It's amazing how, in just five years, the Frieze Art Fair has inserted itself so resolutely into the fabric of the London art world. It does seem to satisfy the great British love of the spectacle, and highlight its inexorable relationship with the contemporary art market. Although swinging marquee price signs that dangle above the aisles or splashy slogans like "Something for everyone!" are perhaps still a long way off, nevertheless Frieze has done a lot to introduce art to the regular Joe in London. Here, other art fairs sprout up to lure the wildebeest-like herd of art viewers down slightly less-travelled but still familiar paths, and hopeful galleries across town put up hungry fronts that they might also catch some of the run-off.

But are these fertile grazing grounds for the migration of art-lovers, or predators lying in wait? The debate rages over whether the biennial/art-fair culture that has flourished so vividly around the world in recent years is nourishing the art world, or presenting a kind of one-stop-shop, selling who's hot and snubbing who's not while we graze on assembly-line sushi and knock back sponsored beverages. But it's the event of the year, bringing with it a whole season of art and culture. All we can say is: remember to wear comfortable shoes. It's a veritable marathon!

NB: Frieze Art Fair runs from till 19/10. For a our special Frieze 2008 Issue click here.

Another Sprawl event that thinks outside of the musical box, this showcase is a medley of digital-leaning processed improv and songs, with moves towards strings. Cellist and composer Thomas Gardner specialises in group interactions, interfaces for digital performance and evolutionary musicology. His work includes the Ouija Board, based on the analysis of the shadows of a group of people. He also explores the integration of cellistic technique with speech and lip controls over live electronics. Bela Emerson's intense electric cello sets employ spontaneous analogue effects looped to take on lives of their own, bouncing off each other, as can be heard to full effect on her new album on BiP_HOp. Meanwhile, Manuela Barczewski's songs -- simply sketched with electric guitar, vocals and electronic elements -- are about "the luxury of melancholy". Her music works like a memory system, a sound archive in which Barczewski, who recently collaborated with FatCat's Hauschka, captures and processes her observations on everyday life, creating a pastoral intimacy.

NB: also of note is the Cut & Splice festival (24/10 and 25/10).

Daniel Hit by A Train is only the second time that duo Lone Twin have created a full length "theatre piece" with an ensemble. If their first effort, Alice Bell, seemed to have little in common with previous work and bore the marks of a group having followed their noses perhaps a bit too freely, this latest production promises far more of a clear link to the precision and doggedness that has characterised the varied performances by founders?Gregg Whelan and Gary Winters. The show (starring among others the excellent Nina Tecklenberg) borrows elements from vaudeville and the funfair to present the heartbreaking stories to be found inscribed on tiles at the Watts Memorial Of Heroic Deeds in central London. Given the immediate, love-infused and utterly tragic appeal of these micro snuff-plots (eg "Sarah Smith died of terrible injuries received when attempting in her inflammable dress to extinguish the flames which had enveloped her companion"), and that all 53 deaths are covered in about an hour, it's easy to imagine this going down as a Lone Twin classic.

NB: Daniel Hit by A Train is performed on both 16/10 and 17/10.

Following the ten seconds or so required to get one's eyes, tongue and head around the title, it becomes clear this is a word combining "aphrodisiac" with "aphasia" -- the two central concepts of this new work by the seminal Belgian dance troupe Les Ballets C de la B (Wolf, Vsprs...) . Combine "the inability to express or understand thought in spoken or written words" and stimulate that with sexual appetite, and we are in the realm of the Aphasiadisiac for whom the need to express anything inspired by love (desire, jealousy, submission...) requires turning to the body for a new language. It's this kind of "physical Esperanto" that guest choreographer Ted Stoffer playfully explores, alongside four other dancers, and with the help of a percussionist (Pieterjan Vervondel from the great band Madensuyu) hung perpendicular from a wall five metres up in the air. In one hour of charming madness, Stoffer weaves together stupidity, eroticism, danger and absurdity to create the picture of a strangely charming communication breakdown.

NB: Aphasiadisiac is performed on both 17/10 and 18/10. Also of note is Compagnie Beau Geste's Transports Exceptionnels (which runs until 19/10) and Dance Umbrealla 2008 (which runs till 08/11).

