Tuesday 10 December (6:30pm)

@ Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 (020.7887.8008) Tube: Southwark/Blackfriars

With art, what you see is never just what you see, even if Frank Stella did say that "what you see is what you see." Painting, sculpture, installation and performance, all fall into that loose category of art-work, but their relation is not only to themselves and all the genres -- portraiture, still-life, landscape... -- before it, but also to Art's history. It's an idea of complexity, and how Art has evolved from being a mere tool to document our lives -- which it still does in bizarre ways -- into this rich fulfilling product of thought and vision. Theorists, critics and art historians provide voices for artworks, sometimes even against the words of their authors. What results is a complexity of vision that makes the visual arts fulfilling in ways that life is not... so why not get your theoretical toothpicks out for theorist/critical art historian Stephen Melville's discussion with artists Christian Bonnefoi and Laura Lisbon on the relationship of painting to installation and architecture.

NB: Tickets can be bought by calling 020.7887.8888. (If you go make sure you catch the Eva Hesse show.)

Tuesday 10 December (7pm)

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

ET phone home!! If you're an avid or even non-avid sci-fi buff, haven't you ever wondered why aliens always look humanoid (exception being them Tribbles)? What does Patrick Moore really think? The Mars Lander after all is now looking for water, 'cause water leads to life, but what if there's such a thing as a non-carbon based life form? Well, life-off-earth will give life-on-earth much more perspective, perhaps even unity. So the ICA is presenting a discussion on the possibility of alien life with Dr. Monica Grady -- head of the Petrology and Peteoritics division of the Department of Mineralogy at The Natural History Museum -- a leading expert on the study of extraterrestrial life and author of Search for Life, in discussion with last year's ICA Scientist-in-Residence, Dr. Daniel Glaser. Bring your own candy and phaser or try to channel in Carl Sagan...

Wednesday 11 December (6pm)

@ Apollo Theatre, 29 Shaftesbury Avenue, W1V (020.7494.5399) Tube: Piccadilly Circus

The mother of all vicious, extremists, man-hating feminists? Surely a major inspiration, but not the definite authority. A bit of an enigma (especially considering the alleged threats of violence against her unauthorised biographer), Germaine Greer is probably the most influential feminist on the face of the planet. Scary? Maybe. Interesting? Definitely. Read between the angry lines, and you'll discover that Germaine Greer actually has something to say -- something worth listening to. Furthermore, she occasionally will say things that are not by definition the words of a feminist, but simply those of a respected authority on Shakespeare and a university Professor. And that's probably why they've invited her to hold the Housman lecture. Furthermore, she occasionally will say things that are not by definition the words of a feminist, but simply those of a respected university Professor and authority on Shakespeare.

Thursday 12 December (8pm - 1am)

@ Cargo, Kingsland Viaduct, 83 Rivington St., EC2 (020.7739.3440) Tube: Old St./Liverpool St.

R2D2, C3PO, Robbie the Robot, Transformers... what do they lack? A penis. This one supposedly has a penis capable of shooting flames, sparks and confetti, or so the press-release tells us. "Iamtherobotinyourtown... IamtherobotIgetdown..." so the song goes -- preprogrammed with musical influences such as Devo, Kraftwerk and the B-52s -- New York City's own My Robot Friend (more buff than Tron) and complete with combustible parts and glowing torso is in town to rust it's wears and beat out some tunes. It seems that someone is trying to take the piss out of electoronica, but one visit to their site -- created in collaboration with theworldofadam -- will convince you: them beats, them sounds, them rabbits! Prepare to robot-bop till you drop, or whatever it is that they do...

Friday 13 December (Fri 10am to Sat 6pm)

@ Hayward Gallery, South Bank, SE1 (020.7960.5226) Tube: Waterloo

Alfred Hitchcock has made much greater movies than Psycho, yet that original chiller still has a special place in our psyche -- perhaps it's just that damn shower scene. Psycho's even had the more dubious homage of a shot-by-shot remake starring Anne Heche??!? but it's Douglas Gordon's 24 Hour Psycho that's the real salute. Gordon's even said of his work that he'd like the viewer to be thinking about Hitchcock rather than himself; and certainly the Hitch is everywhere present here, for in this work Gordon slows down the film to run for 24 hours. This is true homage and nerd-dorm, for you lovers of Hitchcock get to comtemplate each and every moment of the film -- slowly, very slowly. Like the original, tension builds, albeit differently, via this slow process of unspooling. Can you take it? Can you stay just that little while longer? Will you be lucky and catch that infamous shower scene (around 8/9pm)? So here's your chance... The ultimate date-movie, the Hayward is open for the entire run of this film-artwork, start your date with a bang, catch some grub and some drinks, then return for the slow slow slow moment passing by...

