Wednesday 22 October (6pm)

@ Gielgud Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, W1 (020.7494.5530) Tube: Piccadilly Circus

Apparently London is too cool, too hip and just too darn fast for yer average literary festival to work! Which does explain why KF never found the decadence and high-octane party mayhem it expected in Hay-on-Wye. Anyway, the London Arts Board, with The Orange Word have devised a "Happy Hour" to slot neatly into your busy lives. Turning west-end theatres like the Gielgud into early evening lecture halls is actually an annoyingly good idea, and it's matched by the line-up of speakers. Zadie Smith is the third writer of these weekly Wednesday night gigs, and this literary celebrity isn't cutting corners either, taking on a big topic with E.M. Aspects of the Novel Forster. Expect Kafka, Nabokov, and David Foster Wallace to make a show too as Smith makes her case for the novel as an analogy of morality. Heavy stuff to slip in before the pub, but well worth it just for the conversation fodder down at Wetherspoons. Orange are paying for the whole thing so don't forget to check out the official website for a moment of high-squirm sponsor-sycophancy before you go.

NB: The Orange Word series runs until 09/12. Click here for full line-up and event details.

Wednesday 22 October (7pm)

@ The Other Cinema, 11 Rupert St., W1 (0207 734 1506) Tube: Piccadilly Circus/Leicester Sq.

Triggering recognition for German film director Jens Meurer is probably best achieved by mentioning the recent critically acclaimed and prize-winning (and surprise commercial success) Russian Ark, filmed in one single shot, over an hour and a half, in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. And in doing so, bringing to life the complex history and cultural heritage of Europe's vast Eastern expanse. Meurer produced this remarkable documentary, so expect exceptional viewing once again as he screens and discusses his latest film -- this time as director -- Public Enemy. Not quite a documentary about Chuck D's politicised rappers, but it does follow three members of The Black Panther Party -- key activists in the black Civil Rights Movement of the mid-'60s -- from their experiences during the tumultuous period itself through to present day. Now an art teacher, an R&B record producer and an academic theorist, the documentary shows how those early days have shaped its subjects through and through -- in both a comic and insightful way.

NB: Meurer is currently working with Martin Scorsese on a new documentary about Russian cinema.

Wednesday 22 October (7:30pm; Sat matinee 2:30pm)

@ Sadler's Wells, Rosebery Avenue (020.7863.8000) Tube: Angel

Definitely more than a few good reasons to see Ballett Frankfurt's Kammer/Kammer at Sadler's Wells this week. It will be the company's third and final visit to London under the direction of William Forsythe. We saw their first show at Sadler's Wells, and the physicality of the dancers was breathtaking. The aesthetics and emotions were so overwhelming that there were tears in our eyes towards the end. Sometimes that happens, but not often. Created in 2000, Kammer/Kammer is Forsythe's visionary full-length piece. The sources for the technologically complex work, featuring wide screen monitors on stage and live feeds, are the novel Outline of My Lover by Douglas A. Martin, and award-winning poet and scholar Anne Carson's Irony is Not Enough: Essay on my life as Catherine Deneuve. Throw in the world's best and most beautiful dancers -- if you were a dancer doing the European audition circuit this company would be top of your list -- and you get much more than just a dance piece.

NB: Kammer/Kammer runs for four days from Wed 22/10 till Sat 25/10.

Wednesday 22 October (8pm)

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

A singer with a blog is always intriguing, and with NME describing Damien Jurado as the "Raymond Carver of US singer-songwriters", KF wonders whether this spells lots of smoke and whiskey drinking, or tough lonely nites... Not quite Leonard Cohen nor the Bob, but with Juardo sharing the stage with the Canadian Julie Doiron, whose minimalist pop has been compared to Edith Frost, Cat Powers and Beth Orton, this night at The Spitz promises to be a hot one for those expecting music to move them in their hearts and heads rather than hips. Both share Subpop as label, and as part of the Secretly Canadian/Jagjaguwar showcase, expect poetry to touch you in those places that disco never reached!

Thursday 23 October (Thu 23/10 6 - 9pm & Fri 24/10 11am - 12am)

@ Deluxe Gallery, 1st Floor, 2-4 Hoxton Square, N1 (0207.729.8503) Tube: Old St.

