Friday 6 June (Daily 10am - 5.40pm)

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

There's something holy about Wolfgang Tillmans. Wispy, gauzy images capture nothing less than the soul of a radiantly gentle personality on paper. In his photos of people we sense expansive lives: hugging on the beach, naked climbing trees, on the Love Parade, and we remember that chest-bursting love we all feel for our friends sometimes. Artfully simple everyday still-lifes remind us how easily beauty may be coaxed from a situation. Luckily for the faithful, Tate Britain is now presenting a major retrospective of his catechism. Featuring new work and unseen pieces, it coincides with the publication of his new book if one thing matters, everything matters (Tate), which revisits every single image taken by Tillmans (over 2,300 prints!). Expect miracles!

NB: Show ends 14/09.

Friday 6 June (Tue to Sat 10am - 5pm; Sat till 4pm)

@ Modern Art Oxford, 30 Pembroke St., Oxford (01865.722.733)

This week Turner Prize nominees Jake and Dinos Chapman close another eventful exhibition at Modern Art Oxford. Suitably controversial and rich in grotesque and idyllic satire, The Rape of Creation draws yet another line in the sand to bring us "boy art" at its best. Insult to Injury borrows from the Chapman brothers' long running source of inspiration Francisco de Goya, this time in something of a more literal sense. The complete series of original etchings have been purchased and manipulated to depict the heads of clownish gremlins acting as manic stand-ins for the sufferers and torturers in Goya's Disasters of War. The newest grotesque is transposed onto the old -- and so the disasters of art mirror the disasters of war. One die-hard Goya fan did not see this piece as a tribute so much as a travesty, and responded by decorating Jake Chapman (and surrounding area) with red paint screaming "Viva Goya" during an artists' talk last week. The remnants of the evening's festivities can still be seen on the frame of a defiled artwork... perhaps another double original. The rest of the space, densely festooned with heavy metal style notebook drawings, provides a series of intellectual interludes, double entendres and downright dirty pictures. The installation for which the show is named is a defensive haven that seems to nourish a flagrant and abounding symbolism that (along with other white-trash ideologies) promises sanctuary in the homage to the detritus of society in all of its glory.

NB: Show ends this Sun 08/06.

Friday 6 June

@ Various cinemas across London

In all the best horror you're never quite sure how much of what you see is supernatural and how much is psychological, how much is ghost story and how much is descent into madness. For much of its running time Hideo Ring Nakata's Dark Water plays as a Repulsionesque portrait of a woman on (or a couple of steps beyond) the edge of a nervous breakdown, as well as a very grim modern fairy tale of lost and abandoned children and maternal love. But all the way through there's a ratchetting up of the supernatural tension, which eventually, shockingly, explodes -- or perhaps the most appropriate (wettest) analogy would be a dam burst. Either way, if you don't jump out of your skin, you've probably already drowned. And what is it with small children in primary coloured raincoats? Scary buggers. But while the little girl in red in "Don't Look Now" turns out to be a homicidal goblin for no apparent reason -- or are we missing something? -- there's no such trick ending here. The sodden and faceless figure in the yellow mac turns out to be... but that would be telling. Suffice to say she'll scare the bejaysus out of you and leave you feeling deeply uneasy about water in all its forms.

Friday 6 June (Tue to Sat 11am - 6pm)

@ Andrew Mummery, 61-63 Compton St., EC1 (020.7251.6265) Tube: Farringdon

Merlin James is an odd painter, not just in the context of England but perhaps in Europe as well. With holes cut through the canvas and bits of fibre and sticks thrown onto his surfaces, images carelessly-carefully over painted, there is an engaged awkwardness at play here. From his subject matter, of matadors, Quixote, windmills, to the rough-and-ready treatment of the objects, these paintings have a turn-of-the-20thcentury feel; that is there's a distinct retro-breeze. Would you expect any less from a man who lists William Nicholson (father of Ben) as one of his favourites? James' work pushes the boundaries of modern paintings language through the caesuras of postmodernism. The scent of Nicholson, Renoir, even early photography are all present, yet these paintings still question and pull at paintings edges. In a moment when most painters seem to pass themselves off as skateboarders, James' paintings assure us of Painting presence, and Painting like Quixote's windmills just smiles and turns in the wind. (Ends tomorrow Sat 07/06.)

