Tuesday 23 September (7:30pm)

@ Water Rats Theatre, 328 Gray's Inn Rd., WC1X (020.7837.7269) Tube: King's Cross

Track & Field present an exclusive line-up with a Scottish theme. Lead vocalist of the recently formed Sister Vanilla, Linda Reid is the little sis of Jim and William Reid from the notorious '80s cult feedback band The Jesus and Mary Chain. JAMC were pretty radical in their day and Sister Vanilla have all the same drum beats and punk cool with the added bonus of a female vocal. They are part of a new wave of indie music that recycles punk's stylish past, pumping out three-minute power pop songs filled with scratchy guitars and irreverent vocals. Think Shangri La's in a car crash with the Stooges, a beautiful mess. Camera Obscura come from a long tradition of twee Scottish pop, from The Pastels to Belle and Sebastian. Anoraks, recorders and Hello Kitty rucksacks. You get the picture. Pipas -- we don't know anything about them but worth the sixer for the other two.

Tuesday 23 September (Tue 23/09 till Sat 27/09 8pm)

@ The Place , 17 Duke's Rd., WC1 (020.7387.0031) Tube: Euston Station/King's Cross

This show comprises three short pieces by three different choreographers: Shobana Jeyasingh, Rui Horta a final piece by Random's artistic director, Wayne McGregor. But the thing that makes this company outshine other contemporary UK dance companies is the extraordinary stage presence of the dancers. They look at the audience, at each other. You want to know what they are thinking. The three pieces are very different, starting with Shobana Jeyasingh's Indian influence, followed by the bizarre cooking episode in the second piece (yes, cooking on stage -- it's effective in a raw, urban kind of way, especially with a soundscape that includes Tom Waits), and then the satisfying simplicity of the duets and lifts in Wayne McGregor's final piece, which look simple, but are no doubt very technically complex to execute. The costumes for all three are incredibly stylish and look as if they've been designed by Bella Freud or Matthew Williamson. The lighting is always slightly asymmetrical, the soundscape slightly unsettling. This is one cool company!

NB: Polar Sequences runs for five nights from Tue 23/09 to Sat 27/09.

Giveaway: We have two pairs of tickets to give away for the Wed 24/09 performance. They'll go to two randomly picked subscribers who can tell us which famous American choreographer is giving a talk this Friday at the Royal Academy. (Hint: she's from New York.)

Wednesday 24 September (6pm)

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

Jacques Tati's Playtime was described "as the masterpiece that wrecked his career", humouring and criticising what he saw in postwar France as an obsession with gadgetry. This evening should be an entertaining little jaunt into the world of architecture, as the film is discussed by Bartlett School director Iain Borden, a man known for his supportive stance on creative cityscapes. Tati's Paris isn't true of today's city, but the problems he focuses on are always current. The film follows Monsieur Hulot (played by Tati) during his misadventures through Paris, while American tourists weave in and out of scenes in search of the 'real' city, represented only by the futuristic glass and chrome buildings. Despite the director's highly exploited use of widescreen to give the impression of multiple activity, the film has no real narrative; it's more an observation of mindless progress. Recreating Paris (Tativille) as a set, the film was repeatedly refinanced and consequently flopped, thus proving that Tati's creativeness surpassed him while also being a little ironic in a world that was not ready to see his vision.

Thursday 25 September

@ See websites for venue addresses

The newly created London Design Week kicked off last weekend with the opening of a number of exhibitions as well the excellent, and sadly only annual, London Open House Weekend. London Design Week has taken a number of existing design events and placed a brand umbrella over the top of them. The most significant addition is the impressively titled World Creative Forum which, with its reassuringly expensive ticket price of £1,250 plus VAT, doesn't really seem to be targeting designers or indeed the average design consumer. But the old favourites are still here and they are well worth the price of admission. In particular you have four days to get along to both the designersblock and 100% Design, both of which run from Thu 25/09 to Sun 28/09. 100% Design, as its Earls Court venue might indicate, is a serious international design event that features both the important old hands and the exciting new faces. Sticking to its east London location of past years, the designersblock is the edgier of the two shows and, for those looking to be excited by design rather than satisfied by it, definitely more of an experimental playground than a professional showroom.


SEMINARS @ 100%

Bouroullec Brothers: Sat 27/09 @ 1:30pm
Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, the young French brothers who are the rising stars of furniture and product design, will discuss their work so far and plans for the future with Alice Rawsthorn (Director, Design Museum).