Another week and another iconic band from the New York '80s no wave scene are roused from arguing about baseball in sports bars (a very popular pastime in NYC) and tasked with entertaining the more esoteric amongst us Londoners. That's right Stop Making Sense enlist the Bush Tetras to headline the impressive-looking Alphabet City night down at Corsica Studios. Whilst not held with the same reverence as ESG by people whose grasp of no wave extends to a solitary Soul Jazz compilation, Bush Tetras were key in the rise of no wave and tracks such as "Snakes Crawl" and "You Can't Be Funky" are certified dancefloor heat. Complementing them on stage are the excellent Emperor Machine and the perennially tipped Chik Budo. This alone guarantees attendance so you're really being spoilt with the addition of DJ sets from Twitch (Optimo Espacio), the Soul Jazz Sound Sytem, Allez Allez and Disco Bloodbath.

Double knot your laces and carb-up the grey matter because it's time for London's annual talkathon lead by the sleepless polymath Hans Ulrich Obrist and held in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion. Eno vs Ono (Brian and Yoko of course) will headline the Manifesto Marathon in Frank Gehry's exploded glasshouse: expect grand plans, hot tempers, and Frieze-season casualties littering up the place. Last year, science boffs and performance artists experimented on each other inside a conch shell designed by Olafur Eliasson. In 2006 at, the Interview Marathon, caffeine and big ideas pulled most people through the long night in Rem Koolhaas's hot air balloon. The 24-hour format has been abandoned for 2008 but the long-haul programme remains and this time it's getting political. Also in the ring, among others, will be Nicolas Bourriaud, Eric Hobsbawm, Gilbert and George, Franz West, Christian Boltanski, Terrence Koh and Agnes Varda. Not one for those with attention deficits. Oh, and don't forget your warm clothes people -- it's gonna be fresh out there.

NB: runs on both 18/10 and 19/10 (for the full schedule and speaker list click here).

Whilst clubland's collective gaze has briefly turned south for the launch of matter, its parent club Fabric relentlessly soldiers on, doing what it does best and remaining one of the top clubs in the world. So this Saturday, as per usual, expect to find the Farringdon club filled to the rafters with punters dancing through till midday to an incredible line-up of DJs and producers. This week's formidable group includes among others Chilean and Swiss minimalist Luciano; the latest tech house star to emerge from Detroit, Omar-S; a live set from Hannover's Martin Buttrich; and familiar Fabric faces like Robert Hood, Shinedoe and Mark Broom. And the line-up also includes Fabric's own trusted residents, Craig Richards and Terry Francis. God knows what the size of their carbon footprint is but as it's their 9th birthday this weekend we'll forgive them this once.

NB: also of note on the same night is the Minus 10-year anniversary party with among others, Richie Hawtin, Magda, Troy Pierce, Marc Houle, Hearthrob, Gaiser, Konrad Black, Ambivalent and JPLS at seOne.

If the thought of yet another private view and yet more over-intellectualised art chatter brings you out in a cold sweat, head to the east of London for the last chance to see design exhibition From Now To Eternity. The good folks at arts consultancy, Arts Co, offer a titillating and playful distraction during Frieze with an exhibition that celebrates that most banal and versatile of materials: plastic. Eight specially chosen designers, Committee, FAT, Hiroki Shiratori, Raw Edges, Rolf Sachs, Stuart Haygarth, Tom Price and Tomoko Azumi were commissioned to create works in response to the material, resulting in both imaginative homages and innovative re-workings that tap into the problem of recycling the indestructible. With the distinct possibility that only rats and plastic are likely to outlive us humans, the credit crunch and any passing nuclear explosion, this exhibition gives plastic its due, and explores its many guises in the creation of some truly ingenious design solutions.

NB: runs till 19/10.

To mark the London Film Festival screening of his skate-art documentary Beautiful Losers (see below) the ICA is hosting artist and Alleged Gallery founder Aaron Rose and compatriots for their "silent" gig quartet The Sads. In a motif that has been met with enthusiastic reception in the US and Europe, The Sads play electronic instruments in the round, with the results audible only on headphones jacked directly into their set. Joining Rose at the ICA will be David Scott Stone (Melvins, The Locust) and Aska Matsumiya (Moonrats) on keys and accordion, and Joe Plummer (Modest Mouse) on drums. With only five performances across two days, and a capacity of only 60 people at each one, move quickly to ensure your place.

As mentioned above, the LFF is hosting two screenings of Rose's film Beautiful Losers. The film charts the growth of the DIY artist fraternity that arose in New York City's Lower East Side in the early '90s, many of whom gravitated to Rose's own Alleged Gallery. Inspired by the varied influences that surrounded them from skate culture and graffiti through to hip-hop and street fashion, this group of artists sought to create works that reflected them and their lives, the kids doing it for themselves without the restrictive guidance or endorsement of the art world. Artists such as Mike Mills, Ed Templeton, Harmony Korine, and Rose himself talk through an inspiring story of self-belief and independence. Dispossessed genius and geek/freak pride drive this excellent film -- and following the free 10am screening 20/10, Rose will host a Masterclass at the ICA on the different themes raised in the film, a must for aspiring outsider artists.