NB: In sync with the current drawing revival d'jour, James is also exhibiting drawings in the project space downstairs. Willliam Nicholson's The Lowestroft Bowl (1911), one of Britain's lesser known gems is currently on view at Tate Modern.

Giveaway: We have a Merlin James catalogue and a pamphlet to to give away. It'll go to one randomly picked subscriber who can tell us who is his New York dealer.

Friday 6 June (8pm)

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

Laptop, leftfield music comes to the ICA in the form of a three-manned band Manitoba. Daniel Snaith and co have decided to grace London again, after exhausting Europe mainland, and is bringing with him Dublin nine-piecer The Jimmy Cake. Does inviting a psychedelic rock band mean Snaith is pushing left right the way round to er... right? Anyway, Manitoba's latest Up in Flames has received wide acclaim, two years after his debut LP heartstring tuggingly titled Start Breaking My Heart. Needless to say Manitoba is experimental textural sound. But unlike others there's a richer melodic construction and ability to continue to still push post 1st album hungriness, our newest technologies. It really is hard to describe, it's reminiscent of Musique Concrete when the musicians were really hearing the noises for the first time and weren't concerned with copying others, as there were none. Imagine a 7 year-old eight-armed child with ADD surrounded by the latest musical technology on sherbet.

NB: If you miss Manitoba at the ICA you can catch him do a DJ set on Fri 13/06 at the Embassy Bar and on Sat 14/06 at 93 Feet East.

Giveaway: We have two copies of Up In Flames and two copies of the single "Hendrix With KO" single to give away. They'll go to four randomly picked subscribers who can tell us what is the capital of the province of Manitoba.

Friday 6 June (9pm - 2am)

@ Dust

Future World Fridays is new night from Russ Jones and Cliffy, the chaps behind KultureFlash favourites FWF and Batmacumba, so like everything else they put on, you know it's going to be great fun. With Soho's Dust as the new locale, Cliffy's Brazilian beatfest will go down upstairs, whilst Russ agitates the dancefloor in the main room. He'll be dropping global grooves of pretty much every imaginable description, from Panamanian Drum 'n' Bass to Burmese Funk, from Somalian Salsa to Alaskan Breakbeat. Okay, we made those genres up, but we're trying to make a point here. Fantastic music is being made around the world, unlikely fusions are taking place as you read this, and we're grateful to Cliffy and Russ for having taken it upon themselves to root out this music and bring it to you on a plate rotating at 33.3 RPM. There's live music too, Quilombo Do Samba tonight, the UK's top samba school, banging a whole lot of drums very hard, and doing a damn fine job of recreating the beat of Brazil's carnival streets in the process; a suitably rip-roaring start to a great new night. Now where did we leave that Czech Flamenco CD?

Saturday 7 June (Tue to Fri 11am - 5pm, Wed until 8pm, Sat & Sun until 6pm)

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

Courtesy of Canadian sound and film artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, visitors to the Whitechapel can now take part in a unique audio walk that forms part of the series began in '99 entitled, The Missing Voice (Case Study B). Taking in the sounds of the 18th Century East End beginning in the Whitechapel Library, and ending forty minutes later at Liverpool Street station, the tour is relayed through the fractured remembrances of a disturbed stranger. Back at the gallery, the rather moving Forty-Part Motet (2001) is a recent example of Cardiff's experiments in devising controlled spatial environments. Voices in an invisible choir become separate and more human once we notice the coughs and whispers at the intermission that play earily in the background. Upstairs, leading American photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia continues to deal in scenes from daily life, meticulously creating moments in real time as a means of unravelling the signs and symbols through which we interpret the world. On show, A Storybook Life, which first took form as a book, charts the life of a select group of people over a series of 76 images. Two Hours is a smaller project consisting of pictures shot from a single vantage point in a Havana street, which follows on from a similar experiment, displayed two years ago at Gagosian, London. (Show Ends 24/08.)

NB: Catch Philip-Lorca diCorcia talk at Tate Modern on Sun 08/06 about his work (which is also on view at Tate Modern in Cruel And Tender -- a group photography show that just openned).