Democratic Design Debate: Sat 27/09 @ 4:30pm
For those who want to see and hear the thoughts of some of the design luminaries who are hanging about for Design Week, but who haven't sacrificed the requisite limb to attend the World Creative Forum, there is The Democratic Design Debate. Hosted by Tyler Brule, CEO of Winkorp (also founder and former editor of Wallpaper*), the seminar will feature panellists Vittorio Radice (Executive Director, Marks & Spencer Lifestore), Bettina von Hase (Editor at Large, Art Review), Magnus Englund (Managing Director, Skandium), and Gareth Williams (Curator of Furniture Design, V&A).

NB: Make sure you check out 100% Folding Chairs, an open, international competition set up by the good people at designboom.com. The 20 winning entries will be selected by a panel of experts (Tom Dixon, Alberto Meda, Karim Rashid...) and exhibited at the 100% Design fair.

Thursday 25 September (7:30pm)

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

Tobias Hill is the current literary hot property -- Mayfair or Notting Hill? Both appropriate given that his latest novel, The Cryptographer, is about the world's first guadrillionaire who's trying to create an electric currency. On the other hand, Jon McGregor -- who was on the last Booker long list for his debut If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things -- has written about more "mundane" day-in-the-inner-city matters... Not that Hill is adverse to things mundane (e.g. the zoo); he's been known to touch on immigration, war, ambition, greed and repression. Perhaps McGregor will have something to say about this, as both enter the ring as part of the SBC's Fresh Fictions series. Note that Celebrity Death Match this is not; that would be Martin Amis and Brett Easton Ellis...

NB: To purchase tickets call the RFH on 020.7960.4242 or go to the website.

Giveaway: We have two copies of The Cryptographer (Faber and Faber) to give away. They'll go to two randomly picked subscribers who can tell us the name of the Canadian feature film whose title relates to the word "cryptographer". (Hint: we reviewed it in issue #55.)

Thursday 25 September (7:30pm)

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

Way back in '74, when video art was still in its grainy infancy (and was being peddled by anyone with even a vaguely experimental bent), the American artist Richard Serra parodied a game show Prisoner's Dilemma by explaining that the loser would spend six hours alone in a basement; six hours being "about the length of the boring artist's videotape". Video art has, however, come a long way since its confessional and telly-gazing childhood, as evinced by the slick little cinematic digi-fests populating white cubes in museums world-wide these days. In this talk (Rewind, Freeze, Fast Forward: The Rise of Video Art) at the ICA, staged in conjunction with the current Video Acts exhibition, Michael Rush (author of a major new tome Video Art), Isaac Julien (Turner Prize nominee and edgy black film-maker) and Amelia Jones (from the History of Art Dept at the University of Manchester) will be revisiting the history and rise of this most probing of media.

NB: Isaac Julien's work is currently on view at the Victoria Miro Gallery (till 11/10) and Sketch (till 18/10).

Giveaway: We have two copies of Video Art (Thames & Hudson) to give away. They'll go to two randomly picked subscribers who can tell us the name of two artists featured in KF's Artist-in-Residence programme who are predominantly known for their film/video work.

Thursday 25 September (10pm - 2am)

@ Neighbourhood, 12 Acklam Rd., W10 (020.7524.7979) Tube: Ladbroke Grove/Westbourne Park

"Fuck me I'm famous!" With those four short words, David Guetta found himself the toast of Ibiza this season. His parties of the same name roadblocked the luxurious Pacha nightclub and rammed the French house sound down everyone's throats -- including a certain P Diddy who was seen dancing on the podium at said bash. Guetta had already made big strides in the studio, re-rubbing and bootlegging David Bowie's "Heroes" to wild acclaim. Now he unleashes his own single and album of the same name, Just A Little More Love, already a favourite of big-room jocks like Tong, Fontaine and Morillo. Tonight he DJs at Caroline Prothero and DJ Lottie's infamous music biz bash Missdemeanours, newly relocated to Ben "Everything But The Girl" Watt's Neighbourhood club (used to be Subterania) in West London.

NB: Entry is free to members (by invitation or application -- caroline@missdemeanours.co.uk).

Giveaway: We have three copies of "Just A Little More Love" to give away. They'll go to three randomly picked subscribers who can tell us the name of the famous Parisian club that Guetta (along with his wife) re-launched. (Hint: baths.)