NB: Psycho starts Frid at 10am and conlcludes on Sat at 10am -- and starts again and runs for 8 hours until Sat 6pm. (In conjunction with Gordon's what have I done exhibition which runs until Sunday 05/01/2003.)

Giveaway: We have two copies of the what have I done catalogue to give away -- they'll go to two randomly picked subscribers who can tell us in which London group show Gordon is currently exhibiting.

Friday 13 December (9pm)

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

Jazzanova appropriate the sounds of yesteryear (soul jazz, Brazilian samba and bossa nova, Afro-Cuban rhythms, rare groove), recombine them with the dance-floor sounds of today (house, hip hop, techno), and throw in a good measure of soulful vocals and spoken word. Key players on the "future jazz" or "nu-jazz" scene, the result is an utterly compelling melange, aimed at the dance-floor, yet exuding warmth, sophistication, and positivety which belie the predominantly-sampled beats and melodies. Signed to the Compost label, in the late nineties this six-strong DJ and production outfit from Berlin remixed tracks for the likes of King Britt, MJ Cole and Incognito. Earlier this year they released their long-awaited debut album In Between to much critical acclaim. Afronaught, aka Orin Walters, is part of the Bugz In The Attic collective. Comprised of producers, DJs, musicians, and vocalists (such as 4 Hero, IG Culture and Kaidi Tatham), the Bugz are central to the "broken beat" scene ("the West London sound"). Afronaught's single Transcend Me is one of the scene's defining songs. For Friday's DJ sets, expect then an uplifting, genre-twisting, and wholly satisfying selection of sounds both foundation-creating and ground-breaking.

Friday 13 December (10pm - 12am)

@ National Theatre, South Bank, SE1 (020 7452 3400) Tube: Embankment/Waterloo

Fractured electronic folk could be one way of describing Erlend Oye's new sound as he joins Ben Osborne for a night of semi-d-tached music at the late lounge. Softcore pop-stylist Erlend Oye is better known as one half of the Norwegian acoustic duo Kings Of Convenience and since providing vocals for fellow countrymen Royksopp he has ventured into the world of electronic music. His new album Unrest -- out in the New Year -- features collaborations with highly renowned acts such us as Schneider TM, Morgan Geist and The Op:l Bastards, producing a mixture of electronic styles infused with his typically subtle vocals. With this rare DJ appearance Erlend will not only be previewing tracks from his new album (there's talk of live vocals too), but also playing an eclectic set from electronic and country to guitar pop.

Saturday 14 December (7:15pm)

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

In his last book, Super Cannes, JG Ballard (Crash, Cocaine Nights and Empire Of The Sun...) dealt with the creeping violence of consumer culture. Essentially, Ballard's theory is that our latent psychopathy is being tapped into in order to keep us engaged and consuming. Or as, the book's psychologist character Wilder Penrose explains; "A perverse sexual act can liberate the visionary self in even the dullest soul. The consumer society hungers for the deviant and unexpected. What else can drive the bizarre shifts in the entertainment landscape that will keep us 'buying'? Psychopathy is the only engine powerful enough to light our imaginations, to drive the arts, sciences and industries of the world." It's something to think about as you endure the Xmas maul at the mall. And when you return home with bleeding shins and an empty wallet you'd do well to nurse your wounds with a Ballard novel. But hearing him speak is an even rarer delight. This event at the ICA finds Ballard chatting to Iain Sinclair. If you have an interest in modern British fiction, the impact of the car on human behaviour, narratives of incarceration and release or the perversity of the modern consumer mindset, you should go.

NB: The ICA is holding a mini JG Ballard festival from Friday 13/12 to Thursday 19/12 (talks, films, concerts...) -- see the ICA's website from all events and details.

