Tuesday 3 December (7:30pm)

@ Royal Festival Hall, South Bank, SE1 (020.7960.4203 or 4242) Tube: Embankment/Rail Waterloo

Poetry must be the last bastion of the avant-garde, it is the total anti-commodity. When was the last time a book of poems hit the best-seller list? Unlike artworks, you can take them over the barricades if you can memorise 'em. There is but one professorship in this country for it: the one at Oxford. Sure you can read English, but that's just the study of poetry. How one becomes a poet, and how one carries out the activity of a poet is a mystery. Paul Farley has but 2 books to his name: The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You, which won the Forward Prize Best First Collection award in '98, and his new book The Ice Age, is on this year's shortlist for the prestigious Whitbread Poetry Award. Lucky fellow. The Ice Age is a thoughful collection of subtly musical reflections on the world and our state of being in it. Reading some of the poems that won him the nomination, Farley joins celebrated childrens poet Michael Rosen on the Royal Festival Hall bill.

NB: For tickets call 020.7960. 4242.

Tuesday 3 December (From Tue 3/12 till Sat 7/12 -- check website for details)

@ ICA, The Mall, SW1 (020.7930.3647) Tube: Charing Cross/Piccadilly

As we look back at 2002, one thing that really stands out is how many genre-splattering, fashion-mag-tastic musical trends have appeared. Who knew that, as all the post-millennium tension washed away the noughties would be so much more exciting than the plastic flannel '90s? PlayLouder.com and the ICA are to celebrate this week-long mini-festival. Genre specific nights indicate that fun will be had by all, no matter what you believe your particular groove is. Perhaps you dig the gothic semblance of the No Name night, or the urban beatology of the Hip Hop night? Maybe you just want to stick your tongue out and make the sign of the beast during the Rock night, or do a post-modern robotic dance during the Trash and Electronic nights? Expect performances from, amongst others: Alec Empire, Max Tundra, The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, Black Twang, Ikara Colt, Crack Village and My Computer. There will also be a discussion forum on the state of the music industry post Pop Idol (part II to last Sunday's event) -- will include a demo listening panel and a seminar on how to start an independent label.

NB: For all times and prices please refer to the PlayLouder@theICA page. (Festival ends Sat 7/12.)

Wednesday 4 December (6:30 pm)

@ Barbican Centre, Barbican Centre, EC2 (020.7638.8891) Tube: Barbican

Chaired by Sacha Craddock (writer and critic), Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2002 provides that all-important glimpse into the future of British art. Held for the first time at The Barbican's "The Curve", this year's exhibition has been chosen from a multitude of applications sent in by art students and recent graduates across the nation. Filmmaker Patrick Keiller, and artists Sarah Lucas (the YBA well-known for her boyish demeanour and ironic wit), and Graham Gussin, whose video installations often look at the ways in which information is processed, have together selected work in a refreshing range of media, often using a sense of humour to deliver a hard-hitting political edge.

NB: Sacha Craddock and Sarah Lucas will be joined by New Contemporaries participating artists, Mathieu Copeland and Daniel Sinsel to discuss the show.

Wednesday 4 December (6:45pm)

@ ICA, The Mall, SW1 (020.7930.3647) Tube: Charing Cross/Piccadilly

Since the early nineties, we have seen a trend (maybe surprisingly) in Asian cinema determined to explore homosexuality in films such as The Wedding Banquet. Happy Together, beautifully shot by long time Won Kar Wai collaborator Christopher Doyle -- who recently shot The Quiet American -- is at the forefront of this movement, if it can so be termed. Director Wong Kar Wai created a gay movie which renders the (same) sex of the protagonists irrelevant. They are simply people -- whether gay, straight or bi, women or men. As they fall in and out of love, balancing on a thin line between lovers and friends, they are never objectified, never portrayed from a distant straight perspective, never rendered different. The brilliance of the portrayal is wrapped in cinematic excellence throughout, creating a mood and atmosphere enforcing an emotional attachment to his work, something rarely achieved by other filmmakers.

