Tuesday 29 April (7:30pm)

@ Delfina, 50 Bermondsey St., SE1 (020.7357.6600) Tube: London Bridge

Tag teams seem to be the new black: Art and Language, the Chapman brothers, Jane & Louise Wilson, Herzog and de Meuron, French and Saunders, the Thompson Twins, Tim and Sue Noble... and now Markus Muntean and Adi Rosenblum -- sounding like French intellectual comic characters -- if they were'nt two, then they'd be a pretty snazzy collective. With work that shifts easily from painting to sculpture to installation, this forty-something, Vienna-based duo, have been described as seeking or trying to make sense of this spectacle of consumer culture, and yet trying to "distill" a sense of the spiritual. Easily described, but far more difficult to consume; their paintings are made from modified, appropriated images. These "illustrations" come complete with New Yorkerish white bands as frames and pithy captions such as "She hates for things to get finally pinned down, for possibilities to be narrowed by the shabby impingements of facts." or "The day doesn't promise us more than the day, and we know it has a certain duration and an end. We would wait in vain for what we didn't know we were waiting for. And in the end there would be nothing but a slow falling of night." With "irony", the duo's work "appears" to proffer some zen-like questions...

NB: Muntean and Rosenblum will be speaking in conjunction with their show that just opened at Iterim Art (runs until Sun 01/06).

Tuesday 29 April (8:30pm)

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

Switch on ya cable tonight (or today you jammy freelancers) and if you're not a fan of all new Most Haunted, Bid-up or BBC4, you're likely to flick over to the music channels. Whether a VH1 Classicer, or avid Kerranger, during those annoying 3 minutes when the "official" adverts (for things other than your fav pop music human brand) appear, loyalty will waver and you'll end up twitching and chain smoking across every pop video channel. So tonight, you do this and during your journey you'll see one zillion times: Aguilera's "Beautiful", Tatu's "Not gonna get us", Madonna's entire back catalogue and ridiculous new replacement video, Justin body popping and The White Stripes stuck in some scary skeleton Toblerone. Does it have to be like this? There must be a more civilised and sophisticated way of watching the highest of this low art? Let's move it to the South Bank, and make sure we only see the most cutting edge music videos, and drag along a panel of those Sohonians to discuss who was the D.O.P.... Might not be everyone's pint of lager, but if you love new music and newer videos you'll just simply have to go. (For tickets call NFT box office at 020.7928.3232.)

NB: This is Antenna's fourth installement and this month's panel will comprise of video commissioner and production company partner John Hassay, video directors Blue Source, and Shane R. J. Walter (director of onedotzero).

Wednesday 30 April (6:30pm)

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

Voluntary or involuntary exoduses create many things... like seeds thrown in the wind, new sprouts grow in fresh fields. Probably the most famous exile, from Africa's expulsion, is one little Indian lawyer, MK Ghandi -- yup that one. Most stories though don't have such heroic ends... Artist Zarina Bhimji's film, Out of Blue - comissioned for Documenta 11, which is having it's first UK viewing -- examines Idi Amin's 1972 expulsion of Asian and Africans from Uganda, a moment of diaspora, and one of great sadness but also of new beginings and possibilities. Working with the Ugandan landscape and architecture, the London-based Bhimji has created a personal film based on childhood memories yet universal in outlook. After all, the landscape, as all those images of Bagdad and Iraq will testify, can be as evocative as the scars of a human face.

NB: As part of Tate Britain's Art Now exhibition series, Zarina Bhimji will be speaking to cultural theorist Sarat Maharaj.