Saturday 7 June (6 - 8pm)

@ Laurent Delaye, 11 Saville Row, W1 (020.7287.1546) Tube: Piccadilly Circus

If you, like us, often wake up pondering whether there's more to reality than meets the eye, you'll be pleased to hear that the Swiss Institute's latest tome has come to the rescue. EXTRA sees 28 artists -- plus a coterie of critics, curators and physicists -- probe the complexity of the real through textual and visual 'essays'. Published to accompany the Swiss Institute's EXTRA exhibtion in New York, the book invites us to explore the probability of multiple universes courtesy of quantum physicists David Deutsch and Seth Lloyd, and allows us to glide through the folds of reality in the safe hands of Marc-Olivier Wahler -- among many other things of course. Featured artists include Olaf Breuning, Fischli & Weiss, Gelatin and Christian Jankowski. The evening's highlight will no doubt be a rare glimpse of Saddam Hussein, who will be putting in an appearance alongside his old buddy Bush in the UK premiere of two 'politically absurd' works by Giani Motti.

NB: Buy EXTRA through the Swiss Institute or Walther Koenig Books.

Giveaway: We have two copies of EXTRA to give away. They'll go to two randomly picked subscribers who can tell us the title of Fischli & Weiss' cat video.

Saturday 7 June

@ Watermans Art Center, 40 High St., Brentford, TW8 (020.8232,1010)

Waste not, want not... that's what the foggies say. Really, savin' and spendin' seems the nature of the world today. Recyclin' really is about wastage, it's to assuage our guilt for wasting. However in the visual arts, recycling is "appropriation" -- same old shit, different theory -- and in music, it's samplin' -- some old shit, new cool grooves! So Sprawl -- KF's own UN of IDM -- in collaboration with the Watermans Arts Centre and BRAG (the Brentford Recycling Action Group) is presenting Sonic Recycler, an evening to take out some old trash and transform it into "reinvented electronica". Magic! With global digital eaves dropper Scanner, composer Simon Fisher Turner, Benge and si-{cut}.db's tennis, and electronic performance ensemble Ticklish to take out, take apart, and remake their own sounds and others, this is going to be a stirring nite both in the head and all the way down to your knees. In that recycling spirit, we suggest that you KF divorcees out there get hitched to another, alternatively double recycle: marry yer exs...

Sunday 8 June (7:30pm)

@ Cecil Sharpe House , 2 Regent's Park Road, NW1 (0207.485.2206 ) Tube: Camden

Formerly as Appendix Out, currently as himself, Alasdair Roberts plays London following the release of his fifth and finest long player: Farewell Sorrow. Currently on loan from Drag City, this Rough Trade release sees Roberts' traditional influences and exceptional songwriting combined to produce a warm, confident and natural record. On his well-received '01 album of traditional songs, The Crook Of My Arm, Roberts' delicate voice and guitar awakened these songs for a new audience. Farewell Sorrow's original songs, this time with various accompaniments, still seem well aware of their ancestors but with a self-assured and unselfconscious air. Following the release of last year's Amalgamated Sons Of Rest record with Will Oldham and Jason Molina of Songs:Ohia, and a recent London support slot for Beck, Roberts has kudos aplenty. However, in the real world, the reason you should be going to see him play is because he's just released an album containing some of the finest songs you're likely to hear this year.

NB: On Sunday he's assisted by regular contributor Gareth Eggie.

Sunday 8 June (check schedule)

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

If your national pride is still smarting from our Eurovision embarrassment, then a trip to the Royal Festival Hall this month should restore your faith in musical Britannia. The Meltdown Festival, now in its eleventh year, stakes a claim to being one of the most varied, star-studded, and weirdly wonderful musical events on the planet. This year, it has an ideal curator in the shape of reggae icon and certifiable loon, Lee "Scratch" Perry. Perhaps there's not as much variety as in previous years -- when the likes of Nick Cave and Elvis Costello have taken the chance to show off their catholic tastes -- but there's the cream of the reggae, dance and R&B worlds on display, thus paying homage to Perry's broad influence. Check out Sly & Robbie and Michael Rose, alongside Howie B and Roni Size, and Perry himself playing with the likes of Macy Gray, Coldcut, Skin and Cleveland Watkiss. In the words of Scratch: "Tic tic toe. Big ben de time clock is my headmaster." Not to be missed.

NB: The festival runs from Sun 08/06 till 30/06. For the full line-up of events see the website.