Wednesday 4 December (7:45pm and 9:30pm -- see BITE website for detals)

@ Barbican Centre, Barbican Centre, EC2 (020.7638.8891) Tube: Barbican

Ridiculusmus, are Jon Hough and David Woods; two more provocative and amusing performers you couldn't wish to see. For the Barbican BITE festival, the pair present two of their shows, Say Nothing (almost their signature piece) and Yes Yes Yes (Time Out Live award winner). Say Nothing, is an acute and idiosyncratic observation of the Irish sectarian divide (the title being drawn from Seamus Heaney's mantra, "whatever you say, say nothing"). The glory of the show lies in its desperate host of characters - all played by Hough and Woods - who include a familiar B&B landlady and a student of Peace and Conflict studies. On selected nights, Say Nothing will be followed by Yes Yes Yes, which is also well worth seeing. Yes Yes Yes, is a crazed and terribly appealing look at Anglo-Indian culture clash, is full of high antics, body fluids and some odd Raj characters. This is a great opportunity to see properly messed up theatre on a larger scale.

NB: Say Nothing runs until Sat 4/01/03 and Yes Yes Yes until Tue 28/12/02 -- see BITE website for details.

Wednesday 4 December (Potemkin on Wed 04/12 8:30pm; Kane Thu 05/12 6:10pm )

@ National Film Theatre, South Bank, SE1 (020.7928.3232) Tube: Embankment/Waterloo

It can be a problem with great works of art that we become so familiar with them, that it can take an effort to view them with fresh eyes. Showing as part of a series that make up the Sight and Sound 2002 Critics all all time top ten poll, Citizen Kane and Battleship Potemkin (no. 1 and no. 7 in the list for those of you who care about such things) probably fall into that category, but it's an effort worth making. Potemkin is the film with which Eisenstein is largely credited for having "invented" montage in 1925, and with it, film-making as we know it. Kane was made just 16 years after Potemkin, and has been pretty much universally accepted as the best film of all time, which suggests film-making as we know it took 16 years to go from invention to perfection, and nobody's improved on it in 60 years of trying. Truly extraordinary.

NB: Potemkin is also being screened on Fri 20/12 & Mon 23/12 and Kane on Wed 18/12 -- see website for times.

Thursday 5 December (6:30pm)

@ Tate Britain, Millbank, SW1 (020.7887.8008) Tube: Pimlico

Ho hum, another year, another barrage of criticism about the Tate's Turner Prize artist shortlist. The spin is all too predictable: too elitist, too esoteric, "how the hell can they call that art?", and so on... Perhaps worse, media buzz often detracts people from making up their own minds about what they really think. There are, of course, different approaches to learning about contemporary art, a major one being from the artist's own words... Tate Britain gives viewers a chance to do this as it presents a series of talks focusing on each of the artists in the shortlist. This week, it's the turn of Catherine Yass, whose lightbox-mounted, hyper-coloured photographs hint at enlightenment not just in their physical form, but also in their subject matter. The sublime landscape, the interior of a darkened factory, and the gaze of an Indian movie star: her images give us a glimpse of a present and a history in a flash. (For tickets call Tate Ticketing on 020.7887.8888.)

NB: To read KultureFlash's interviews with the three other short-listed artists click on the names below:

Keith Tyson
Liam Gillick
Fiona Banner

Friday 6 December (Daily 10am - 5:45pm)

@ Design Museum, Butlers Wharf, Shad Thames, SE1 (020.7940.8790) Tube: Tower Hill

Imagine being given thirty grand to go shopping with, what would you buy? But then, what would you buy knowing that the contents of your basket were going to be scrutinised for reflections of changes in today's design, taste and technology and again, as to whether they will form a valuable reference archive for future generations? Following the supermarket sweep of Marc Newson, Tyler Brulee, and Jasper Morrison, this year, Sir Terence invites Gijs Bakker and Renny Ramakers, co-founders of droog, to splash out on "things they'd like to live with". With today's voyeuristic obsession, "things you'd like to live with", could read "things you'd like to be seen living with". But these guys, having created a platform from where they showcase ideas rather than work as a conventional collective or design team, probably won't care!

NB: The show runs until Sun 09/02/03.