Wednesday 30 April (6:30pm)

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

There is a scene in this new Aki Kaurismaki film in which the protagonist, played with amazing deadpan by Markku Peltola, has been locked up in a vault together with a bank-teller. "Do you mind if I smoke?" he asks, whereupon she replies "Does a tree mourn its fallen leaves?" Maybe it's the Finnish language, maybe it's the strange ambience and slow pace that Kaurismaki is so good at building up, but somehow the way the dialogue of certain French films makes sense without actually making sense at all, it seems to be a perfectly logical response. The amnesiac hero, M, tries to find out who he is, and then tries to become someone new. As Jeremiah Kipp pointed out in his review (for filmcritic.com), "It may be The Film Without a Point, saying things we already know about human interconnection and that we can all get along if we try (even the homeless)", but who needs a point when Kaurismaki delivers such a beautiful comedy? Minimalist yet emotional, harsh yet heartwarming, Man Without a Past has been compared to old classics by directors such as Charlie Chaplin, Preston Sturges and Frank Capra. It won two awards at the Cannes Film Festival, including the Grand Prix (the second most important prize).

NB: It's run at the ICA ends tonight so make sure you catch it.

Wednesday 30 April (7pm)

@ Astoria, 157 Charing Cross Rd., WC2 (020.7434.9592) Tube: Tottenham Court Rd.

With music's best reference to "signing on" since UB40, the Avril Lavigne sounding single "El Salvador" took Athlete to heights as of yet unscaled by the Deptford four piece. A cool, catchy single taken from their debut album Vehicles and Animals, it was a long time in the making, but it was well worth it. This 12-song collection sees them create some of the loveliest Anglicised Beach Boy harmonies since Silver Sun. Will they fulfill their promise of being the next big thing? To paraphrase their debut single: they've got the style to make it happen.

NB: Support comes from the excellent Fonda 500 who are working on their fourth album, a follow up to Number 1 Hi-Fi Hair.

Giveaway: We have two copies of Fonda 500's limited 7" ep to give away. They'll go to two randomly picked subscriber who can tell us on which label was their last album released.

Wednesday 30 April (7pm)

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

"Tenderness" is a word not usually associated with the brutally hot New York summer, but Rabbit Songs, the debut album from Hem, suggests that it should be. Recorded with an 18 piece orchestra and colouring their palette with glockenspiel, harmonium and flute "alt.folkies" over said time, this NYC four-piece kicked it back old-school, creating a timeless soundtrack to an imagined pastoral landscape. Critics have suggested that they share a lineage with everyone from the The Kingsbury Manx to The Cowboy Junkies. While singer Sally Ellyson's dulcet tones have set lips a quiver with her conglomeration of Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez and Sandy Dennis; prepare yourself for an evening of hushed, magical reverence.

Thursday 1 May (8pm)

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

When Sam Beckett put together some radio plays, its intent was to demonstrate the power, actually more the presence, of voice, and just as likely, sound. When the sound engineer of the first Star Wars -- classic, not episode one -- tranformed everyday sounds into Wookie calls, Tie fighter whoorls, Android bleeps... he demonstrated that simple day-to-day experiences could be trompe l'oeil for the ear. In inverse, Francisco Lopez's blindfold-aided minimalist sounds, wildlife enviromentalist Chris Watson's glacial recordings, and "sonic enviromentalist" Gregg Wagstaff's country "experience", this final installment of the Sonic Arts Network's Cut and Splice will collect and re-present specific sounds, that is they'll allow one of our more neglected senses in the visual arts to take precedence. This will be as the ICA has stated; "anti-fast listening"!

NB: Excerpts from this festival will be broadcast on Tue 29/05 on John Peel's Radio 1 show, Sat 10/05 at 11pm on Hear & Now (BBC Radio 3).

Friday 2 May

@ Cinemas across London

They don't make actors like Burt Lancaster anymore, and we sure do miss him. Perhaps we miss him more because of films like The Leopard, in which he plays an aging Italian prince -- the Sicilian Leopard -- based upon Guiseppe di Lampedusa's novel, after all Lancaster based his Leopard on the film's director Luchino Visconti. Need we say more? A thoughtfully epic drama about the old making passage for the young, it is Lancaster's leathery toughness combined with an atmosphere created by Visconti that's so palapably textured that one could remember it decades later. Now we see where Scorsese and Coppola got it from. We're sure even they still remember that scene in the stables with the young boy. (This is a newly restored print.)