Sunday 15 December

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

What Hollywood needs right now is Jimmy Stewart. Through westerns, romances, thrillers, comedies... and oh, It's a Wonderful Life (a genre all of it's own) Stewart brought a range and ease that exudes an honest conviction. His gentle, mid-Western integrity gave his characters a kind of humorous easy gravitas. Today, you'd have to roll Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise and George Cloony together and you'd not even be close... who else could have played roles ranging from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance to Mr. Smith goes to Washington to Rear Window. And what would Hitchcock have done without him? Employ Cary Grant? In classics like Vertigo, Rear Window and The Man Who Knew Too Much, he paints a masucline vulnerability to the Hitchockian hard edge. Cowboy, politician, detective, human-being, where would Hollywood have been without him? Given the tough political times, it's perhaps appropriate that the NFT is presenting a Jimmy Stewart season. On the other hand, imagine Jimmy Stewart today in a Michael Mann epic... perhaps Miami Vice??

NB: The fetsival runs through Monday 30/12/02. For the full schedule see the NFT website.

Monday 16 December (6pm also at 8:30pm on 21/12)

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

Mad computer tries to kill astronauts, oh set across time, doesn't sound like much does it? What do Tarkovsky, Soderbergh, Kubrick and Roddenberry have in common, they've all made thoughtful science-fiction, i.e. a slow-burning, big budget, certainly brain-twisting, possibly mind-numbing experience (if you don't believe us, see Star Trek: The Motion Picture, director's cut). Throbbing pulse or pre-Woo balletic is the appropriate term for the editing pace, but these are milestones; what is science ficition if not the ambition to imagine the future in a grand way: ultimately Trekkies determined that the first space shuttle would be named the Enterprise. 2001: A Space Odyssey still remains the quintessential intellectual sci-fi thriller, machine behaving like man, man vs. machine, totally existential. Sure, Kubrick's directorial tics, ambitions, habits and eccentricities are the stuff of legend, but don't let that crowd out the enormous vision of 2001, what did some astronauts say after landing on the moon: it was just like 2001. Sure, but they didn't wear outfits by YSL now did they? And did you know that if you scoll Hal one letter forward, you get IBM? Was Kubrik really that witty?

NB: 2001 is also being screened on Saturday 21/12 at 8:30pm.

Tuesday 17 December (8pm )

@ The Garage, 20-22 Highbury Corner, N5 (020.7607.1818 ) Tube: Highbury and Islington

A band whose music features in a current commercial for a certain mobile phone service provider, Add N to (X) have a unique ability to express what all machine hearts are feeling with some heaving analogue electronic art rock. Featuring an awesome array of retro-synthesizer expertise, backed up by a massive drum sound, the band reveal quite varied underlying grooves from track to track that enigneers live music with a captivating power. With the tools of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop at their disposal and the influence of unidentified space aliens, these musical scientists use their instruments as an artillery assault against cutesy TV-friendly sick pop. This gig (with support from Chrome Hoof and Donnatella) will mark the end of their current UK tour that promotes the release of the new album Loud Like Nature.

Giveaway: We have 5 copies of The Dedworth Echo and 5 packets of seeds of doubt -- they'll go to 5 randomly picked subscribers who can tell us how many members there are in Add N to (X).

Ends Friday 20 December (Tue to Sat 10am - 6pm)

@ Gagosian, 8 Heddon St., W1 (020.7292.8222) Tube: Piccadilly Circus

Quentin Tarantino recently complained that journalists will kill you with a verb, well actually Hollywood Is A Verb, so says an Ed Ruscha drawing, and the title of this goup show. Actually, Hollywood is a verb, noun, town, image, dream, fantasy, hell and a boulevard. It's also an appropriate Xmas show in that we need that cheery sunny cool to heat up this winter chill and any show with Ruscha drawings is always worth a stop-over. Together, Rushca's cool, Douglas Gordon's collages, Dennis Hopper's Hollywood cool photos, Philip-Lorca diCorcia's homeless folk in La-La land and Cindy Sherman's portraits, all bring a razor to the glamour of tinseltown. Yet all also reglamourize with their technical slickness -- even the Rockstar painter-chic of Dexter Dalwood -- so maybe Ruscha's other drawing is an appropriate self-criticism: Lame Theme... still when you work with talent, you get results. (Ends Friday 20/12)

NB: The show also features David Hockney, Maurizio Cattelan, Bruce Nauman, Andy Warhol and Glen Seator.