NB: the concerts are performed on 18/10 (2 and 3pm) and 19/10 (3, 4 and 5pm); the screenings held on 18/10 (6:30pm) + 21/10 (4:15pm); and finally the masterclass will be held after a special 20/10 (10am) screening. The LFF runs till 30/10.

Who would have thought that Messrs Brin and Page's simple idea would be so incredibly useful and, according to Randall Stross, so powerful? If you are a KF regular, then you must subscribe to the notion that the web is a source of endless knowledge; both good and bad, useful and mostly useless. But definitely infinite, maybe it's our final frontier -- not outer space, but errr..."inner" space. In the old days, you took a sextent, looked at the stars, and drew charts to map the world. Today you can use Google Earth, or think of space as being charted by this endless series of labyrinthine computer links called the WWW. Insider Stross argues that Brin and Page's search engine is reorganising the shape and culture of our habits: how we process information, how we find information, and what kinds of information. The Internet is more powerful than ever; bloggers now even have their own tent on the presidential campaign trail. And, yes, Team KF bang out Flashes week in and week out with the help of trusty old Google.

NB: Randall Stross will be in conversation with columnist and author Andrew Keen (chaired by tech critic Bill Thompson).

Director William Friedkin was responsible for two of the most iconic (and successful) American films of the '70s, when, during a three-year period, he made The French Connection, closely followed by The Exorcist. Both Oscar winners, with these two films he changed the way both horror and detective thrillers were made. The French Connection's Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) subsequently became the template for the maverick cop figure who doesn't give a damn about the rules -- he just wants to get the job done. And the job (in this case a big heroin bust) included probably the most famous (and largely unrehearsed) car chase sequence in cinema -- once seen, it makes taking the New York subway a whole different experience. It's exhilarating stuff, and demands to be seen on the big screen. Friedkin, who has continued to write and direct landmark (and sometimes notorious) films ever since, will discuss his long career with critic (and film obsessive) Mark Kermode after the screening.

NB: also of note is the release of Burn After Reading (17/10), Quiet Chaos (24/10) and A Bloody Aria (24/10); and be sure to check out the LFF (which runs till 30/10).

Anthony Gonzalez is now going at it alone as M83, but in keeping with the Frenchman's galactic moniker, the spacey other worldness is still very much intact. His atmospheric, reverb-driven sounds have a shimmer that has proven well suited to the big screen -- a source of more than a few breaks over his seven-year recording career. In spite of all that he's kept a relatively low profile, though his faithful reworkings of '80s motifs will probably have more resonance with the mainstream now. He's likely to have extra zest both sonically and in terms of profile now though, since his recent, rather lovely LP Saturdays = Youth has the smooth production hands of Ewan Pearson on it. Pearson's unassuming, subtle style is a great fit too, for a sound that is now more massive than ever, but distinctly more diverse than older M83 material. It'll be quite a feat if he can master it live, and no doubt an intriguing spectacle to witness.

With the evenings closing in and days ever gloomier, textured warmth and evocative sound explorations are high on the menu for this night. Harvested from the minds of some of the most stimulating electronica artists around, this looks set to be a sonic trajectory of rich elegance. Sebastien Roux produces a shadowy dusty sound that is endearing and appealing in equal measures, a netherworld of glitched harmonies. He has released via the excellent Apestaartje, 12k, Carpark and Room40 labels and his music will be bumpered up against the dubmeister of digital sound, Douglas Benford, aka si-cut.db. For almost two decades now Benford has been developing a shape-shifting trail through a myriad of styles and fashions. Distilling beats within a field of transparent harmonies, his often groove-led sensory studies skip between the dubby pulses of Pole and the melancholia of early Eno. Buffered alongside the rare beautiful sounds, Beddoes from Australia incorporates live acoustic guitars and filed recordings, completing the line-up with a crackling, intricate set. A night to savour.

NB: also of note is the Cut & Splice festival (24/10 and 25/10).