NB: The NFT will host a Visconti Study Day on Sat 17/05 (10 am - 3:30pm). Speakers will include: Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, whose definitive study of Visconti has just been re-editioned, and Richard Dyer of the University of Warwick, currently working on a study of Visconti's use of music.

Friday 2 May (6:30 & 8:30pm)

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

The history of literature has its fair share of recluses. We have, of course, JD Salinger, who fled to the tiny village of Cornish, New Hampshire, in '53 and has been shunning publicity ever since. There is Harper Lee, who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird and then went quiet; Don DeLillo, who refuses to promote any of his books; and William Wharton, the author of the cult classic Birdy, whose true identity, together with that of B. Traven, is one of the best kept secrets in the world of publishing. And finally there is of course Thomas Pynchon, whose novels (including The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon) have been critically huge and sales successes. Still all known photographs of the man date back to the early '50s, and until a few years ago, when Nancy Jo Sales of New York Magazine tracked him down, he hadn't been interviewed once in four decades. In their documentary, Fosco & Donatello Dubini seek to unravel the enigma of Pynchon -- "one of the most influential but least public writers of our time", using archive photographs, historical documents, news footage and interviews with Pynchon's friends and fanatics.

NB: The ICA will be screening this documentary until Sat 31/05.

Friday 2 May (7:30pm)

@ The Spitz, Old Spitalfields Market, 109 Commercial St., E1 (020.7392.9032) Tube: Aldgate East/Liverpool St.

In the school of cool you get a whole lotta points for supporting screaming darlings the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and it's no surprise then that the Spitz is stressing the almost coolness of their supporting act for this Friday's gig. The Loves are new and in their short career have warmed audiences up for the ultra hip YYY's and The Rapture, maybe the promoters hope that this "coolness" is catchy, 'cause this May 2nd sees their punky pop shmuckness prologue for The Apples in Stereo. AIS could conceivably be seen as the older siblings, compared to all these young snappers in mullets and leg warmers. Let's say they have been here and done this before and have had supporting acts come and go while they make their way around both the masses of the USA and Europe on their first tour since the release of their last album. In the Spitz, you will find them exactly half-way through their tour, so expect a polished set of poppy melodies. The Loves will be hungry and spunky but equally as popblastic in warming you up for the release of their debut album Love.

Giveaway: We have a pair of tickets for this gig to give away. It'll go to one randomly picked subscriber who can tell us the name of the other country in Europe that AIS are gigging in on this tour.

Friday 2 May (9:30pm - 5am)

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

Located in the heart of Farringdon's meatpacking locale, Fabric Live -- as a destination for a drunk-drive safari through the savanna of today's beats-driven music scenes -- is difficult to better. This week is no exception with, in Room 1 of the labyrinthine venue, the Bay Area's Gold Chains, aka Topher Lafata, performing live. Electroclash-esque, Lafata's sound is an amalgamation of acid-house, electro, punk, disco, and dancehall. It's chaotic, high-attitude, and bassbin-pumping, and guaranteed to incite Cameo-emulating carnal thrustings thinly disguised as dance. DJs James Lavelle (of Mo' Wax fame), Errol Alkan, and Joe Ransom provide back up. In Room 2, there's the usual ridiculous drum 'n' bass who's-who tearing things up; this week it's Roni Size, Fabio, Peshay, and Teebee, with MCs GQ, Moose, and 2 Shy. And in Room 3, straight outta Manchester, Aim (aka Andy Turner), appears to be playing a marathon all-nighter. His latest album on Grand Central, Hinterland, is a fine collection of blunted Hip-Hop, featuring Souls of Mischief and ex Baby-Bird singer, Stephen Jones.