Friday 26 September (Daily 12 - 8pm)

@ Dray Walk Gallery, Dray Walk off Brick Lane, E1 Tube: Aldgate East/Shoreditch

Don't Believe the Hype is the third show by the theymademedoit.com collective and aims to showcase the wide range and quality of work from some of the most talented artists emerging from the UK graffiti scene, including: Astek, Bleach, Chu, Dane, Insa, Korey, Shucks, Solo One, Snug, Sonia, Tizer and Wish One. The showcase (in collaboration with Ecko) features 12 large canvases co-produced by the artists over one weekend, a 37-foot-long mural of mixed canvases, a 4-foot-square diorama and a series of short films and photographs documenting the collective's last three painting sessions. With all this and individual context boxes giving visitors an insight into the motivations, history and inspirations of each artist, Don't Believe The Hype hopes to illustrate the diversity of styles and creative interpretations of this impressive collective.

NB: Show ends 08/10.

Friday 26 September (7pm)

@ The Foundry, 86 Great Eastern St., EC2 (020.7739.6900 ) Tube: Old St.

With Rock'n'Roll being the new Rock'n'Roll, we'd be surprised if you haven't noticed announcements heralding the death of clubbing, but stay chilled since there're just so many genres and sub-genres that Death couldn't even find 'em... And, after a week of breakneck 24-style KFlashing on the Kulture front, the Capital's Slow Sound System always makes an inviting case for chillin' out. So if you're having a Jack Bauer day, it's the moment to make time and ease into an aural margarita, and have that massage while fading into the soundscape. As they say, "lie down and be counted"...

NB: Tonight's evening is a special one in that is sees the launch of Resonance FM's new fundraising compilation LP, Flat Pack Antenna.

Friday 26 September (9pm)

@ Electrowerkz, 7 Torrens St., EC1 (020.7837.6419) Tube: Angel

Not yet having graced us with a full length album since last year's Cannibal Oxtrumentals, these guys promise to fill the resulting rap-void as they roll into Electrowerkz this Friday with their uniquely trippy, disjointed hip-hop product amid some ferociously syncopated grooves and sharp lyrics. What's more, these Harlem natives cite blip-art maestros Boards of Canada and those perennially emotive indie-Brits Radiohead as influences... so we know that this can only serve to deepen the impact of the mix. Supports in the form of Cylob's acidic hip-hop and Brak's fiendish electro promise to meld the styles of music on offer this evening somewhat sweetly.

Saturday 27 September (2 - 5pm)

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

Uber-critic Clem Greenberg used to joke that sculpture was the thing you fell over when you backed up to see a painting, but painting's hegemony in the visual arts really stems from the 1700s. Before that it was Big Michael and sculpture; painting was mere decoration... Today, there's such a proliferation of genres that to speak of a dominant form would be like trying to figure out the one goal scorer at Real. With such emphasis on installation, true sculpture-in-the-round has not had an easy ride in recent decades, although Rachel Feinstein, Jason Meadows, Martin Puryear in the States, and Jim Lambie, Nobuko Tsuchiya, Richard Wentworth in this country are working towards rectifying this. Yet even with these artists -- save Puryear -- the form in a sculptural sense hardly seems to matter... what does matter today? Time to get them skates on, zip down to the Whitechapel's Crash Course and not fall over anymore.

NB: To book in advance, ring the Whitechapel on 7522.7888 and select "education", or go to the website.

Ends Tuesday 30 September (Check site for times)

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

The thing about film-making on the whole is that it's a collaborative activity between actors, directors, producers, asylum inmates (?!?)... As part of the deal which allowed Milos Forman to make One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest on a shoestring budget in an Oregon State asylum, they had to let some inmates work with the crew. Quite unlike the hubris and pathos of Eleanor Coppola's journey Hearts of Darkness, Charles Kiselyak's documentary of Forman's multiple Academy Award winner, Completely Cuckoo, raises the human spirit when we find how it had touched many associated with it -- one inmate "recovered" after the project and now works for the institution. What Kiselyak, who is no stranger to Hollywood, achieves is to give a voice to the various points of view -- Michael "pre-Gekko" Douglas (producer), Milos Forman (who likened it to the country he grew up in), Ken Kesey (who was inspired by an Indian fighting the system) and Kirk "No-Vikings-here" Douglas. on this film which took a decade to create, a voice. And finally pieces together a tale that's as engaging as the film itself.

