from Kieran Hebden aka Four Tet and EYOE DJs (5:30 - 8:30pm). Bands start just after brekkie, so if you get out there early and wander up and down the street, you'll be able catch some traditional Roma music, a selection of brass bands, a Columbian throat singer and some holy rollin' gospel.

NB: make sure you check out 6a Architects' Brompton Stoops located on Exhibition Road.

Over 20 years after his death in 1982, American architect Bruce Goff is being brought to the attention of the London art crowd with a weekend of events at Tate Modern. The child prodigy turned design maverick had fantastic visions for what architecture should be. Ahead of his time, Goff was designing organic buildings using unconventional materials that opened up radically new possibilities for what a building could look like. Although only about a quarter of the 500 buildings he designed got built, his work has inspired the likes of Archigram and more recently Zaha Hadid. Highlights of the Goff weekend include two "must see" films for architecture fetishists: artist Stephen Prina's new film, The Way He Always Wanted It II (shot in Goff's stunning Ford House) will be screened on Saturday and is the UK premiere (21/06, 8pm) and on Sunday, Heinz Emigholz will be introducing Goff In The Desert that documents 62 of Goff's remaining buildings from small petrol stations to museums (22/06, 2pm). Shot in 2002, Emilgholz's film is the result of a 9,200 mile trip across the USA. The final highlight will be a discussion that celebrates Goff's life and work between Charles Jencks, Peter Cook, John Sergeant, Sid Robinson and Stephen Prina (21/06, 3 - 6pm).

NB: runs on both 21/06 and 22/06.

Opening the Edinburgh Film Festival this week, is John Maybury's The Edge Of Love, a sensual, pulchritudinous, luminous film and a compelling study of the complexities and compulsions of love. So we don't miss out down south, there's a special screening this Sunday in London, when the director (he of Love Is The Devil fame) will give a talk. The film opens in London during WWII, where the bohemian beautiful people continue to live a decadent life of parties, cabaret and drinking while the bombs fall about them. In the midst of this heady decadence dance the irascible poet Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys); his impetuous wife Caitlin (Sienna Miller); his childhood sweetheart, the nightclub singer Vera (Keira Knightley); and Vera's dashing husband Captain Killick (Cillian Murphy). The four have a gay old time in London, but Captain Killick soon departs for the frontline and Thomas and his girls decamp to Wales with their children, where a tumultuous menage a trois develops. The relationships between the four characters are a devilish mix of love, jealousy, loneliness, boredom, comfort and support -- driven and doomed by the Machiavellian machinations of Thomas. Despite the film's script being rather muddled it remains visually captivating and is a feast for the eyes even for the most vehement anti-Knightley-ites.

NB: The Edge Of Love is released in London on 20/06. Also of note is the re-release of Killer Of Sheep, the Sandrine Bonnaire Q&A screening of Her Name Is Sabine and the special screening of My Winnipeg with a live narration by Guy Maddin.

David Benioff's writing has taken many forms ranging from short stories (When The Nines Roll Over) to screenplays (The Kite Runner) to novels (The 25th Hour -- his debut, which he adapted for a film starring Edward Norton and directed by Spike Lee). Benioff comes to London to discuss his new book City Of Thieves. With a film writers' instinct for courting his readers, Benioff's story follows 17-year old Lev in the starving city of Leningrad under- siege. Arrested for looting the dead body of a German paratrooper, Lev and his plucky cellmate Kolya are offered a deal. Find a dozen eggs for the wedding cake of a colonel's daughter and escape execution. In the depths of the coldest winter in history, through a city cut off from all supplies and suffering appalling deprivation, man and boy embark on an absurd hunt. And so begins a wild action-packed quest, a coming-of-age story, an odd- couple tale and a juicy footnote to the Siege of Leningrad.

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

A unique and nonlinear take on life in the LA ghettos in the '70s, Killer Of Sheep is one of those often overlooked films that had a tremendous impact on film and television as purveyor of "real-life" drama. Shot in black and white, Charles Burnett's film unravels to reveal a subtle portrait of family life in hard times, and the way a household or neighbourhood is affected by issues of economy and class, racial segregation, and the simple pleasure and pain of daily living. What makes this film so unique, what identifies it as a stand-alone icon of realist cinema, is its stark narrative. Barefaced and open-ended, Killer Of Sheep tells the story of one man and the interwoven elements of his life. Stan, the protagonist, experiences alternating waves of hopefulness and exhaustion with his work, his family and the world around him, painting a picture of the harsh realities of manhood set against the aspirations of childhood. The film is not plot-driven; the story is not an intense or cerebral dramatic narrative. Where this film succeeds is in its succinct simplicity and ambiguous subtlety -- it is believable in its unnecessary cruelties, unjustified transgressions and inexplicable pleasures.

NB: Killer Of Sheep screens in London at various locations from 20/06. The film is being screened at the BFI Southbank as part of the Charles Burnett season which runs from 20/06 till 19/07. Also of note is the John Maybury Q&A screening of The Edge Of Love, the Sandrine Bonnaire Q&A screening of Her Name Is Sabine and the special screening of My Winnipeg with a live narration by Guy Maddin.

Every domicile, at certain times of day, becomes a container of light in ways that most of us have likely considered capturing on film. German photographer Uta Barth documents very ordinary sites in a manner that connects our collective experience -- in this case of the home -- with less tangible philosophical concerns. Barth's own dwelling becomes a sundial in this repetitive series of interior spaces; light a mercurial substance with the power to destabilise our preconceptions of even the most familiar domestic details. But most images here, presented in pairs and clusters on the wall have been cropped in defiance of the traditional interior view; as if the tripod was inadvertently knocked between the taking of the shot and the moment of capture. Yellow light appears to saturate furniture and objects in certain frames, to the point of incineration, while in others facilitating a theatrical puppet play of abstract Morandi grey shadows on cool, off-white walls. From image to image, the LA-based artist's pictorial focus, as in other of her projects, appears to shift in and out of particular modes of image-making (lifestyle magazine photography, still life painting, the film still) with a specificity of mood that implies a subtle personal narrative at work.