Co-written by lead actor Nanni Moretti, Quiet Chaos charts one man's reaction to grief. Nearing the end of a summer holiday, successful communications executive Pietro rescues a drowning woman while at the beach; simultaneously, at their cottage, his wife collapses and unexpectedly dies. He is left stunned at the bereavement. But differing from more familiar treatments of grief -- no sobbing, rage or religious conversions -- Pietro instead enters a state of "quiet chaos". Although he is primarily known as a comic ("Italy's Woody Allen") Moretti is familiar with the subject -- he also examined the effects of grief on family dynamics with Palme d'Or winner. However, the process that Pietro goes through, in which he spends everyday waiting in the square opposite his young daughter's school, is intensely personal. Although in the communications industry, he seems unable to voice his own feelings about his state of mind, while at the same time his outward serenity attracts others to confess their problems to him.

NB: Quiet Chaos is released in London on 24/10. Also of note is the release of Burn After Reading (17/10) and A Bloody Area (24/10); the special screening of The French Connection with William Friedkin (21/10, 8pm); and the LFF (which runs till 30/10).

There was a time when Korean cinema seemed to be just a sub-set of the Asia Extreme genre, dominated by Japanese weird-fests that made other comers appear as mere imitations. This century the Koreans have subverted that, most notably with Park Chan-wook's Vengeance Trilogy, keeping the ultra-violence but weaving in threads of humanity and ambiguity that betray something of their complex national psyche. Won Shin-yeon's A Bloody Aria continues this trend. What appears as a simple Texas Chainsaw-style "nice folks from the city set upon by deranged hicks" melodrama takes strange turns as the characters' pasts are revealed to be sickly intertwined, casting each one as both predator and victim. Male power struggles, the cyclical consequences of extreme bullying, and the terrible human cost when these dominate a life, are the real subjects of this film. The genuine threat and teeth-grinding physical violence are a foil, as is the occasional pitch-black humour. Imperfect but a brave film with important ideas.

NB: A Bloody Aria screens at the ICA from 24/10 till 16/11. Also of note is the release of Burn After Reading (17/10) and Quiet Chaos (24/10); the special screening of The French Connection with William Friedkin (21/10, 8pm); and the LFF (which runs till 30/10).

A giant venue needs a giant line-up -- and this one reads like a "who's who" of disco and credible house. Not surprising then, that it's curated by James Murphy and Pat Mahoney, whose beautiful executions in LCD Soundsystem are now dwarfed only by the armfuls of artists they're breaking on DFA Records. Having that pair spinning would probably on its own be enough to send most punters home happy, but this kitchen sink shebang has live sets from seldom-seen Gavin Russom and Juan MacLean, who's fresh from a sophomore album that includes throwback soon-to-be-classic "Happy House". It's also got a stack of talent behind the decks both homegrown and flown in from New York. Amid the inevitable melee, don't miss Scotland's finest DJ export Optimo, Still Going (Rub n Tug Eric's side project), Environ Records/Metro Area stalwart Morgan Geist and DFA up-and-comer Babytalk.

NB: also of note is Issst's special Tiefschwarz party at The Lightbox on 25/10.

Now you would think after an extensive tour of the States and a sell-out gig at Hammersmith Apollo, most bands would want to kick back in their hotel room with a big mountain of coke and the finest Eastern European hookers London has to offer, and just relax. Not Mogwai though: instead the Glaswegian rockers have scoured their black book, called in favours and generally abused their position as artists of great repute to put on a huge party with the great and good in the arches of London Bridge. Reading like a Pitchfork editor's wet dream, expect the music to veer wildly from all-out pounding techno to more psychedelic fare in the various rooms with luminaries such as James Holden, Nathan Fake, Four Tet, Caribou, Cherrystones, and Allez Allez, with the added involvement of bands such as Errors and Mogwai favourites Fuck Buttons also tasked with raiding their record collections.

Renowned -- or, in some circles, notorious -- for his seminal 1967 article Art And Objecthood, the eminent art historian (and poet) Michael Fried is in London to discuss themes addressed in his new book: Why Photography Matters As Art As Never Before. In this talk Fried will focus on the work of Douglas Gordon. The photographic turn in Fried's readings of modernist art extends his longstanding concerns (drawing on Diderot) with the critical relation between "absorption" and "theatricality" in the work of art, as these bear upon the relation between the artwork and its beholder. As the annual carnival surrounding the Turner Prize starts up again, this talk offers a great opportunity to to hear from Fried himself, whose writings remain key points of reference for debate not only within visual art, but across different art forms, as the relation between aesthetics and Modernism continues to be widely contested.

NB: you can also catch Michael Fried on 25/10 (7pm) at the Photographers' Gallery when he gives a lecture on his new book and Anri Sala's video piece Long Sorrow.