At some point around '78, two young men in Norway who had read a few too many Robert Browning poems borrowed the title of one and started the band Fra Lippo Lippi. The duo's members, Per Oystein Sorensen and Rune Kristoffersen, soon teamed up with Morten Sjoberg, and as a trio they recorded their debut album In Silence. From having been heavily influenced by the likes of Joy Division and The Cure, the band's sound soon became more melodic and inviting. Following the second, Small Mercies, the band signed with a major. Their third album, Songs, had a more romantic tinge and produced minor chart successes in the UK -- also some less unexpected positive responses from the Philippines, where Fra Lippo Lippi went on to become superstars with their fourth release, Light And Shade. Two albums later the trio disbanded. Kristoffersen who released two instrumental albums -- Elephant Song and Monolight -- before setting up his own record label, Rune Grammofon, with the aim of pushing experimental Norwegian acts such as Arne Nordheim, Supersilent and Alog. The label has been going strong ever since, with this latest launch being for a new book and 2CD set. Apart from acts such as Phonophani and Maja Ratkje, Rune Grammofon's sleeve designer Kim Hiorthoy will be displaying his strengths in and out of the DJ booth.

NB: The exhibition runs from Thu 23/10 at 6pm (private view 6 - 9pm) to Fri 24/10 and the musical events kick off at 7:30pm on Fri 24/10.

Thursday 23 October (6pm)

@ Curzon Soho, 93-107 Shaftesbury Ave., W1 (020.7439.4805) Tube: Leicester Sq./Piccadilly

Many music videos are but dull glorification's of popstars, yet there are moments when they surprise and grab us unaware, proving that a few flashing images can't improve music, but can certainly create an enticingly cool world. With videos ranging from Video Vanguard Award -winning Mark Romanek's film for Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Can't Stop" to ever-enterprising Spike Jonze's playfully imagined creation for Bjork's "It's in Our Hands", Mirrorball offers us an eclectic mix of such work. While Nando Costa's simple yet captivating work for Squarepusher's "My Red Hot Car" almost clashes with the fantastically sleek animation of French collective, Pleix; both provide a taste of a new generation. Taking its image and ethos from the glittery disco object, Mirrorball promises to show us that music videos, commercials and promos are more than just that, often being an art form a little forgotten, if not appreciated. In this special event for the newly renovated Curzon Soho, the group will showcase a specially selected collection of music videos with work crossing a wide spectrum from the commercial to quirky, but always with a special something and a style all of its own.

NB: Catch commercial and personal work from the top Parisian promo director and AV artists Pleix on Mon 27/10 (7:30pm - 12am) at The Audiovisual Lounge (Below 54, 54 Great Eastern Street, London EC2).

Thursday 23 October (6:30pm)

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

Just before Damien Hirst's Horror at Home -- a giant ashtray brimming with butts harvested from a heavy night at the Groucho Club -- went on display, the artist received an urgent telephone call from the gallery. Exactly how should the butts be arranged, a stressed gallerina enquired. With characteristic bluntness, Hirst replied: "Any way you damn well like," or words to that effect. You see, for the not so Young BA, the execution of the work was pretty irrelevant. But having carefully arranged said fag ends, could the gallerina claim a stake in the authorship of the piece? It's thorny issues such as these that artist Cerith Wyn Evans, Sue Webster and William Furlong tackle with the guidance of Guggenheim curator Germano Celant and editor Patsy Craig. The focal point is YBA foundry the Mike Smith Studio, responsible for 'realising' works by the likes of Darren Almond, Rachel Whiteread, Master Hirst and Mona Hatoum. The event coincides with the launch of the book -- edited by Patsy Craig -- Making Art Work: The Mike Smith Studio (Trolley).

NB: Cerith Wyn Evans, whose output spans film, sculpture, installation and photography, will exhibit at White Cube next week from 31/10 till 06/12.

Thursday 23 October (6:45pm)

@ Calder Bookshop, 51 The Cut, SE1 (020.7620.2900) Tube: Waterloo/Southwark

KF loves a man who ends his epoch neatly defined by the word "irascible". It is an elegant word to summarise a magniloquent man who, by 1966, had become a cantankerous old bugger in tweed, wandering around pretending to need an ear trumpet and dishing out fabulously ill-mannered opinions. Yet Evelyn Waugh is a novelist who seems better known than read. He charmed '30s London with a merciless and savage satire of its bright young things, was divorced by his wife and converted to Catholicism -- all by the age of 28. It makes us feel a little otiose. Indeed the 28th of this month is the centenary of his birth, thus giving due cause for John Calder to host another edifying evening of retrospection. Calder will speak on the complexities of a man who was a Marine in WWII and an ardent seven-sprogged Catholic man, but whose beloved public persona is forever associated with the hedonistic and homoerotic glories of Brideshead Revisited, a novel that might rather be read as an homage to the faith. Actors Sion Probert and Michael David will provide the oratory embellishments.