Friday 6 December (9:30pm)

@ Fabric, 77A Charterhouse St., EC1 (020.7344.4444) Tube: Farringdon

They say that if you play something long enough, it'll grow on you... well some music just hits you right to your core, if you're lucky it'll even release your "kundalini" energy. Of his latest, Amon Tobin described it as "sampled from source like fucking Evian. Even though no one really cares apart from sad bastards like me" but what he really does is jazz, albeit jazz channeled through drum & bass, sampling and everything other that clubculture today has to offer. "Jazz" really denotes improvisation and structure, and where Tobin improves on drum & bass, GusGus improvise everywhere -- a collective of 9 musicians and filmmakers -- this Icelandic group make "sexy music for eccentric people". GusGus shine a note of pop sunlight into a sometimes murky electronica with their old-school rave references, R&B grooves and infectious house and techno rythms -- following in the critically acclaimed footsteps of Sigur Ros. The combo of GusGus and Amon Tobin + others, is not to be missed.

NB: Others inlcuded in the line-up are -- John Peel, Peshay, Grooverider, Fabio and Hybrid.

Giveaway: We have two prizes to give away. The first prize is a set of all of Amon Tobin's CDs and the second is his latest CD. Both will go to 2 randomly picked subscribers who can tell us the name of Tobin's first album on the Ninja Tune label.

Friday 6 December (11pm-6am)

@ Fortress Studios, 34-38 Provost Street, N1 (020.7251.6200 ) Tube: Old Street

A bright light will be appearing over the Fortress this Friday, heralding the Haywire Sessions Christmas Party! The two "wisemen", Andrew Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood, will be bearing gifts of electro, machine-funk and fun. Then there's the little drummer boy, Sidney le Sarge and hark, is that the sound of the herald angel, Eon? It certainly isn't going to be a silent night, but there'll be a celebration of the most divine electro debauchery, with tidings of great joy provided by Santa's little helpers who'll be handing out Christmas goodie bags to all the Haywire faithful.

NB: This is a strictly ticket only event. Tickets are available from Smallfish or by calling 020. 7377.6060.

Saturday 7 December (10am - 10pm)

@ Somerset House, Strand, WC2 (020.7845.4600) Tube: Temple

Now that the Courtauld has shimmied into the more glam Somerset House, it's offerings have trebled... How's this for a great night out: get together at the Courtauld Institute collection and fight over whether Edouard Manet's A Bar at the Folie-Bergeres is his greatest painting ever, or would that be Le dejeuner sur l'herbe? Surely, the girl behind the bar must be one of the gems of London... No? Well then there's always the Ice Rink. For the third year running, Sommerset House is transforming it's square for ice skating. What better stage to demonstrate that Saturday Nite Fever! Think of those buildings, that square... This year, there're even flaming torches, and the Swiss (actually the City of Basel) are donating a 40-ft Christmas tree. To top it off, the rink is bigger this year, and there's more viewing galleries too, so don't forget your entourage. If you want a chilled-out Hollywood evening, out with that drop-dead-gorgeous someone, then why not head on down to the rink and try not to slice anyone's fingers off. Recommended drink: ice-cold Vodkas with river view at the bar.

Saturday 7 December (9pm - 2am)

@ Subterania, 12 Acklam Rd., W10 (020.8960.4590) Tube: Ladbroke Grove

Nigerian Dele Sosimi came to prominence as a pianist for the legendary King of Afrobeat, Fela Kuti, and is widely acknowledged as Afrobeat's top tinkler. For the uninitiated, Afrobeat is Nigerian funk music, born of Yoruba rythms (Fuji, Highlife and JuJu) and raised by the funk of James Brown. The music's seen a resurgence on the jazz and "world beats" scene of late; DJs are bringing the music to new audiences, concerts are selling out fast, and recording artists including Mos Def and Masters At Work are re-interpreting the distinctive 3/4 and 6/8 rhythms in their own works. After touring the world and recording some damn fine albums with Fela, Sosimi formed Positive Force with Fela's son Femi Kuti. Now as bandleader of the ten-piece Afrobeat Orchestra, his work is at the bleeding-edge of the music's evolution, pushing it into new sonic territories. Expect powerful horns, pounding bass, polyrhythmic percussion, and divine piano-playing. What's more, expect to succumb to the seductive rhythms and dance.