Without any doubt, Melanie Wilson's new solo confirms her as one of the great new "all-rounder" talents in British theatre. (Although perhaps it's best if we forget about "Theatre".) With Iris Brunette, Wilson has taken the idea of an encounter with someone as the experience's kernel; first we encounter Brunette -- immaculate, tall and disarmingly beautiful, her mouth and psyche taking it in turns to speak in the kind of beguiling hush we know from Wilson's last creation, Simple Girl -- but soon it's us, her 16-strong audience, who we "meet". As she slowly blinks her enormous eyes (no doubt causing several tsunamis) we find we've been effortlessly woven into the thread of this post-apocalyptic patchwork, appearing and disappearing from view thanks to Ben Pacey's brilliantly conceived lighting. There are some hilarious moments, but the breathless tension never drops for a moment, due in large part to Wilson's intricate and flowing soundtrack (her other "hat" is as a sound artist) and a staggeringly well-executed mix of her live and pre-rerecorded voice.

NB: runs till 25/10.

Paperweight is the blackly comic show from Top Of The World that picked up a Fringe First Award at this year's Edinburgh Festival. It is set in a decidedly mediocre office in tailspin; neon strip lights illuminate the two actors Tom Frankland and Sebastien Lawson, who are Harold and Anthony from Resources. The show, directed by Jamie Wood, makes good use of the eccentricities of Camden People's Theatre, playing with the street outside and the sound of a martial arts class upstairs that gets reframed as a depraved orgy in the stockroom. The show includes some extremely funny set-pieces which punctuate sometimes banal sequences, lending the show a curious and uneven rhythm, one more akin to office life than "gag a minute" comedy. This, the semi-improvised nature of the show, and the suggestion of a prison-like workplace, give Paperweight its edge. The two of them are trapped and Paperweight shows their attempts to escape in opposite directions: Howard into juvenile office gags and Anthony into catatonic withdrawal.

NB: runs till 25/10.

Juxtaposing capitalist immorality apparent in both our current state of affairs and the street art milieu, an entirely new body of work from the subversive artist known as D*Face hit London this month with far more than anticipated from our boulevard comrades. Utilizing a variety of mediums including painting, sculptural works, street installations and sounds, aPOPcalypse Now acts as a metaphorical backdrop for the corruptive, persuasive consumerist idiocy that the artist feels has been force-fed into our society. Although an attack on the same blood that fuels the street art market, a visually physical journey of destruction and resurrection is encountered through tunnels of fallen meteor-like spray cans, back alleys and a Chapman Brothers-inspired chapel echoing funeral compositions. All of which conjures the bright light of an iconic D*Face purgatory, before seguing into the main gallery space of dysfunctional comic characters questioning their existences.

NB: runs till 02/11. For more street art but in a different vein check out the Robin Rhode show at The Hayward (till 07/12).

Politics is in the air, along with the sound of money markets imploding... Exhibitions such as Olivia Plender's Tina (currently at The Drawing Room) take a direct approach: by way of contrast, The Freedom Centre celebrates art's impotence in the face of political events, but while doing so manages to land a few potent punches made all the sweeter by honesty. Ross Sinclair's voting booth, portraits of Abe Lincoln on the outside, with urinals inside, offers to save busted bladders in a way that, in 2000, America was not saved from the busted chad. Bob and Roberta Smith cheerfully laud George Michael as a greater campaigner for freedom than The Jam, The Clash, that bloke from the Boomtown Rats, Bono and Sting all put together. Ian Davis' painting Clients has a sinister circle of black limousines in the sagebrush, headlights forming a strange star pattern in the gloom -- a rather odd image suggesting corporations on the defensive. The exhibition is packed with angry detail, suggesting that none of the artists are being quite as hopeless as the press release claims.

NB: runs till 15/11.

It is testament to the unique talent of Robin Rhode that for his first exhibition in London he gets to share a double bill with Andy Warhol. Rhode makes a witty form of street art, which comments on urban poverty in his native Cape Town in the form of drawings, paintings and more recently sculpture. Rhode draws two-dimensional objects in chalk and charcoal on inconspicuous walls, and brings them to life by interacting with them in a form of stop-start animation he christened "Street Gym": by "riding" a bike, or mounting a bar and swinging round like an urban comic-strip gymnast. Rhode cites his key influences as Man Ray and Duchamp, and to prove the point he once chalked a urinal on the wall of the South Africa National Gallery and urinated on it. Yet at the same time Rhodes' graffiti animations reveal his younger self, the cheeky schoolboy nicknamed "The Artist" by his teachers, and his work carries the heavy burden of growing up during apartheid, and attending a "coloured" school.

NB: runs till 07/12. For more street art but in a different vein check out the D*Face show at Black Rat Press (till 02/11).

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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