What constitutes a crime during wartime? For those found guilty of ordering such crimes, is there any solace to be found in their sentencing, or in the upheaval involved in the process of their discovery? Is there any just punishment for an individual convicted of genocide? If there is such a punishment, is it justice or vengeance? How just is the justice system in this capacity? And to whose standards should these criminals be held? The "Truth Commissions", established in Guatemala, East Timor and South Africa, and which give oppressed citizens the chance to confront their attackers, torturers and oppressors have, in many cases, become decades-long outpourings of conflicted and emotional desperation -- not to mention cloak-and-dagger style cover-ups under the auspices of charity. Alternately, the swift and publicly broadcast executions of felled leaders such as Ceausescu, Mussolini and Saddam, have raised concerns regarding the quality of the defence of such vigilante justice-seeking. In a timely debate, John Laughland, Phillippe Sands and Simon Jenkins discuss the gravity and impossibility of justice in the tribunal format.

For those not already in the know, the Shunt Lounge is a members' bar under London Bridge Station. In the true spirit of all good co-op schemes, the money raised from membership supports the embryonic performances hosted every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. Membership for the current period is sold out, but you can still gain access by buying day membership, subject to availability. So, now you know that people queuing by the entrance to London Bridge Underground aren't necessarily buying travelcards. Next week showcases The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs (to avoid any potential tongue-twisting embarrassment, they're pronounced "Chumlees" and "Fanshaws"). The former is an all-female company, the latter all-male, both founded by choreographer Lea Anderson. Their pedantic observation of pedestrian movement and sensitive subversion of conventional styles is often irreverent, and utterly idiosyncratic. If you thought that variety shows had died a death in Victorian times, Dancing On Your Grave (supported by the amusingly titled Corpse de Ballet) may provide proof to the contrary. Who'd have thought wallowing in music hall purgatory in the vaults of commuter hell would turn out to be such an uplifting, albeit macabre, experience?

NB: runs till 26/07. If you cannot make any of these performances catch the Dancing On Your Grave run at the Assembly festival in Edinburgh (01/08 till 25/08).

In case you've been asleep, Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight is released this week. Hysterical plaudits and talk of posthumous Oscars aside, what Nolan's take on the Batman franchise offers is a chilling depiction of the post 9/11 landscape and a dark insight into the way the Western audience is beginning to see itself. The references to 9/11 are there, as are those to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. But what sticks in the mind is the depiction of the city itself. Be it Gotham or Hong Kong, the city is turned into a hall of mirrors, a space filled not with buildings but what Jean Baudrillard in America called millions of "vertiginous glass facades". In countless scenes, the characters' reflections are caught in these mirrors, all the while images of the actors playing them are refracted through the giant screen of the cinema. This is a film all about simulacra: Batman is plagued by doubles, while he and the Joker are flipsides of the same coin. Baudrillard famously pointed out in the aftermath to 9/11 that reality had absorbed the energy of fiction to become fiction; Nolan's film, ostensibly an elaborate fiction, is so mired in our dismal reality that its spectre of menace feels all too disturbingly real.

NB: The Dark Knight is released in London on 25/07. Other films of note this week are Aaron Katz's Quiet Village + Dance Party, USA and Julian Schnabel's Lou Reed's Berlin.

If you feel like watching great indie films that don't involve whips and aliens (whoops! spoiler!) check out these two Mumblecore offerings from young American filmmaker Aaron Katz, at the ICA. First off, Dance Party, USA (2006), a mildly nihilistic riff on middle- American teenage life. In simple terms, it's about a fall and possible redemption, but if Bret Easton Ellis has the dial turned to 11, Katz keeps it way down at three. A good example of the genre but definitely more structured than Quiet City (2007). This is pure Mumblecore, stripped of emotion-tugging orchestration and any real narrative arc, you do not so much watch this film as "hang out" with its protagonists, as they spend 24 hours mooching around New York. Beautifully observed and acted, the very lack of any conventional drama holds you from start to finish, while you scream internally: "Kiss her you fool! Kiss her!" A double-bill to get you, like, you know, thinking. And stuff.

NB: both Quiet City and Dance Party, USA screen at the ICA from 25/07 till 09/08. Other films of note released this week are Julian Schanbel's Lou Reed's Berlin and Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight.

Shrouded in mythology and probably more notorious than straight up "famous", Daniel Johnston is nevertheless one of the most acclaimed singer/songwriters of his generation, awarded particular adoration from his artistic peers. We won't dwell on the back story -- check the excellent 2006 film documentary The Devil And Daniel Johnston for that -- but the idea of "troubled genius" can be applied here without cliche. Such details regularly obscure the man's musical gift, but suffice to say this is a very rare opportunity to see Johnston perform, and with an impressive cast of underground heroes in support and backing, namely; Sparklehorse, Scout Niblett, James McNew (Yo La Tengo), Norman Blake (Teenage Fanclub) and Jad Fair (Half Japanese). His performance history is accepted as being somewhat erratic, but there's a raw naivete to his work that can be spellbinding if channelled on the night. Hopefully, the occasion will be more of a revelation and celebration of his work than a spectacle, but there will no doubt be people in the crowd for both reasons.