Saturday 21 December (7pm)

@ Forum, 9-17 Highgate Rd., NW5 (020.7344.0044 ) Tube: Kentish Town

Death In Vegas are to play The Forum (with loyal support from Electrelane) to give some "Xmas fun for the UK". This gig is intended to aid the propelling of the single Scorpio Rising to a Christmas No. 1 spot. However unlikely this may sound, the accompanying vocals of rock and roll bad boy Liam Gallagher may send it pretty close, especially since his recent high-profile, but presumably coincidental (!), activities involving a dry slap in a Munich hotel... However, we may not necessarily be able to count on his performance at the gig. The single itself provides us with more musical depth and groove than much of Gallagher's activity, all credit to the solid dirty downtempo beats of Death in Vegas themselves.

Ends Sunday 5 January (Daily 8:30pm & Sun 6:30pm)

@ Battersea Arts Centre, Lavender Hill, SW11 (020.7326.8200)

"Jazzlanguagemusic" is what Lord Buckley preached. An idol for Charlie Parker, Lenny Bruce, and then Bill Hicks and Robin Williams, this is a character that remains fogged -- or perhaps fobbed -- by history, but who still influences people now like Dustin Hoffman and Eddie Izzard. "His royal hipness" hails from an era where "come to daddy" was an invitation to the "Faroutasphere", where cats, kittens and daddies charmed their way through the dishevelled jazz bars and debauched back rooms of the pre-LOVE sixties. McCarthy is on the horizon and the Jones' in the corner havn't a clue what's going on. This production, swings to the words of Jake Broder as Lord Buckley and the sounds of the Sleepytime Jazz Quartet. It's part night-club, part-church, but the era is ever-shifting. A fantastically stylish way to get your finger poppin' Christmas spirit flippin'...

NB: Run ends Sunday 05/01/2003.

Ends Saturday 4 January (Tue to Sat 10am - 6pm)

@ Inside the White Cube, 48 Hoxton Square, N1 (020.7930.5373) Tube: Old St.

"This is how I have lived day after day, not only in the real world, but also and much more in the copied world...". One of Japans foremost post-war photographers, Daido Moriyama has been working at the cutting edge of the photographic medium for 35 years. In this single work, thousands of Polaroid's were taken consecutively over three days. The result is a flat representation of his environment, where objects, textures and time merge into a one-dimensional pattern. These Hockney-esque Polaroid's like Picasso before him, are a striking example of the way that photography can distort and fragment perceptions of time and reality. In a world where digital images and distortion are now commonplace and accessible, these images have a quality that seems almost pure by comparison. (Show ends Sunday 04/01/2003.)

NB: This is Louise Neri's third curatorial selection for this new project space: Inside the White Cube (the last one was Katharina Grosse).

Ends Sunday 12 January

@ Mobile Home, 42 Theobalds Rd., WC1 (020.7405.7575)

There's never been a more poignant moment to look at a plane in the sky, though the Blitz was probably much more terrifying. As we only really see planes in disastrous situations through the media, Jon Thomson's and Alison Craighead's latest collaboration is probably very welcome. They're streaming-in live images of planes taking-off combined with randomly found he-said/she-said texts, the result is Short Films about Flying. Not quite Krzysztof Kieslowski nor Glenn Gould, there's still a silent movie real-time quality to this experience. They're no crashes nor tearful fairwells, just planes leaving and arriving. It's Fischli and Weiss set to the tone of keystone cops. Given our increasingly international lives and this time of year, they tap into our desire to leave on a jet-plane. This could run and run...

NB: Show ends Sunday 12/01/2003.

Ends Sunday 9 March (Daily 10am - 6pm, Fri & Sat until 10pm)

@ Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 (020.7887.8008) Tube: Southwark/Blackfriars

Given the fragility of Eva Hesse's materials, this exhibition may be the only time that such a comprehensive collection of the work of one of the most important sculptors of the late twentieth-century, is brought together in one place. Included are early gouaches and watercolours: close-knit works on paper in which the shadowy intimacy of darkened semi-abstract forms remain contained within the tight borders created around them. It is only at the point where three-dimensional expression literally leaps out of the frame, and shadows become sculptural, following objects which gracefully mix a mechanical regularity with the spontaneous beauty of the sub-conscious, that Hesse's work comes into its own. Nipples, phallic objects, ropes and latex all feature-delicately wound up in an iridescent web of ordered chaos.