NB: runs till 28/06.

"Everything is information", says immersive cosmologist-artist Matthew Ritchie in his 1996 work, The Hard Way. That online-offline multimedia phantasmagoria is typical of his installations, such as Ghost Operator, now at White Cube, Hoxton. It's energetic to look at, and the scientific and historical references are there, often spelled out in text and spilling out over every surface and into every inch of available space. The array of sculpture; intense paintings; the ceiling patterned to reform the gallery as a miniature universe within itself; the gold head on the floor that signals both Ozymandias and Ritchie's complex, symbolic private panoply of characters, all combine with a sense of encyclopaedic knowledge and simultaneity. Everything feels like it's happening at once, but the effect is not disorientating. It's more like watching an organ grinder winding up the universe as an instrument and playing it with brio. Ritchie has also contributed to a book on Einstein in the 21st century. This is an artist who thinks reality is sufficiently fantastical, and makes art about the facts.

NB: runs till 28/06.

Never screened as widely as he should be, once you discover the idiosyncratic films of Canadian director Guy Maddin, there is no going back. Compelling, kitsch, hallucinatory, inventive -- stylistically and narratively -- his films have no equal (barring perhaps early Eraserhead-era Lynch). Silent film-style features and shorts, his fantastical plots (Careful, The Saddest Music In The World) are populated with obsessed outsiders struggling to contain barely controlled passions and fraught familial relationships. And of course (as befits his revered hometown, "Winnipeg: coldest large city in the world". Forty degrees below zero, anyone?) they generally feature copious amounts of snow. Dipping his toes into the unfamiliar territory of documentary, in My Winnipeg, Maddin attempts to explain his symbiotic relationship with his home by delving into both the city's and his own family's histories. His crazed monochrome re-enactments of family scenes -- both pivotal and routine events -- are interspersed with historical events -- again both pivotal and routine -- from the city's history, as a way of confronting his own identity. Surreal, absurd and very funny, with a rambling voiceover, this special screening (on July 1st, which happens to be Canada Day), will feature a live narration by Maddin himself.

NB: Guy Maddin fans can catch him in conversation on 02/07 (8:45pm). Both events are part of the BFI's Maddin season which runs from 01/07 till 23/07. Also of note is the re-release of Killer Of Sheep, the John Maybury Q&A screening of The Edge Of Love and the Sandrine Bonnaire Q&A screening of Her Name Is Sabine.

If, as is said, patience is the companion of wisdom, then Tom Friedman is clearly a genius. Bordering on the precarious division between obsessive and round the bend eccentric, Friedman's work tends to warp your perception and sense of perspective, overturning the everyday through his deceptively simple artwork. Past works have featured 30,000 toothpicks wedged together to create a geometric starburst, and most absurdly 1,500 chomped pieces of bubblegum squished together to form a perfect sphere crammed into a corner. His new show, Monsters And Stuff, is a continuing adventure into the abnormal, using commonplace materials such as paper, plastic cups, wire and cardboard and transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. A nine-foot tall naked stick thin figure towers over the room, while others melt into the floor and blankly lean into the wall -- zombies born out of insulation foam and paper. Huge colourful paper collages balance against glittering, unbalanced images; cereal packets and washing powder collide in a perfect cube. Playful, witty and perfectly formed, this show will reward you with the broadest smile.

NB: runs till 25/07.

According to the UN Human Development Index, the citizens of Iceland are some the happiest people on Earth. More commonly associated with grandiose floes of melancholy, shoe-gazing post-rock, Sigur Ros -- by some way Iceland's biggest musical export after Bjork -- aren't exactly notorious for being conduits of bonhomie and general hilarity. Last year's homespun Heima movie and subsequent Hvarf/Heim live/acoustic album revealed another, less epic side to the band, however, and that tendency has borne further fruit on the tongue twistingly titled new opus (which translates as "With a buzz in our ear we play endlessly"). Opener "Gobbledigook" sets the tone, all brisk, fizzing acoustic guitars, folksy backing vocals and general psych-folk-pop urgency a la Animal Collective, while "Inni mer syngur vitleysingur" ("Inside me a lunatic sings") rides an almost glam beat while a confetti of piano notes and Jonsi Birgisson's choir boy vocals soar heart-stirringly. Elsewhere we get finger-picking folk introspection ("Illgresi" ), slow build anthems ("Festival") and one backslide into grand orchestration ("Ara batur") -- replete with the 70-piece London Sinfonietta and a choir). There's even a song in English ("All Alright"), another Sigur Ross first. Judging from the grinning vibes that emanate palpably from what is, unquestionably, Sigur Ros' most audacious yet approachable record to date, that UN index was spot on.

To buy Meo suo i eyrum vio spilum endalaust 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.

If you want to tell us about an upcoming event please do so by sending an email to: events@kultureflash.net. We receive many emails and thus please realise that sadly we cannot reply to all of them. Every single email receives attention and we will contact you if we need anything further. Please note that KultureFlash is not a listings ezine and we do not receive any payment from venues, artists, managers or promoters.

Please send all press releases, invites, books and CDs to:

KultureFlash Ltd.
52 Cranmer Court
Whitehead's Grove
London SW3 3HW