Tuesday 10 June (7:30pm)

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

Guns, gangs and being scared witless are among the guaranteed topics of conversation during this instalment of the RFH's Future Perfect series. The concept: an established scribe -- here Niall Griffiths -- quizzes an up-and-coming writer on his or her big break, in this case Aniruddha Bahal on Bunker 13. It helps that both authors have chronicled unsavoury worlds of violence and subterfuge. Bunker 13, set in Kashmir, tells the story of military corruption and double-crossing and is predicted to be the summer's debut blockbuster. Meanwhile Griffiths -- Yoda to Bahal's Luke Skywalker -- gets a chance to plug his fourth work, Stump. The novel charts a flight from the clutches of Liverpudlian gangland life and subsequent adjustment to existence in a small Welsh town. Reading the book is akin to standing 'on the edge of a cliff in a fierce gale' according to the Guardian: not so good if you have vertigo, but a bit of excitement if you don't get out the house much.

NB: Lucy Ellmann talks to Barbara Gowdy about her fourth novel Dot in the Universe at 7:30pm on Wed 11/06. Gowdy is Canada's number one best-selling author.

Tuesday 10 June (drinks @ 6:30pm; talk @ 7:15pm)

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

KesselsKramer are a cr-ay-zee bonkers Dutch advertising/design studio. Known internationally for their pioneering Diesel ads, and admired the web over for their silly website kesselskramer.com (just go there and keep pressing refresh), these loonies will be bringing their mad as a badger approach to brands, and here to the venerable D&AD President's lectures stage. This season's lecture theme is all about integration. Presumably KK will be talking about how to integrate marketing ideas with pure hydroponically-grown skunk weed. One thing's for sure, they're about as likely to stick to the subject as the awesome George Lois who put on a top show last month. Both represent the power of anarchic creativity in delivering ads with guts, George comes at it with age, KK holds the torch for youth.

NB: Tickets can be purchased by calling 020.7840.1111 or emailing info@dandad.co.uk.

Tuesday 10 June

@ Notting Hill Arts Club, 21 Notting Hill Gate, W11 (020.7460.4459) Tube: Notting Hill Gate

Favela Chic are celebrating the release of their second discography Postnove 2 at Notting Hill's finest. A hippy Franco-Brazilian clan, they have moved from a cafe to bigger premises, to club nights, to albums. Postnove is not only the name of their record, but the name of their club night, as well as beachside meeting place in Brazil. They claim this act of branding was not intentional, and that their strong identity comes down to passion, and with the motto of "disorder and progress" you gotta believe them. The music is global eclectica, from '70s South American grove to Samba Rock and Hip-Hop. Paradox is providing us with dub poetry to get us into the mood, so expect Chocolate Milk to do exactly what it says on the can, it's smooth, but there's enough sugar to keep you dancing all night.

Thursday 12 June (8pm also on Fri 13/06)

@ Hoxton Hall, 130 Hoxton Street, N1 (020.7739.5431) Tube: Old Street

Angry, frustrated, analytical and satirical: Daniil Kharms (1905-42, Russia) presents a desperate image of the human condition as a well-oiled machine driving insatiably towards the edge of oblivion. In Kharms Way presents a snapshot of this reality, animated and shot into the present via Ted Milton's eager, intense voice/sax/ finger puppet virtuosity (he is very busy on stage) and Sam Britton's deconstructed, rewired laptop computer. Initially created as an experiment for the Rotozaza Connexions festival (Paris '01), it has developed magnificently, mostly during gigs all over central and eastern Europe last year; this is their UK premiere. It's a very exciting collaboration. Sam Britton works as one half of Icarus (mutterings of "my god, they've overtaken Autechre" were heard following their phenomenal live gig at the Scala last month). Ted Milton, "a kind of humanoidal Frankenstein poet combining the inspired lunacy of Leon Thomas & the anarcho-beatness of Kenneth Patchen", is known above all for his presence in the band Blurt, who, "like the Fall, are one of those anomalous sonic-poetic mysteries, consistently sounding both rudimentary & sophisticated, rhythmic & improvisationally complex..." (Bart Plantenga, radio 100, Amsterdam).

NB: In Kharms Way will be performed on both Thu 12/06 and Fri 13/06 at 8pm. Also Ted Milton will perform at Union Chapel on 16/07 with support from Icarus.