NB: Brando and Gene Hackman were offered the role of McMurphy which eventually helped Jack Nicholson to his first Oscar. Unfortunately Nicholson did not participate in this documentary.

Tuesday 30 September (7pm)

@ Heaven, Under the Arches, Villiers St., WC2 (020.7930.2020) Tube: Charing Cross

If ya know your Judaeo-Christian mythology, then the possible significance of this up-and-coming gig cannot possibly escape you. The Rapture are playing at Heaven. Oh my Gawd! Could it be that the four-piece punk-funkers are God's rather more low-key embodiment of the Revelation? And that the pink parade are in fact the gatekeepers to Mr. Omnipotent's great going to heaven and living happily ever after plan? Considering all this it would be hard not to call this gig seminal (!); with the music press screaming "iconoclastic" and "genrebending" at The Rapture's special blend of dance and indie rock, if this performance does not herald the end of the world, it certainly signals chart change. From NYC, like their producers DFA, the four boys brought us their debut album Echoes a couple of weeks ago. Their last record House of Jealous Lovers has sent dance floors into spasms and screams with cries for more, and the single "Sister Saviour", released in November, is set for more praise. Apparently expect mixes by tiefschwarz and Black Stroke before long, and, if you haven't quite got the picture, think Cabaret Voltaire, Josef K and Certain Ratio.

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

@ David Risley Gallery, 55 Laburnum St., E2 (020.7613.4006)

Known for his pearlescent paintings of celestial mappings and dank, morphed junglescapes, Roderick Harris is intent on tricking our sense of perspective through the use of reflected or repeated patterns, ambiguous scaling, and an obscuring low-lit palette of red, green and purple. This latest collection sees the continued creation of unpopulated and otherworldly locations. Drapecaster is a luscious rendering of an either idyllic or horrific area of outstanding unnatural beauty, depending on whether you perceive the central form as a velvet curtain or a waterfall of blood. In Shadowhopper, one of two large canvases, a stretched double-ended limo is trapped and sinking into what could either be a Dagobah swamp or a Louisiana bayou. The other, Screensleeper, shows the interior of a cinema, its rows of seats overgrown with a mouldy green foliage, bringing to mind a host of reference points, from Michael Jackson's Thriller to Monet's Nympheas. In these works, attempts at escape through fantasy struggle in vain with the trappings and enormity of the physical universe.

NB: Show ends 04/10.

Saturday 4 October (7:30pm)

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

They Might Be Giants? Anybody, anybody? "Birdhouse in your Soul" chirping popsters, TMBG are now probably best known in the UK for the "Malcolm in the Middle" intro, yet have a "TMBG 4 Pres" website in the States. So here's the pitch: lit sensation Dave "you're so cool I'd like to lick your boots" Eggers -- of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius fame -- has a jolly good idea. Get the fanatically followed and engagingly quirky TMBG to compose a soundtrack to the articles in Issue #6 of his star-studded super-trendy literary comic McSweeney's. The issue sells out (well they all do) and a year later, and still way too cool for school, the chums go on the road around America. It's a muso-lit fiesta of cosmic proportions, and guess what? It's great. More a "happening" than a concert/reading, the free-form style and sheer zaniness of the "tunes & tales" formula has made it a smash hit. Mucking in at the Barbican for the UK leg are Nick Hornby, Zadie Smith and Arthur Bradford.

NB: We doubt that there'll be tickets on the door so buy 'em quick. To purchase tickets call 020.7638.8891 or go to the website.

Ends Saturday 11 October (Mon to Fri 10am - 5:30pm; Sat 10:30am - 1:30pm)

@ Waddington, 11 Cork St., W1S (020.7851.2200) Tube: Green Park

Sam Fuller once said that the first scene in a screenplay should always give you a hard-on. With soft-porn imagery, consumer objects -- at one point thriftstore paintings and actual furniture -- and finally loud grahics, David Salle is a Picabia-Manet. Nescafe filtered through James Rosenquist, the ensuing taste is nonetheless entirely his own: Long Island Iced Tea. Now that should've given you a hard-on. Together with Haim Steinbeck and Jeff Koons, it is Salle's paintings that really epitomise the big-shoulder-pad consumerist '80s, where there seemed to be more of everything, yet one always felt emptied out by Gordon Gekko. Salle, who went from abstraction to conceptual art while at Cal Arts during its '70s heyday, makes work which ping pongs between the two. Though figurative, their channel-surfing quality abstracts and formalises the imagery, and of late, Salle has been adding that ole genitalia standby, flowers, to his stock of ladies and consumables.