Sunday 8 December

@ Various venues

We've all seen enough films to know that Hell is high school in small town America (from Carrie to Heathers, to Rushmore or Election). It's bad enough just being a teenager, so being a paranoid schizophrenic teenager who's just been befriended by a 6-foot rabbit in a death's head mask and insider information on the exact time of the end of the world, has got to be truly, bizarrely, bad. Teeming with enough nods and references to suggest that writer/director Richard Kelly spent his entire adolescence down the video store, Donnie Darko still manages to be a true original. Maybe not out of quite the same startling box as Being John Malkovich, but a darkly brilliant debut nevertheless. Most commonly compared to David Lynch -- and it's easy to see why for it's sheer weirdness -- it reminded us rather more of a darker, spookier, though strangely rather sweeter American Beauty only taken from the screwed-up kids' point of view, and without any of that drippy red carrier bag nonsense.

Monday 9 December (6:30pm)

@ Whitechapel, 80-82 Whitechapel High St., E1 (020.7522.7888) Tube: Aldgate East

Where to start with good old Mies? One of the world's most famous architects and designers... without him we probably wouldn't have had nearly as many fantastic towers of steel and glass as we do today, and certainly not the 1929 German Pavilion (at the Barcelona International Exposition) and those wonderful chairs and day-beds that our architect friends keep spending all their money on. The last director of the Bauhaus school in Weimar, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), coined the famous "less is more" ethos and liked to view his work as "thoughts in action." If you're thinking Modernist architecture, then you're more than likely thinking Mies. Terence Riley (Chief Curator, Department of Architecture and Design, MoMA New York ) and Barry Bergdoll (Professor of Art History at Columbia University), along with Whitechapel in association with MoMA, have put together 38 pivotal projects, dating from his arrival in Berlin (1905), to his departure for the States (1938). Also on view will be works by Peter Behrens, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Frank Lloyd Wright and photos by Thomas Ruff.

In conjunction with the Whitechapel exhibition, Ruff has a solo-show at the Essor Gallery. On display will be some results of his stereofotos (photos from a camera which takes two different views at the same time) of Mies' interiors and two large photograpgs of Mies' exteriors (Show runs until 23/01/03).

NB: This preview and reception will include a discussion with curators Riley and Bergdoll.

Monday 9 December (7pm)

@ The Borderline, 16 Manette St., W1 (0207.395.0777) Tube: Tottenham Court Rd.

Possessed of all the credentials of a rock star -- a John Peel favourite and DJ in her own right -- it might surprise some to find that Cantrell is actually a country singer. Her sophomore album When The Roses Bloom Again, has garnered praise from such heavyweights as The Sunday Times and Mojo magazine. Combining originals and covers of songs made popular by The Carter Family and Amy Rigby, the delicate traditional country pop displayed on the album is held together by Cantrell's unique voice, which USA Today intriguingly described as "precious and businesslike". Following a tour with Elvis Costello, this is Cantrell's first British show and possibly the last time you'll be able to catch her in a venue the size of The Borderline, before she goes seismic.

Ends Saturday 7 December (Fri to Sat 12pm - 6pm or by appointment )

@ Jeffrey Charles, 34 Settles St., E1 (07930.396.671) Tube: Aldgate East/Whitechapel

Tony Benn, like Steve McQueen, is another artist with a more famous doppelganger, but, where the more famous Benn practices in-your-face politics, the latter makes in-your-face paintings. At first glance, Benn's rather pretty flower pictures seem facile and sonorous and not at all difficult, but they're really just plain-old subversive, confrontational jazz. Like Ali's fancy shuffle to distract you from the equally blinding handwork, Benn's brushwork is constantly dissonant, causing foreground to pull the eye away from image; then there are layers of ellipses -- as if being metaphor for brushwork itself -- that sit uneasily between image and ground... strange, and there's the colour... oh just so pretty... Are they arch-metaphors for painters' today? Just don't forget they are paintings of flowers, like the Sunday promenade, the Sunday painter, they're exactly what you want to see and do on a weekend.