Saturday 3 May (3pm)

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

Only geniuses and fools think they can buy low and sell high on the stockmarket... rather as Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd have taught us with frozen orange stocks, buy when everyone is selling and vice-versa! So with the dotgones behind us, and potential recession on the horizon, it's probably a real good time to consider staring at a dotcom (hint: good example, www.kultureflash.net). The popular image of the internet is one of the wild, wild west, that is complete unregulated freedom, the right to be who and whatever you want to be, anytime you like -- the final frontier, so they say. Well following 9/11 and all that, concern over security is certainly overtaking final frontier privileges, thus the time is right for cyberwonderland's Noam Chomsky to step forward: Geert Lovink, author of Dark Frontier: Essays on Internet Culture and Uncanny Networks, founder of the nettime mailing lists and co-founder of online community server Digital City. How could you say no to the member of the Foundation for the advancement of Illegal Knowledge who will be speaking, discussing information warfare and net-art strategies. As with all wild frontiers, the railway and sheriffs always steam-roller their way through eventually. Remember the Matrix! Perhaps Lovink is the One!

Saturday 3 May (10pm - 5am)

@ Arcola Theatre, 27 Arcola St, E8 (020.7503.1646) Tube: Highbury & Islington

A highly-charged all-nighter looms as Warp celebrates the launch of a series of one-off dancefloor 12"s on the new Arcola label. In addition to Warp DJs, there are sets from DJs Dub Kult, Louis Digital, Plaid, Oris Jay, Cane and Luke Vibert -- so a gnarly selection of grooves should be on offer from these electro luminaries. Keeping the floor moving shouldn't be a problem with the skeletal garage and tubular bass and breaks of Oris Jay, especially when it is all to break forth from the reported gargantuan PA rig. Plaid is set to weave a bit of electrogroove with a laptop set, whilst Luke Vibert has the potential to save a few souls with a more loungesque twist; although judging by the line-up a heavier sesh is on the cards. Sleep? Who needs it?.

NB: Tickets are available from Smallfish (EC1), Rough Trade (Covent Garden, WC2) and online at stargreen.

Giveaway: We have a pair tickets for this party to give away. It'll go to one randomly picked subscriber who can tell us the name of Plaid's most recent release (which is excellent by the way).

Ends Sunday 4 May (Mon to Sat 11am - 6pm; Sun 12pm - 6pm)

@ Photographers' Gallery , 5 & 8 Great Newport St., WC2 (020.7831.1772) Tube: Leicester Square

In a time when pre-emptive striking is the politics of the moment, and after years of bodies piling up, quiet reflection may not seem the chosen activity with regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We have seen the photos in the press, we have read the stories of Palestinian suicide bombers and Israeli tanks, we know what it is about: perpetual retribution, an endless cycle of deadly violence. What the press neglect to show us is everyday life, that the moment of death and pain is only a moment among many moments of people -- just like us -- who go on with their lives. Confronting Views may inspire quiet reflection, it may inspire helplessness or it may inspire immediate action -- but all nine photographers included tell a story, the same story, from behind nine different cameras and yet they all hold some truth -- whatever that truth may be. (This show ends Sun 04/05.)

NB: From Thu 08/05 till Sat 17/05 catch Photo London a short exhibition of photographs representing London's status as a capital of culture as seen by twelve leading UK-based photographers (Martin Parr, Dorothy Bohm, Juergen Teller, Elaine Constantine, Mauricio Guillen, John Riddy, Gavin Fernandes, Greg Williams, Leticia Valverdes, Stephen Gill, Tom Hunter, Anderson and Low).

Tuesday 6 May (drinks @ 6:30pm; talk @ 7:15pm)

@ Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, WC1 (020.7612.6000) Tube: Russel Sq.

George Lois is a giant of the ad industry. As well as being over 6'3" (and having that New Yorker's knack of seeming twice as big), he is also the King of BIG IDEA driven advertising. From the 21st century perspective of focus group driven campaigns, Lois' insistence that advertising is Art derived from gut-instinct, seems either quaint or refreshingly anarchic, depending on your viewpoint (or which floor your desk is on in the agency). Either way he has a lot to answer for -- it was Lois who really began to exploit celebrity as a creative route in ads and his iconic Esquire covers. That said, Lois' brilliant portrayal of celebrity has always made a profound comment on the nature of celebrity and product, while his ideas were never secondary to the celeb. So the punters that put that bloke out of Eastenders and into the Abbey National campaign would do well to show up at the launch of $ellebrity (Phaidon). Big George may need to break their balls already and while he's at it, he could have a word with Beckham's agent.