Thursday 23 October (7:30 pm)

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

Here in the West, we've not quite forgotten that China is a culturally rich nation. Perhaps because of the Cultural Revolution and now the sudden shock of capitalism which is exporting this gregarious wacky contemporary art (see the Zone of Urgency at the current Biennale), it's so easy to overlook the thousands of years of thought, craft, cultivation... There're is more drawing now from the rich Chinese past -- here, dear Flasher, we are not referring to the exploits of the Monkey God, though it was the Harry Potter for many a child -- but with Chinese opera, classics like the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Dream of the Red Chamber, calligraphy and painting, poets like Li Po and Tu Fu; the past from here can seem like a foreign country, but one so rich, mythical and poetic that to ignore its diversity would be foolish. Now like all Chinese artists that the West loves, Wang Jianwei is bringing us politics in the guise of performance-theatre. In a tragedy inspired by the execution of the outspoken scholar Mi Heng a thousand years ago, Wang moves between narratives and Classics, to outline the problematics of recollection. Do not expect any crouching tigers nor hidden dragons, but plenty of alterity and Rashomon. Chen Kaige this is not, but it springs from the same culture of romance and passion nonetheless... (Ceremony runs from Thu 23/10 to Sun 26/10.)

NB: The ICA recommends a quick flick through that classic Chinese political saga of fraternity, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms to add depth to your pleasure.

Saturday 25 October (10pm-5am)

@ Egg, 200 York Way, N7 (020.7609.8364) Tube: King's Cross

Again the eclectic Electric Egg are cracking out the most diverse array of European musical dishes available! Kompact's Thomas Fehlmann who has previously beaten us into peaks of hi-cholesterol fluffy-white cloud, will be playing a rare hour-long live set. He's now serving a hi-protein jizzy-white Micro-House Berlin sound, highly refined from the Cologne scene that he helped establish. Assisting will be label mate Geo and the tastiest local mid-week ova JO JO De FREQ. Skint will be providing the riches of International Pony live in the terrace. They are DJ Koze, Cosmic DJ and Erobique without the 'pony' in sight; think vocoders and hip-hop, Royksopp and Daft Punk, '60s atmosphere riding bigger waves. You shouldn't miss this as your life will be poorer without it.

NB: The Shoreditch crew NERD are hosting a Saturday night version of their Sunday electro event with Shelley Parker, Seb Patane and guest Richard Norris (The Grid); and in the loft you'll find Electric residents Bones + Ramsey. The pre-party is held at the Lock Tavern (35 Chalk Farm Rd., 7 - 11pm). Discounted tickets and free shuttle to Egg are provided to those that attend. Tickets can be purchased from Phonica Records (020.7025.6070), Kokon To Zai (020.7434.1316) and ticketweb (08700.600.100).

Monday 27 October (7pm)

@ Shepherds Bush Empire, Shepherds Bush Green, W12 (020.7771.2000) Tube: Shepherds Bush

A simple Google test, shall we? A search for "Stephen Malkmus is a genius" gives you eleven hits. Compare that to Schopenhauer's eight, Nietzsche's three and Socrates' seven! Not convinced? Unfair to compare living people with their dead counterparts? Well, that only goes to show that Malkmus is the philosopher of our wired times. Really, forget about that silly game -- we just wanted to catch your attention. As if that was called for. Chances are, the moment you saw his name above, you immediately thought of a few Malkmus characteristics such as jangly guitars, great melodies, ramshackle structures, off-kilter harmonies, quirky (and cryptic, and literate) lyrics, purloined riffs, ironic seriousness and serious irony. Or you may have been thinking that this will be a dull gig compared to his earlier efforts with US indie gods, Pavement? It is true that Malkmus has been criticised for not living up to his previous standards together with his new band, The Jicks, but their recorded output -- two lovely albums in three years -- and touring (occasionally together with Elastica's Justine Frischmann and others) prove the opposite, and missing out on Stephen Malkmus simply because he isn't with Pavement these days is like refusing to go and see Elliott Smith without the rest of the guys from Heatmiser.

NB: Domino Records 10th Anniversary runs till Mon 27/10. Click here for full line-up and event details. Tickets may be purchased from Rough Trade (020.7240.0105), ticketmaster.co.uk (020.7344.0044), ticketweb.co.uk (08700.600.100), wayahead.com...