Thursday 12 June

@ Egg, 5-13 Vale Royal, Off York Way, N7 (020.7428.7574) Tube: Kings Cross

Read All About It! Debut festival at newfangled club celebrates fresh album. It's the Sonic Mook Experiment's new born bastard: Hot Shit (released 23/06). More gloriously affected art rock from a variety in the model of Pink Grease, !!! (Chk Chk Chk) and Radio 4. So, having just opened in Kings Cross, SME choose Egg for the three day fest in honour of the record, and arranged for hip bands and DJs to play too. They include Erase Errata, Klang, Kings With Long Arms, Queens of Noize and Richard Fearless (one half of Death in Vegas). Look on the SME site for the full festival line-up, and if you wanna be part of this avant-garde racket, join the scensters for some unashamed , grandiose naughtiness.

NB: Festival runs from Thu 12/06 to Sat 14/06. For tickets call Ticketweb on 08700.600.100 or Way Ahead on 08712.200.260.

Friday 13 June (6:30 - 9pm)

@ Royal Academy, Burlington House, Piccadilly, W1 (020.7300.8000) Tube: Piccadilly Circus

World urban population is now larger than the rural one. Nowadays it's unnecessary to even live in a city to be urban; it's a mentality, a way of life nourished upon us by the media and global economy. In addition, the countryside is disappearing into the greater city and environmental degradation is accelerating. In this context, skyscrapers appear as a viable approach to manage the city's physical growth and house its population. However, the high rise decision is always less technical and more emotional. From the effervescent development of housing towers in Asia to the petrifying argument that "the views to St. Paul" hold back anything from rising in London, our response to this building typology is as diverse as the functions of the towers. This thin line of economics and aesthetics is the topic to be dissected by this symposium.


Speakers Include: David Dunster of Liverpool University, currently researching the changes and adaptations wrought by the famous apartment towers Mies van de Rohe's 860-880 North Lake Shore Drive, Jean-Louis Cohen architect and architectural historian director of the Institut francais de l'architecture (IFA) Paris, Dr. Ken Yeang AA architect and 1996 Aga Kahn Award recipient who designs ecological buildings and skyscrapers, and Piers Gough another AA graduate and "enfant terrible" of British Architecture. Chaired by architectural commentator Peter Murray.

NB: For tickets call 020.7300.5839 or email events.lectures@royalacademy.org.uk. On Mon 23/06, part of the same series, David Marks of Marks Barfield Architects (designers of the London Eye) will talk about the Skyhouse project, an idea to create high quality, sustainable and affordable homes for London.

Friday 13 June (7pm)

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

Psychiatric patients gathered in the ICA to drink beer, and watch people of the likes of ex-Billy Childish band mates Holly Golightly and Bruce Brand make like Lux Interior and play The Cramps. Back in March, first reported on project File Under Sacred Music, the controversial re-enactment of The Cramps '78 Napa Mental Institute video, and the accompanying heated discussion with the patients, journalists, mental healthcare professionals and the artists. Now camera angles in check, edited and filmed from TV, across video after video to create the same "bootlegged" quality of the cult original, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard are known to be excited at having caught the "liveness" they pursued. Re-enactment can be a difficult issue, not least with the unease and excitement the role of this viewed 'audience' provides. After debuting in Sheffield, the film has its first London screening.

NB: There'll be screenings of File under Sacred Music in the ICA Theatre at 8pm and 10:30pm and live performances from The Parkinsons and Holly Golightly as well as Banned and The Courgettes, from Core Arts. DJs in the bar throughout the night will include Mini Kev (Miniscule of Sound) & Mo Shanks, Trash Money, Viralux, DJ Damaged, and Sophie Brown & Kevin Hendrick.

Saturday 14 June (11am)

@ Curzon Mayfair, 38 Curzon St., W1J (0871.871.0011) Tube: Green Park

Football brings out the best and worst in people. You can have instant comrade-in-arms in a London taxi simply by conversing about the intricacies of the game, and then be spat upon or feel the racial slurs just by walking to a match. England fans can be the happiest party-people in Asia then the nastiest philistines in Turkey, well not all, just some bad apples. During hostilities in Timor, silence fell during the FA cup final -- a moment greater than civil war. Football's finest hour usually being the World Cup, this past one between Brazil and Germany on June 30th, that is Ronaldo against Oliver Kahn. In reality, while millions focused their eyes on these 22 men and one referee, a small group of people watched another pair of nations go at it with a leather ball: the 2 lowest-ranked FIFA teams, Bhutan and Montserrat. Described as "a film of love, football and a faulty loudspeaker", this documentary already has a whiff of out-cooling Gooner Nick Hornby They say that the greatest Brazilian talents are always found on the streets playing kick-about, but least their greatest talents are multi-millionaires, now watch this bunch of ill-equipped folks playing for love and pleasure. Even Oliver Kahn can't stop that!