You know you're onto a winner when a DJ famed for always taking time to find the special ass-wiggling tracks that keep the dance floor percolating comes to town. Claude VonStroke is nice like that. After all, his real name is Barclay Crenshaw. DJ and producer VonStroke is originally from Detroit, but now lives in San Francisco, where he set up tech-funk label, Dirtybird in 2005. Since then he's triumphed with the release of his Beware Of The Bird LP and three massive singles. With his debut track, Deep Throat, VonStroke time-stretches his voice so that it resembles a huge belch before tapping out a tune on his Adam's apple, as the Guardian's John Burgess so aptly put it. Then came Who's Afraid Of Detroit?, which Richie Hawtin named the best track of 2006, followed by the instantly recognisable The Whistler. This Friday sees VonStroke team up with his long-time friend and fellow dirty bird DJ, Justin Martin, for the first official Dirtybird party in the UK. Unit 7 at Cable Street Studios will be transformed into a nest of unrest for what promises to be a night of dirty boy beats and throbbing bass lines. Multiple eargasms guaranteed.

Given the significance in this country of The Great Escape, it seems appropriate that Steve McQueen -- the artist -- has served the nation as a war artist. He follows in the footsteps of Paul Nash, Wyndham Lewis and Henry Moore, among others; however, unlike his predecessors McQueen's record of Iraq is more conceptual and much more controversial. The official war artist is charged with depicting the act of war and its results, however the 1999 Turner Prize-winner has created a work that records the price paid in British lives. Encased in a large oak cabinet are facsimile sheets of postage stamps with photographs of our casualties of war -- that is, every soldier killed in the current conflict in Iraq. First exhibited at the Manchester International Festival last year, this cabinet is now touring the nation in a campaign to persuade the Royal Mail to release the images as a series of commemorative stamps. If this were to happen, it would truly give new meaning to the term "multiple".

NB: this week is your last chance to catch Queen And Country before it travels around the country (ends on 26/07).

So, if the My Bloody Valentine gigs sold out in 16 seconds, why are there still tickets going for the Butthole Surfers gig? An urban myth persisted in the '90s that the Buttholes had printed tickets that read: "If you haven't had previous experience with psychedelic drugs, don't come to this show on psychedelic drugs". Their live shows emanated and pulsed not only with twisted furious noise and sick-culture -- splitting the virgin ears of dazed pre- grunge undie kids, but with an unadulterated visual chaos that caused good kids to freak out and middle-class moms to slip a 'lude to little Suzy and lock her in her room to keep her from going to the show. A band that sidled their way to fame by winning the hearts and minds of all those kids who were going to be big stars in the '80s and '90s, and being in the right place at the right time, the Buttholes were infamous before their music even hit the charts. Don't worry -- this gig is not going to be all Electrclarryland and Weird Revolution. Word has it they're dusting off some gut-wrenching golden oldies, so expect to hear the odd track from PCPPEP and Another Man's Sac.

In recent years improvised music -- as very much purveyed by the London Musicians Collective -- has seen a resurgence, moving away from the usual jazz cliches, into more interesting areas of almost-Dadaist intensity, circuit-bending and micro-tonality. It's perhaps also propelled by the lack of innovation in other music genres, as the excitement of hearing one-off accidents and discoveries is undeniable. This night's collision features organiser Kenichi Iwasa -- multi instrumentalist and member of avant-rock Miso-Soup (known also for work with Damo Suzuki (Can and Chrome Hoof) -- and Seb Rochford, drummer with Polar Bear, Acoustic Ladyland, Menlo Park and part of the F-IRE Collective. Joining them is another regular collaborator, Leafcutter John aka John Burton, whose intimate acoustic songs nestle in a thorny briar of digital processing, with Acoustic Ladyland mainman, saxophonist and clarinetist Peter Wareham, well known for his American late '70s no wave garage punk attitude and Albert Ayler sax-style.

NB: on 28/07 (8pm) also at Cafe Oto catch an improvisation workshop led by AMM founder member Eddie Prevost.