Monday 27 October (7pm)

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

The Sticky Rice club returns with a vengeance this evening at the Notting Hill Arts Club, proffering London premier of Daft Punk's intergalactic uberproject Interstella 5555. This 67-minute scriptless sci-fi animation is driven by their 2001 release Discovery (Akira this is not but it's fun film to watch). The French duo's unique phat + funky dance music works very nicely over the beautifully textured anime (overseen by Manga guru Leiji Matsumoto), and is to be showcased alongside further new releases from the Kai Doh Maru and Read or Die stables. The mini-expo also offers live music in the form of punchy Powerpuff punk-pop idolettes, Mika Bomb (who are conveniently in the middle of a European tour), and deck support from the eccentric punkster DJ KyuKyuSha. On show will also be work from multimedia meta-artist Jen Wu and a selection of curiously fungal sculpture pieces by Haruhi Hayashi. This event is essential for all Mangaphiles, and indeed any follower of cutting-edge oriental culture as a whole.

Ends Saturday 25 October (Tue to Sat 10am - 5:30pm)

@ Entwistle, 6 Cork St., W1S (020.7734.6440) Tube: Piccadilly Circus

Due to their multitude of references, Rosa Loy's paintings feel strangely familiar even when you're seeing them for the first time. Her sources are wide-ranging, including ideas of the unconscious and magic realism as well as almost the whole history of painting, yet they come together to create works that seem deceptively simple. Each one tells a story, often including mythology as well as a sense of 'otherness', possibly a result of Loy's upbringing in Leipzig, part of Communist East Germany. This background meant that Loy's first visit to Italy to see the quattrocento wall paintings was only a mere ten years ago, after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Yet the influence of this trip is clear, particularly in her decision to paint using casein, a pigment mixed with milk protein that gives a luminescent, nostalgic quality to the works. This is not to say her paintings are old-fashioned though, as Loy brings together ideas of coincidence, chance, and surrealism to create intriguing narratives that stay with you long after viewing. (Show ends Sat 25/10.)

NB: Cross the street to this week's other artflash Michelle Grabner and while you there, step around the corner to aspreyjacques for Graham Little's show.

Ends Sunday 26 October (Mon to Sun 12 - 6:30pm)

@ Atlantis, The Old Truman Brewery, 146 Brick Lane, E1 (020.7251.3194) Tube: Aldgate East

Some say that the world is run by a few rich families, but really the grease that makes the cogs move depend on the poor or poorer. Visit a Chinese restaurant anywhere in the world and you'll find immigrants, their kids, the local Chinese students... A global stereotype, and this is just what Julian Rosefeldt's ambitious film installation Asylum touches upon: that underbelly of migrant citizenship. On nine huge screens the artist presents nine groups of different ethnic nationalities. Recruited from from various sources, including BMW executives as well as many asylum seekers, they act out mundane and endless tasks in costume, within dramatically lit surreal settings that are both kitsch and also reminiscent of fine art epic painting. Generally concerned with typologies and classifications, here the German artist is exploring terrain related to Santiago Sierra's, but expect better production values and a more humane study of the banal struggle of existence (e.g. Kosovan cleaning ladies hoovering stones and polishing cactuses). So far this is the only London venue. Prepare to have the cogs of your world exposed... (Show ends Sun 26/10.)

NB: Having been exhibited at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin the work travels to Baltic and Spike Island Gallery; it will then be included in the Sao Paolo Biennale as well as the Festival d'Avignon in 2004.

Ends Sunday 26 October (Fri to Sun 12 - 6pm)

@ Pearl, 28 Old Nichol St., E2 (020.7739.9020) Tube: Old St./Liverpool St.

Catch this, it's not your usual London show. This show's about materiality, and typically London artists are more interested in the narrative, that's the transformation of material. With artworld heavy-pickers Richard "material-poetic" Wentworth and current Venice participant Pedro Cabrita Reis of the Portuguese Pavilion, the artist-run Pearl's Retriever is an Arte Povera lesson of sorts; that is collecting, picking, assembling, re-assembling, but essentially it's about the poetry of matter. And the matter of poetry. All this boils down to wit, either you got it or ya don't. In this particular instance, Lima native Armando Andrade Tudela and our own Jefford Horrigan are not only poetic but also witty. Curated by London-based Texan Jeff McMillian -- who is also presenting some lively plays on minimalist painting with cardboard boxes dipped in paint (!?) -- it is the mix of the architectonic with the hand-wrought, the casual with the roughly manipulated, the augmented with the natural. Yet, this particular mix certainly does the job.