NB: Bhutan is now four places above Montserrat.

Sunday 15 June (Daily 10am - 6pm, Tue & Wed until 8pm)

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

The collaboration of Wolf D. Prix and Helmut Swiczinsky aka Coop Himmelb(l)au seems to be in the right time at the right time all the time. Born in the avant-garde hot-spots that were Vienna and later Graz during the late '60s and '70s where they claimed that "architecture must burn", CH later experienced the mandatory AA academic period and from the late '80s, Prix became a teacher at Sci-Arc in Los Angeles, arguably one of the most influential schools of the last decade. Apart from Prix's charismatic and egocentric personality, perhaps the reason why CH's architecture is so interesting is because it is anti-tectonic in its defiance of gravity. Prix architectural metaphor is that of a gigantic whale leaping out of the ocean and frozen floating in the sky. Remaining faithful to their unconventional design techniques and surviving a couple of decades without building, the demise of modernism, postmodernism and later deconstructivism all around them, CH have now secured a number of very large scale projects. With a Desden cinema already built, the Musee de Confluences in Lyon and the JVC Entertainment and Shopping Center in Guadalajara, Mexico -- - the subject of this talk -- it remains to be seen if the realization of these large buildings will be the final triumph of "architecture frozen in the sky" or contrarily time to burn their original ideas.

NB: For tickets call 020.7942.2211. And on Sun 22/06 catch Jan Kiplicky discuss Future Systems' new Selfridges building in Birmingham.

Sunday 15 June (2pm onwards)

@ Clissold Park, Stoke Newington

Somewhere within the hideous brochure for the otherwise excellent StokeFest there's an easily missable page about an event that should be quite something. BOXED curated by Regitze Bondesen of The Kiosk Project, consists of 16 artists presenting 12 art works of varying descriptions that will exist for the one day in Clissold Park, all inspired by and in response to the word "boxed". Highlights include a short performance piece by Rotozaza called Punta 1 which involves performers who haven't rehearsed being told what to do via recorded CD playback. The audience is apparently about 100 metres away from the actors who mix with the public in this busy park -- a kind of plugged-in "Where's Wally!" Borg and Beck -- aka Ollie Bown (the other half of Icarus) and Fred Labbe -- are showing some wonderfully lo-fi music machines that have just been on show at Manchester's Cornerhouse Gallery. Britt Hatzius -- characteristically injecting subtle wonder into the tiny banalities of our everyday -- has taken over a disused bowling green and is creating an enormous "lost property grid" for the hundreds of odds and ends left behind in the park every day. Other artists include amongst others Sumer Erek, Abigail Jones, Odelia Lavie and Rob Smith.

NB: BOXED is 15-20 minutes long, and will be performed 4-6 times throughout the day (different performers each time) from 2pm on Sun 15/06.

Monday 16 June (6:45pm)

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

Since the Greeks (and no doubt before), audiences have enjoyed watching dramas with sticky ends. And still, nice people find it fun watching films where butter-wouldn't-melt-in-their-mouth victims run away from nasty axe-wielding psychos. Contemporary culture even has its own league of horror superstars and Freddy Krueger's certainly up there -- that striped shirt, those finger-nails, the bad skin... Wes Craven's A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) was so popular that it became a franchise, just as his Scream did in the late '90s. But horror films are more than gore, they can comment on Society's morals and its make up. The America of A NOES has changed since Robert Englund's Kruger first stalked those kids -- so is it now more or less pertinent? For answers, check out the ICA's special screening of this slasher classic introduced by three long term fans: Marc Evans, director of My Little Eye, writer and broadcaster Mark Kermode and award-winning author of King Rat, China Mieville. Here they'll discuss "the intimate relationship between domestic contentment and apparently motiveless violence as seen in the film" but it's also a chance to swat up on '80s fashions and get a glimpse of a 21 year old Johnny Depp...