Regenerating more often than Doctor Who, Andy Meecham (former member of Bizarre Inc, Big Two Hundred and sometime half of Chicken Lips) seems to finally have settled down with his Emperor Machine project, under which name he has been making a strong case for wonky analog space disco being the pinnacle of human musical achievement. Sounding one part psychedelic cosmic pomp, one part Radiophonic Workshop and one part New York post-punk disco, Emperor Machine has been setting the bar for the nu disco crowd since 2003. Now finally a live unit, Meecham is taking the show out of the studio and into the clubs and this Saturday will be playing live in London for only the 2nd time at Go!Zilla's third birthday party, with the added bonus of the band's hide-behind-the-sofa Dalek disco augmented by a visual show animating the band's iconic La Boca sleeve designs. Aware that jaded London audiences need more than just one of the best live shows of the year to make them leave the telly alone for the night, Go!Zilla have also pulled in a live appearance from Meecham's DC Recordings labelmate Kelpe and DJ sets from Phoreski and secretsundaze's James Priestley. All rather grand.

The Felix da Housecat of the early noughties was pretty untouchable, seamlessly moving from the mushroom cloud of electroclash to the mainline of electro-house and a string of big-name pop remix jobs. But somewhere along the line the second-wave Chicago spinner, most highly fetishized by Europeans, seems to have had his edges blunted. One theory is that P Diddy (yes, really) is to blame. In any case, the hackneyed electro-waffle seen on his latest studio release, Virgo Blaktro And The Movie Disco, must have come as a bit of a shock to anyone who enjoyed Kittenz And The Glitz in 2001. Ground-level rumblings would suggest that the disappointment didn't pass Felix by. His latest release for the Global Underground series is an unashamed attempt to reclaim some of his techno credentials, and succeeds in cleaning out some of the dross, if perhaps not fully recapturing his earlier years. So still with the nettle in his grasp, the Cat is back in London for only the second time in the past 12 months, ostensibly with a manifesto of harder, tech-orientated beats. And if all else fails, Horse Meat Disco's Severino is sure to supply some choice disco in the other room.

Languages are our most common, yet most complex and coded mode of communication. Some, such as English, are used by many people the world over and others are secret or extinct, obliterated along with the people who had knowledge of them. Susan Hiller's The Last Silent Movie focuses on the latter in the form of a series of recordings of 25 languages that are either endangered or have disappeared altogether. Ranging from crackling songs to rhythmic incantations and whistles, the sounds are accompanied by their translations, where available, as subtitles on an otherwise black screen. Comanche, Welsh, Romany and Cajun all sound wildly different but speak of a same underwritten history -- that of the people no longer around to tell their stories. Indeed, there is something otherworldly and touching about the fact that the voices we hear belong to the dead and that Hiller found the recordings, meant to preserve the dialects in the silence and isolation of anthropological archives. Not having completely eschewed visual representation with this work, Hiller also produced prints that illustrate the variety of sound frequencies particular to each language.

NB: runs till 27/07.

Musicians seem to have held a fascination for film directors recently. Films about musicians -- bio-pics (Walk The Line, I'm Not There), documentary (The Devil And Daniel Johnston) and concert films (U2 3D, Shine A Light) -- continue to appear. And as the music business delves further into free downloads, offset by saturation touring and merchandise overload, the "music film" seems a logical extension of that evolution. Director Julian Schnabel's latest film documents Lou Reed performing his long buried album Berlin -- a commercial failure with the public on its release in 1973, when its narrative format (the songs form the (allegedly) autobiographical record of a love affair) and downbeat content (it all gets bitter and twisted, as love sometimes does) alienated listeners. Reed performs the album in full in a smallish Manhattan venue, with a poignancy that seems more ripe with his much- advanced years. However, despite the similar live concert format and New York setting, the film is diametrically opposed to Scorsese's recent Shine A Light: Reed's granite-man stillness counters Jagger's red-hot wiggle; Schnabel's shadowy colours contrast with Scorsese's bright lights; while Reed's philosophical poetry offsets the Stones' celebratory kick-ass mood. It's like a painting formed of poetry, light and music.

NB: Lou Reed's Berlin is released in London on 25/07. Other films of note are Aaron Katz's Quiet Village + Dance Party, USA and Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight.

From his rooftop apartment window, Pierre (Romain Duris) surveys Paris. He's slight, even gaunt -- a dancer's frame that's racked with disease. His heart putters; he leans further out over the balcony trying to see -- to desperately see, so he can live, love and lust vicariously through the people in the streets below. A middle-aged professor (Fabrice Luchini) pursues a nubile student, market stallholders flirt, fashionistas prowl for sex, while in his flat, Pierre's sister (Juliette Binoche) is frightened of love. Who are they, these people -- fucking, seducing, and toying with one another's emotions and lives? Do they deserve their chances? Or are their petty games, whimsical dalliances, egos, and selfish concerns part of the colourful spectrum of human nature, all to be embraced? Cedric Klapisch's portrait of love and life in Paris is grey, murky, and uncertain. It challenges the usual rosy, romantic Parisian fare, without reaching a definitive resolution. The film does not have the vigour or verve of L'Auberge Espagnole, nor that film's ability to capture the essence of a pocket of dislocated people -- here, Paris is too sprawling. This film is therefore melancholic, contemplative; the hazy message is conveyed with a magical, dreamlike quality that's nothing if not oblique.