NB: This talk takes place at Logan Hall and is part of the D&AD President's Lectures. Tickets can be purchased by calling 020.7840.1135 or emailing dee@dandad.co.uk.

Giveaway: We have two copies of $ellebrity to give away. They'll go to two randomly picked subscribers who can tell us which part of NYC does Lois hail from. (Hint: Bombers.)

Thursday 8 May (7:30pm )

@ 100 Club, 100 Oxford St., W10 (020.7636.0933) Tube: Tottenham Court Rd/Oxford Circus

Walter Van Bierendonck is a massive bearded bald bloke covered in tattoos. If you sat opposite him on the tube, you'd assume his 1,500cc chopper had broken down somewhere. So if you got chatting (unlikely), you'd be amazed to discover he is a fashion designer, who along with Dries Van Noten, was one of the Antwerp 6. And if you thought he was pulling your leg with that one, you'd be even more surprised to discover his latest project is a ballet. With No Strictly Rubens, Sadler's Wells pushes the boundaries of modern dance with an intriguing collaboration between the Royal Ballet of Flanders, the Hell's Angel of Fashion (costumes), dance supremo Praga Kahn (soundtrack) and Philipe Arlaud (stage and lighting). Rubens offers Bierendonck the perfect opportunity to explore his interest in the fusion of myth with body modification. In bringing to life the classical subject matter of Rubens paintings, he uses tulle costumes to transform lithe ballet dancers into fleshy Rubenesque figures. What you can expect is a spectacular fusion of fashion show, modern dance, classical ballet and circus. Just don't ask Bierendonck to do a pirouette.

Ends Saturday 10 May (Daily 7:45pm; Sat Mat 3pm)

@ Riverside Studios, Crisp Rd., W6 (020.8237.1111) Tube: Hammersmith Broadway

La Fura Dels Baus are a Catalan company, who have accrued considerable notoriety over the years for their extreme theatre practises. La Fura believe in direct and uncompromising contact with their audiences, whether that be actual (past work has included swinging heavy machinery into the audience and flinging offal around) or thematic as in the case of their new show XXX. The show takes "The Philosophy of the Bedroom" by the Marquis de Sade as its inspiration. Whatever the Evening Standard would have us believe, La Fura pose an interesting proposition for contemporary audiences. Yes, their tactics are crude, but there is no mistaking the mettle behind them and they have an unnerving knack for creating highly sensitised imagery. La Fura have been challenging their audiences (who form cultish proportions in Spain) since they began in the late '70s. Perhaps audiences increasingly require a more sophisticated shock tactic to really feel moved...? Like Throbbing Gristle, La Fura Dels Baus are not everyone's cup of tea, but it's important that they're out there, making work.

Ends Sunday 18 May (Wed to Sun 1pm - 6pm)

@ Chisenhale, 64 Chisenhale Rd., E3 (020.8981.4518) Tube: Bethnal Green

Marine Hugonnier presents a dystopic view of the potential surface of a war-torn country and at once, a view of the current human condition. Hugonnier's film puts forth a multi-faceted hierarchy that exists in the space between landscape and its occupants -- the visual tranquility that is so commonly associated with landscape imagery collides with a subtly manipulative interpretation of the place. The topography, the geography, all elements of the tangible matter that make up the space, become crucially strategic vantage points from which to harvest influence. What is the highest point in our memory, and why is vantage point so crucial to all of the various outlets for conquest? Hugonnier addresses these questions at the same time as demanding a point of focus that lies beyond the political channels through which we typically view war and its residue. Ariana challenges the premise of art as a blameless entity within a political space and invites the viewer to participate in a complex dialogue between the distance of the artist from its subject and the degree of control that follows.

NB: In conjunction with the show at Chisenhale Hugonnier has an exhibition of photographs at MW projects (until Sat 31/05). Both shows are part of the Made in Paris series taking place in London in April - June 2003.