Thursday 19 June

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

Cybersonica is a rocket trip to the edge of the electronic frontier. Dismiss hitch hiking, ponchos and vodka melons, this festival is a prospectus, not a back catalogue. Three days, overflowing with performance, exhibition, installation, symposium and film, from an international electro-sonic community. Take Fri 20/06 headliner, Kid606, a fore-father of Tigerbeat6, this San Diego artist has been most the way round the world with his Drill 'n' Bass, hyperactive Hip-Hop noise and shambolic visuals. Sat 21/06, DJ and uber producer, for the likes of little known acts U2, Tricky and Bjork, Howie B will no doubt seduce the dance floor once more. But its not all about the big acts, there's symposiums, workshops and presentations to welcome even the most tender listeners into this experimental electronic counter culture. Phew.

NB: The festival runs from Thu 19/06 till Sat 21/06 -- for full line-up of events see the website.

Saturday 21 June (8pm - 2:30am)

@ Camden Centre, Euston Rd.

Vegas, one of the jewels of the Scottish club scene (voted 'Best Club Night in Scotland' by the readers of The List each year since '99!) makes a one night stop through London on Sat 21/06 as part of a nationwide tour to promote a new compilation CD Vegas Swings. The club is a kitsch mix of Swing, Latino, Easy and the much maligned Country. Since '97 it has amassed a huge and loyal following of clubbers "looking for the non-clubbing experience". The photographs on their website shouts a thousand words, a club that demands dressing up, but has no dress code and with tongue firmly in cheek, promises to take you back Rat Pack era, Las Vegas style. With live sets form The Ray Gelato Giants, Sophie Garner and Her Swing Kings, the appearance of the Vegas Showgirls, the roulette tables (for free drinks!) and hosted by Dino Martini and his pack, Vegas is a great alternative night out and a perfect excuse to dress up, firm in the knowledge that you won't end up singing along to Abba.

Sunday 22 June (7:30pm - 12am)

@ Plastic People, 147-149 Curtain Road, EC2 (020.7739.6471) Tube: Old Street

Taking his name from his devotion to pre-fusion Jazz circa '73, Scott Herren, aka Prefuse 73 has been dubbed the new DJ Shadow with his mix of mellow grooves, Electronica and Breaks which, according to some, rivals the ground-breaking work of cut-and-paste mastery of Entroducing. Herren (known also as Savath & Savalas and the late Delarosa & Asora), believes the Prefuse project is mainly based in Hip-Hop, although you may be forgiven for thinking this is Electronica as he rips the MC's words and deconstructs the beat, creating a whole new mangled musical language. Herren has been described as a "musical risk taker and genuine innovator" and self-confessed "edit fiend" and everyone loves an eclectic pigeon-hole avoider. Back this with the Nu Skool Breaks from DJ 2D2 and the programmed beats from Four Tet, and this night promises to be an adventure into avant-garde Hip-Hop.

Wednesday 25 June (7pm)

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

Since '83 the photographer Martin Parr has produced bright, socially unflinching images showing run down resorts and working class life in an unforgiving light. Shots of supermarkets, duty free hypermarkets, and council estates, all featuring scary looking and desperate individuals, have ensured that Parr is one of the most successful photographers working today. Exhibited internationally, Parr's photos are featured in Cruel and Tender at Tate Modern, and here he will talk about his depiction of the domestic and everyday through photography. Heartless mockery? Affection? Social documentation? You decide.

NB: For tickets call 020. 7887.8888 or email ticketing@tate.org.uk.

Ends Sunday 29 June (Wed to Sun 12pm - 6pm)

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

Gary Webb -- star of last year's Early One Morning at the Whitechapel Art Gallery -- returns with another quasi- functional amalgamation of moulded Perspex, metal and fabric. Webb puts a pop spin on the grand gestures of Britain's most celebrated sculptors. This irreverently accessorised altarpiece mischievously begs to be decoded as a collection of signs. The towering totem pole antennae with surrounding dishes, offers one solution. Music is also alluded to in the twin horn forms on the floor that are closed with trumpet-patterned drapery. In the end, the ironic glitzy finishing and decorating, together with an apparently arbitrary compositional process, prevents any singular reading. LA's Evan Holloway ranks second to Webb as master of the non sequitur, and similarly undermines the canon of modernist sculpture with his sampling approach to materials. In A White Hunter, (2003), Holloway has edited scenes from a selection of Michael Douglas films, choosing to loop only the shots in which the actor is driving. Watching the variously aged sex-addict's jittery eyes and gurning mouth is entertaining enough, but the dusty low-fi voodoo figures and dried sunflowers that hang bat-like from the DVD projector opposite, open up yet another world of tantalizingly endless possibilities.