NB: Show ends Sat 7/12.

Ends Friday 13 December (Mon to Fri 10am - 6pm; Sat 11am - 5pm)

@ Timothy Taylor, 1 Burton Place, W1 (020.7409.3344) Tube: Bond St.

Marcel Dzama's Drawings for Dante follow, in subject, from one of the most exquisite drawing series of all time, Botticelli's Drawings for the Divine Comedy, which were shown to great acclaim last year at London's Royal Academy. While Botticelli illustrated Dante's episodic texts to the letter, Dzama has drawn a more generalised inspiration, integrating the grotesque, often brutal imagery from the Inferno into his own darkly humorous dioramas of mysterious, anthropomorphous characters. At times, the Dante references are unequivocal: naked figures of the dammed are bound, stabbed, mutilated, split open, and disemboweled, overseen by glowering demons and talking heads of fire, yet he brings a much more contemporary feel to his vision of hell: a small boy sits at his mother's feet reading hard-core porn, a human-faced knife-wielding monkey, a woman in a bear-suit releases a cloud of evil, smirking demons like some modern-day Pandora, a large decapitated head sits smiling from a chair while a group of men obliviously conduct some kind of business meeting. Not so much morals as gentle parables to the potential consequences of human folly, Dzama creates an engaging, and all-pervasive universe where the devil has one hell of a sense of humour.

NB: This is Dzama's first UK show and ends Fri 13/12.

Giveaway: We have two Artist's books (signed by the artist and in an edition of 1,000) to giveaway. They'll go to 2 randomly picked subscribers who can tell us where Dzama hails from.

Ends Saturday 21 December (Tue to Sat 10am - 5pm)

@ Sir John Soane Museum, 13 Linclon's Inn Field, WC2 (020.7440.4263 ) Tube: Holborn

It is always a pleasure to wonder awe-struck, through the dimly-lit corridors and secret stairwells which make up the Sir John Soane's Museum. And it's even more of a pleasure when the meanderer comes across contemporary artworks by an impressive list of artists including Damian Hirst, Francis Alys and Sam Taylor-Wood, randomly dotted about the nooks and crannies of this the much-adored home -- one of the finest examples of nineteenth-century architecture in London. Here, contemporary work quietly accentuates the brilliantly eccentric, yet sensitive strangeness of the surroundings in which it has been placed. A piece by Mark Pimlott spills a glass puddle onto the carpet of the Breakfast Parlour, while a Tatsuo Miyajima's LED display emits light in an infinite series of numbers, from above a bust of Soane by Sir Francis Chantrey. Although the "I" may have been taken away from the "nvisible", what is visible in that this show creates a spectacle of beauty for that of the beholder.

NB: On the first Tuesday of each month -- ie tonight -- the museum is open from 6pm - 9pm and part of the building is candlelit. Beautiful...

Ends Sunday 22 December (Wed to Sun 12pm - 6pm)

@ The Approach, 47 Approach Rd., E2 (020.8983.3878) Tube: Bethnal Green

In this small, but perfectly articulated exhibition, British artist Tim Stoner single-handedly shows us how contemporary painting can effectively pay dues to the great weight of tradition, while at the same time remaining undeniably relevant to our own times. Using a meticulous process of under-drawing, and veiling of paint across the surface, Stoner generates a composite of perspectives and ambiguous meanings. We are grabbed with an immediately beguiling, advertising-style image. In Tower, 2002, for example, the group of acrobats precariously balanced on each others shoulders may be seen as an obvious testament to the idea of order achieved through mutual support (and who can forget those building society adverts which played specifically to this theme). And yet, such base sentimentality is interwoven with a plethora of referents and hidden depths: figures are drawn from classical Italian painting, subjects reflect mysterious folk culture and ritual, hence a gentle yearning for simpler times. Nowhere is this more sensitively portrayed than in the surefire winner of the show--Union (Levellers), 2002. Anchored by a simple, yet rigorous composition, Stoner layers planar blocks of colour with shimmering outlines, creating a dreamlike vision of human esprit de corps and solidarity.