NB: Paris is released in London on 25/07. Other films of note this week are Aaron Katz's Quiet Village + Dance Party, USA, Julian Schnabel's Lou Reed's Berlin and Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight.

Remember that party two summers ago when you impressed that girl from Sao Paolo with your knowledge of baile funk, had the CSS album on import and casually dropped that you'd seen Bonde Do Role's DJ Gorky play at Bardens Boudoir the week before? Discussing Dissident records might be your party piece now, but ever stopped to wonder what happened to the aforementioned? CSS have just released their sophomore album, which sadly sees their music stripped of its natty pop culture references and dirty lyrics in favour of faceless indie disco, all to get on the Radio 1 Playlist. BDR have ploughed a more turbulent path; their debut LP With Lasers got mixed reviews and front woman Marina Vello departed the band last December under mysterious circumstances. The remaining members, Pedro and Gorky, elected to audition for her replacement via Brazilian MTV, with the two winning contestants, Laura and Ana, chosen to retrieve meat from a private place respectively. Esteemed promoters Eat Your Own Ears bring BDR back to London for their first show since the change-up and with a lack of new material surfacing it will be interesting to see how they sound. Rising Australian electro rap act Gameboy/Gamegirl provide the riotous support.

2000AD, The Beano and The Dandy aside, comic book culture seems very much dominated by Americans. Despite the fact that some of the current greats (eg Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison) originated from these shores, the independents tend to be bigger there. That's not say that there hasn't been a great culture for the talking image here: after all Comica's consultant Paul Gravett's life work has been to draw attention to the talents that exist on this isle. Now here's a chance to catch two of our grand masters, Raymond Briggs and Bryan Talbot. Briggs' 1982 When The Wind Blows uses his cartoon illustrative style to describe the lives of two elders following a nuclear attack. It was a landmark publication, both as graphic novel and in terms of subject matter. Part of the UK's underground commix scene, Talbot's inventive 1978 sci-fi piece The Adventures Of Luther Arkwright is credited with being an influence on contemporary greats like Gaiman, Moore and Morrison. However it is his The Tale Of One Bad Rat, which deals with the fraught issue of child abuse, that has earned him kudos in the greater literary world. For you 2000AD readers of a certain age, it was Talbot (with Pat Mills) that created Torquemada in the series, Nemesis The Warlock, credo!

Bose Krishnamachari's exhibition Ghost is a multilayered distillation of politics, history, people and place centred on Bombay. Dominating the central space is Ghost / Transmemoir, 108 portraits of inhabitants of the city. Chaos and communication, the personal and sociological are transmitted via eleven videos embedded in tiffin cans suspended and hooked to train straps amongst skeins of wires. Meanwhile, Mumbaikar and Bombaiwalla, portraits of Krishnamachari's staff, are part of a group of five huge passport drawings rendered meticulously in blue biro. Staring impassively, the overlaid cinescreen creates a ghostly appearance while the underlying red grid and faux-traditional cast aluminium frames reference both painting and advertisements. The repetition of 108 individual portraits of the Mumbaikar / Host-Passport series carries religious undertones, not least in their referencing of mala beads. The colour headshots of friends and acquaintances from millionaires to children suggest a democracy of subject matter; each face, regardless of caste, is divided by a red grid and contained in tactile white corian frames. Krishnamachari's self-portrait Red 'N' Black smiles benevolently at us in the lower gallery, presiding over Amuseum / Ghost (Plan-I) the artist's utopian museum waiting to be constructed in Kerala. Ghost is Krishnamachari's personal "Bombay", resonating with ideas ranging from the sociological and religious to the political, and beautifully rendered in hybrid mediums.

NB: runs till 12/08.

So much has been written about Bon Iver's mystical arrival from the wilderness of Wisconsin that sometimes it seems a little hard to see the wood for the trees, and to accept that Justin Vernon might just be quite an ordinary guy from Wisconsin who happens to have a talent for writing good songs and singing nice harmonies. It's a situation that perhaps says more about the rise of a kind of "indie" celebrity than the music itself, where the limited context prompts us to re-imagine what is being communicated, spurring our imaginations to fill in the gaps with ever more elaborate personal fantasies (Gus Van Sant's film Last Days proves a great meditation on this topic). One could say that in this climate it would be hard for Bon Iver's potent mix of CSNY-style harmonies and humble home-cooked soul not to shine on through to glorious effect, but that would also be to deny the music its real resonance. Let's just hope that once the cabin in the woods story has run its course that people keep on listening.

NB: this gig is close to selling out so buy your tickets now.

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