Ends Sunday 18 May (Daily 10am - 6pm)

@ Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens (020 7298 1515) Tube: Knightsbridge, Lancaster Gate

German artist, Blinky Palermo, may be unfamiliar to many, but in artworld circles he has long stood as a mythical figure as elusive as the name he appropriated from an infamous American gangster and boxing promoter. Palermo's remarkable body of work, made in only 15 years before his death at 33, has been considered practically problematic due to its extreme fragility, and conceptually ambiguous because of his extraordinary diversity of style and means. There are blatant quotations from artists whom he admired: from his teacher, Joseph Beuys, to those much-lauded US artists growing up in the post-minimalist era, including Brice Marden, Ellsworth Kelly, and Robert Ryman. Yet, for all the echoes of abstractions past, there is a restless energy and resounding sense of possibility that makes Palermo's work uniquely fresh and vivid. Triangular shaped, monochrome canvases are placed over doors, cotton clings to walls like coloured banners, a line traces the frame of a window, and gestural brushstrokes are laid lovingly over makeshift wooden crosses. With his fabric paintings, horizontal bands of coloured material are stitched-together, fusing the impersonal precision of minimalism with the emotional impact of Rothko's colour fields. There is much to take in here, and we can only wonder where this tremendous surge of creative energy would have led Palermo, had he lived to tell the tale. (Ends Sun 18/05.)

NB: Free every Saturday at 3pm, an invited speaker will give viewers and introduction to Palermo's work. On 03/05 it's Helen Robertson (artist), on 10/05 it's DJ Simpson (artist) and finally on 17/05 it's Lisa Panting (curator).

Giveaway: We have one copy of the catalogue to give away. It'll go to one randomly picked subscriber who can tell us how Blinky died.

Sunday 8 June (7:30pm)

@ Hammersmith Apollo, Queen Caroline St., W6 (0870.606.3400 ) Tube: Hammersmith

Those of us that have revelled in the dark melancholic and often cynical -- yet beautiful -- world of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds for just about a decade, shrug disbelievingly every time a new album hits the charts with the implausible statement "this is their best and most accomplished album ever". Yet, incredibly, the statement inevitably turns out to be true -- Nick Cave and his seeds keep getting better, even when your heart incessantly returns to particular older tunes. Music aside, Cave has always had a presence. When he's around, he is the only one in the room -- even you disappear. Well, your chance to experience that presence is coming up.

NB: Buy your tickets asap as the first two nights Fri 06/06 and Sat 07/06 are already sold out.

Ends Sunday 17 August (Daily 10am - 6pm, Tue & Wed until 8pm)

@ Victoria & Albert Museum, Cromwell Rd., SW7 (020.7942.2000) Tube: South Kensington

Back in the '70s, Guy Bourdin (1928-91) revolutionized fashion photography with his subversive, clinically constructed images of fetishistic lust and seduction. Through the pages of Vogue and campaigns with Charles Jourdan, Chanel, and Issey Miyake, he quietly revealed our darkest desires, played out by a dynamic cast of anonymous and solitary women. In the first retrospective of this hugely influential, but esoteric photographer, V&A curator Charlotte Cotton has unravelled a previously unseen archive of cinefilm, polaroids, and journals that document an obsessive pursuit of the perfect picture. In the front room, a turret of peep holes afford us glimpses of salacious bedroom scenarios. Elsewhere, eerie projections flicker silently with ethereal models. Set against a backdrop of bordello mauve, these devices efficiently evoke the native Surrealist theatricality that informed Bourdin's eye. Adopting the underlying compositional structures he meticulously recorded in rural and urban landscapes, Bourdin directed meticulously poised dramas, latent with sinister narratives that are worthy of Hitchcock's own filmic imaginings. The use of older preliminary material, most notably the repeated black and white snaps of trees and fences from the '50s, goes far in unmasking some of the ambiguity and formal concerns of this significant image maker.

NB: The V&A is hosting several events in conjuction with this exhibtion -- consult the Bourdin microsite for the full schedule.