NB: Show ends 29/06.

Ends Sunday 29 June (Thu to Sat 11am - 6pm, Sun 12pm - 6pm)

@ Anthony Wilkinson, 242 Cambridge Heath Rd., E2 (020.8980.2662) Tube: Bethnal Green

Learning from Proust, our writer-in-residence Alain de Botton has counselled against rushing: n'allez pas trop vite. A simple rationale, yet so easily forgotten in modern life. Currently, no other artist could be slowing us down more than Anna Katrina Dolven. On view are three pieces all working towards the same ends in different ways. In a white structure, projected life-size, a man lies on a table with a young girl standing over him. Like her piece in The Galleries Show we wait for something to happen... and we still wait. They breathe. Nothing seems to happen. Via a peephole, a large family takes a meal. From elders to brothers(?) feeding each other to a young child, social and class structure -- not to mention national ones -- are exposed for all to see, yet in Beckett's words "one should never neglect the small things in life." The painting upstairs provides a key, entitled Can women think, it is white on white created by squeegeeing oil paint on surface, a diptych with 2 biomorphic shapes mirrored, they appear/shimmer vaguely on the aluminium panel. In bright light, you move, duck, it's almost there. Difficult to grasp entirely, yet slowly the shapes appear, and women's issues lurk, hint, even nudge... So slow down, grab those sun glasses and tune in...

NB: AK Dolven's work is also currently included in Independence at the South London Gallery (till 03/07) and Sight Mapping currently at Sala Rekalde in Bilbao which will be travelling to the ATP gallery at Creekside as part of Deptford X (20/06 - 20/07).

Ends Saturday 5 July (Daily 10am - 5pm)

@ Sketch, 9 Conduit st., W1 (0870.777.4488) Tube: Oxford Circus

Welcome to the future -- or at the very least its contemporary visitation -- and witness a festival of cinematic reincarnation. In the unsettlingly accelerated environment of the screening room cum banquet hall at Sketch, twelve DVD projectors create a panopticon of repeated images in a spectacular display of cinematic cannibalism. Anemic Cinema features the work of Candice Brietz, Ellen Cantor, Brice Dellsperger, Christoph Girardet & Matthias Muller, Graham Gussin, Ange Leccia & Joao Onofre and presents a visual calliope of sex, violence and melancholy melodrama. Sharon Stone postulates a picture of a woman immersed in hysteria and logic in Brietz's Soliloquy (Sharon) while logic and proportion abandon the ultraviolent female in Ellen Cantor's Evokation of My Demon Sister where the screen narrates a platform for forcible feminine empowerment. A couple circle each other like two dolls inside a music box as Onofre samples and loops 16 seconds of Fassbinder's Martha. Brian De Palma's Dressed to Kill is credited for a re-enactment strangely reminiscent of Roman Polanski. The classics, from Hitchcock to Kubrick, are sampled and sutured together to create a dizzying and manipulative endeavour into the questions of ownership and originality, as well as emotion and its extraction.

NB: Show ends 05/07.

Ends Wednesday 20 August (7:30pm; Saturday Mat 2pm)

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

Summer is the time for the Epic, the time to pass the warm evenings with balms for the spirit and mind. In this language, the epic truly belongs to Shakespeare. French philosopher Jacques Derrida once remarked that all he wrote about was already present in Shakespeare's writing. Face it, Shakespeare live is the only way to read it! And given that we've just witnessed the first war of this century, it seems entirely appropriate for the National to put on Henry V. As with Derrida's ability to read the other into a text, Ken Brannagh's post-Falklands film version was suitability anti-heroic and anti-war, whereas Olivier's '44 version was for a just war. Now with this being National supreme Nicholas Hytner's first production having organised Jerry Springer: the Opera, set in modern times, with some snazzy updates, and cheap seats, it's once more unto the breech cher KultureFlasher... what does Robin Cook think? Any WMDs about? Prepare to be stirred. Yet we ask when are we gonna see the football version? Plenty of wars there...

NB: On Tue 10/06, Harold Pinter will respond to recent conflicts with a reading from poems from his new book War on the set of Henry V. After, he'll be speaking to Michael Billingham. Also on Fri 20/06, with this being his first production as Director of the National, Nicholas Hytner will be giving a talk.