NB: Show ends Sun 26/10.

Tuesday 28 October

@ RIBA, 66 Portland Place, W1 (020.7580.5533) Tube: Regent's Park/Portland St.

Architecture is as much about shelter as it is about "the space", both "between" and "within". For "within" and "without", it's the vision of the architect, but for "between" it belongs to the structural engineer. And in this case no one has had more vision than this year's Jencks award winner and Chairman of Arup's Europe & Building Division, Cecil Balmond. Publicly known here for engineering Anish Kapoor's Marsyas and last year's Toyo Ito air-light summer pavilion for the Serpentine among many others, it is his rethinking engineering to allow "trace", "skip", "jump", and "overlap" to occur in structures that provide his projects with their levity. By moving engineering closer to design, he has managed to make many of Rem Koolhaas' -- who chairs this award -- dreams come true (along with Zaha Hadid's too!). Yet despite all this, the Sri Lankan-born RIBA fellow and Yale-Harvard lecturer -- who last year published his vision in a book called Informal -- looks to music, maths and geometry for inspiration. Here at KF we just look to him!

NB: Rem Koolhaas will give an introduction and present the award to Balmond.

Ends Thursday 30 October

@ Various cinemas across London

Michael Alig was the flamboyant New York party promoter who reinvented the city's nightlife with the "Club Kid" movement of the early '90s, a scene dominated by outrageous costumes, mentalist make-up and narcotic excess. The dream soured though when, in a drug-fuelled haze, Alig killed and dismembered a local drug dealer, Angel, whose body washed up on the city's East River. Alig is currently serving time in a maximum security prison. Directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato focus more on the personalities than the "scene" or the music, coaxing a good performance from Macaulay Culkin (as Alig) in his first movie role in over six years. Seth Green (of Austin Powers fame) plays James St. James, Alig's mentor, rival and fellow "club face", with the requisite quotient of arched eyebrows and cutting one-liners.

Ends Saturday 1 November (Tue to Sat 11am -7pm)

@ Rocket, 13 Old Burlington St., W1 (020.7434.3043) Tube: Green Park

There is a "Somewhere over the Rainbow" quality to Michelle Grabner's work in general. Known for the "domestic" paintings in which she turned everyday household abstractions -- colander holes, blanket and tile patterns -- into a form of meticulous pattern painting, Grabner of late has turned her mind towards notions of "Goodness". Domesticity -- as in the "Domestic Paintings" -- you see is a form of righteousness performed out of love, least one hopes. Grabner has translated this virtuousness into repetition and more importantly colour (which is brought to everyone through light). While colour and rainbows pervade throughout the "Goodness" works, now she's painted her grounds black, sprayed Woven Roving -- an industrial material and title to the current show -- and meticulously painted dots upon this invisible grid. Vertical colourscapes, fields of dreams, pointillist rainbows, or sheer bloody mindedness... Here at KF HQ, we say: don't klick them heels! (Show ends 01/11.)

NB: Cross the street to this week's other artflash Rosa Loy (ends Sat 25/10) and while you are there, step around the corner to aspreyjacques for Graham Little's show.

Giveaway: We have two catalogues to give away. They'll go to two randomly picked subscribers who can name the places where Grabner teaches.

Thursday 6 November

@ Shepherds Bush Empire, Shepherds Bush Green, W12 (020.7771.2000) Tube: Shepherds Bush

The glorious Cinematic Orchestra pretty much do what it says on the tin: create orchestrally-proportioned soundtracks to curious, cult and classic films. The difference is however, that rather than finding them plucking their strings in a studio with Michael Nyman, they tend to show off their wares in less tranquil churches of chill-out, from Cargo to the Big Chill. They're a film-music hybrid also the territory of groups such as the Halloween Society. After their sublime first album, Every Day, (Ninja Tune), which journeys from melting harp strings to mellow hip-hop, the CO recently released their first 'full-length' sound track, Man With The Movie Camera, a score for the Dziga Vertov 1929 Soviet film of the same name. As testament to their current popularity, the Orchestra perform this lush soundtrack live on 06/11, not on the home ground of an intimate Hoxton boutique, but instead head West to Shepherd's Bush, where the film will be screened behind the 12-strong orchestra live on stage.