NB: Show ends 11/10.

Giveaway: We have two copies of the show's catalogue to give away. They'll go to two randomly picked subscribers who can tell us the name of the one feature film that David Salle directed.

Ends Thursday 23 October

@ Various cinemas across London

The rather gorgeous 18-year-old Victor and his two teen siblings live with their Granny (making her screen debut, 74-year-old Altagracia Guzman), who lives in terror of their discovering sex/growing up, but can't stop the tide... Victor seems to be modelling himself on his (absent) dad -- a "player" -- to Granny's horror, but this act cuts no mustard with Juicy Judy, the aloof local beauty. It's all shot in close-up, so the expressions of the partly non-professional cast rule the screen: cocky, resentful, gleeful, longing, guilty and uncomprehending by turns, which makes for a strangely prurient yet sweetly engaging experience. It's shot in Manhattan's Lower East Side in warm, late-summer reds and golds by the cinematographer Tim Orr, who also worked on All the Real Girls -- a man clearly fond of a rich tint...

Ends Sunday 9 November (Tue to Sun 11am - 6pm, Thu until 9pm, Closed Mon)

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

The man behind the suitably and irreverently entitled show Franzwestite is obsessed with furniture and shit. Born in Vienna in 1947, Franz West rejected his early involvement with the Aktionismus movement when he figured it had broken down into "Disneyland". He moved on to create his ambiguously shaped papier mache Passstucke or "Adaptive" sculptures. Heavily influenced by his dentist mother and (perhaps tautologically) Freud, it is no surprise then that Whitechapel director Iwona Blazwick recently said in the exhibition's fantastic "lad-mag" catalogue, "With a Franz West ready-made, the search for your mother's breast is over." Central to West's practice is the ethos that his works "aren't things that one just looks at but things that the viewer is invited to handle". This is enjoyably apparent throughout the exhibition, which displays great examples of West's furniture-infested interiors, collaborative pieces (with, amongst others, Martin Kippenberger, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Wolfgang Tillmans), soft-porn advertisement re-makes, faecal aluminium sculptures, as well as his Adaptives. Once again the Whitechapel has successfully shown Londoners another major international figure who has consistently been overlooked in the UK. (Show ends 09/11.)

NB: The Whitechapel is holding several sceenings in conjunction with the Franzwestite exhibition. The film programme will comprise of films by Kurt Kren (Thu 25/09), Mike Kelley & Paul McCarthy (Thu 09/10), Ernst Schmidt Jr. (Thu 23/09) and Bruce & Norman Yonemoto (Thu 06/11). Also, on certain Sundays throughout the run you can catch free talk tours of the show (Iwona Blazwick leads on Sun 19/10).

Giveaway: We have two copies of the show's catalogue to give away. They'll go to two randomly picked subscribers who can tell us the year that Franz West represented Austria at the Venice Biennale.

Ends Sunday 2 May (Daily 10am - 5:45pm, Wed till 10pm)

@ V&A Museum, Cromwell Rd., SW7 (020.7942.2000) Tube: South Kensington

Ok, so you're not an It girl or the editor of Vogue, and you didn't get a golden ticket to London Fashion Week. Well, we're not sharing our blagging tips -- let's just say that dyeing your hair pink or pretending you're the new stylist for Sex and the City don't work. But why not take a trip to the V&A instead, and get inspiration from designer's designer Ossie Clark. Amazingly, most of the clothes on display still look fresh and contemporary. It's not hard to see why: from Marc Jacobs to Eley Kishimoto, Paul & Joe and Clements Ribeiro, all the current faves have been "borrowing" Clark's combination of sharp tailoring with romantic details (ruffles, embroidery, etc.), and wife/collaborator Celia Birtwell's bold and colourful prints. Without diminishing his genius and God-like status, however, we have to admit that the man's extraordinary imagination did occasionally border on the eccentric. Even Kylie might have trouble looking fab in his stripy snakeskin jacket, although one can imagine band du jour, The Darkness, giving his gold-and-purple glam-rock outfit a brief renaissance. Shame this flamboyant, truly British designer isn't around today. With many Brits eschewing London for New York and Paris, he would certainly have added a much-needed dose of glamour to an otherwise low-key Fashion Week.

NB: Show ends 02/05/04.