Thursday 8 April (check website for the full programme )

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

He spent his childhood running from the Nazis, his wife Sharon Tate was murdered by the Manson Gang, and he was forced to flee America on a rape charge. The turbulent life of Roman Polanski has been as dramatic as anything seen in one of his films. And what films! From Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion spectacularly cracking up in a South Kensington flat, to the absurdist cat and mouse games of Cul-de-Sac, from Mia Farrow besieged by satanists in Rosemary's Baby, to Jack Nicholson's Chinatown battling gangsters and political corruption. While the genres may be varied, the abiding themes of violence, perverted sexuality, paranoia and moral decay remain constant, as does the director's unerring technical virtuosity. In fact, while his contemporaries in European cinema were happy to shoot their films roughly in a freewheeling style, Polanski has always been exacting down to the smallest detail of his films believing that: "The only way to seduce people into believing you whether they want to or not is to take painstaking care with the details of your film, to make it accurate. Sloppiness destroys emotional impact". Now, following the Oscar-winning triumph of The Pianist, the 71-year-old Polanski is once more in favour and expectations are running high for his next movie: a faithful adaptation of Oliver Twist. This month the NFT shows a season of Polanski's films, including extended runs for his feature debut Knife in the Water and noir classic Chinatown.

NB: This retrospective runs from 08/04 till 30/04.

Thursday 8 April (10pm - 5am)

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

The enigmatic Mr. Van Helden is not really a DJ. More noted for his own production and remix work than dexterity behind the decks, this is a rare opportunity to catch the man in turntable mode. Van Helden has made massive and diverse contributions to electronic music over the last decade, and what makes him rather unusual and a little special is his ability to achieve massive suck-my-corporate-co#! mainstream success, at the same time as remaining an exciting and credible force in the dance underground. Commencing in the New York underground with early productions of "Witch Doktor" and the rump shuddering "Funk Phenomenon", Van Helden was then enlisted by the queen of contrived coffee table kookiness, Tori Amos, to remix one of her unspectacular songs. "Professional Widow" was born and speed garage (ahem) was invented, with the remix's unrelenting bass line. Following this, Van Helden hit number one in the UK as an artist in his own right with the glorious pure house of "You don't even know me" and the album 2Future4U also spawned other classics, notably celestial garage anthem, "Flowers".

By this stage the Ali G look-alike success story thought, "fuck it" and dived back into the underground by bastardising Gary Numan's "Cars" into his own anthem. The critics were lukewarm, the dancefloors blistering, and here we have Armand back this week in the labyrinthine Fabric, ready to blow our heads off yet again. A new mix album (New York: A Mix Odyssey) with both original material, '80s mashups and inimitable Van Helden beats is here to be promoted -- and what a support cast Armand has commanded. Kenny Dope, Keb Darge and Ashley Beedle, among numerous others, will be spinning and helping us celebrate the start of the Easter season. It will be a Good Friday (early morning)!

NB: Fabric fans, if you have the energy check out Dizzee Rascal on Fri 09/04 and Richie Hawtin on Sat 10/04!

Giveaway: We have three copies of New York: A Mix Odyssey to give away. They'll go to three randomly picked Flashers who can name the label that released the single "Witch Doktor".

Saturday 10 April (8:30pm - 6am)

@ seOne, Weston St. Tunnel (off Tooley St.), SE1 (020.7407.1617) Tube: London Bridge

That oh-so-chic concept of Return to New York has undergone quite a transformation for its latest event. Gone is the previously palatial location within the luxuriant Great Eastern Hotel, for the more modest, cavernous and grotto-like setting of the seOne. Is this a mission to make more money, or to add a different element to the whole event? The usual suspects of Erol Alkan and Soulwax still pleasingly litter the bill, but whereas on previous occasions, headline DJs have been of a more innocuous and unusual quality (musicians from New Order and Talking Heads), on this particular occasion they have been pilfered directly from the US glitterati. A trio of bona fide legends have been summoned to appear before the debauched court of seOne, which should ensure that fascinating sounds will resonate from the main room. Perhaps the most eagerly anticipated will be the return of the mighty Todd Terry playing his first London gig for years.

Terry is a true stalwart of the dance scene, having been behind innumerable classics and played an integral role in genres ranging from upfront garage to drum and bass. Whatever the case Flashers, it's not about genres and intricate categorisation: it's about the quality and Todd "the God" has it in spades. Also playing is Marshall Jefferson -- "the Godfather of house"!? Famed for his seminal anthem "Move your Body", Jefferson is another legendary name but a more regular visitor to these shores. Completing this holy trinity is Kurtis Mantronik, originally a pioneering hip-hop producer and now dabbling successfully in all forms of electronica. If this bill isn't enough to take your fancy, the other five rooms will surely satisfy with thrills, spills, mischief, filth, deceit, love, flirting and most importantly ear-sweepingly magnificent music. Celebrate your Easter in style, Big Apple style.

NB: For Flashers looking for a harder Sat evening, Detroit techno style, then check out Lost with Juan Atkins (Metroplex) and Suburban Knight (Underground Resistance).

Wednesday 14 April (9pm - late)

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

An alternative appeal to the senses at Plastic People, with a night specifically catering for the deaf, for whom the notion of "feeling the groove" has a quite literal meaning. Research suggests that the sound processing centres in the brain of a deaf person re-wire themselves to discern all vibrations, as high treble tones are felt in the head and arms while lower bass frequencies are felt in the pelvis and thighs. There have been numerous studies to ascertain exactly how the mind's ear perceives sound (including devices to translate conventional music) and the effect is historically well documented. When Beethoven began to lose his hearing around 1800, he sawed off the legs of his piano and put it on the floor, so he might feel the vibrations, and three years later went on to compose his magisterial Symphony No. 3 -- "Eroica" (1803). Contemporary clubbers have adopted a rather more cavalier attitude to their exposure to sound levels typically 10-20 decibels above the 80dB recommended limit, and the dangers of tinnitus were recently publicised by the RNID's Don't Lose The Music campaign. Despite this, a DJ line-up headed by Gilles Peterson and Phil Asher will be throwing caution to the wind and dropping sets of wantonly bass-heavy music to literally keep the floor moving. All proceeds will go to support deaf charities.

Thursday 15 April (8pm)

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

London's most famous "brandalist", Banksy, had his first gallery exhibition last year; while he could not be officially present for fear of arrest, the press were there to pick over his stencilled beasts, vacillating between disapproval and delight at the oh-so-edgy grittiness of it. Only a few days ago Guardian journalist Simon Hattenstone wrote of his experience as hostage negotiator when Banksy's "Drinker" statue was kidnapped by collectors miffed when the artist demanded a further £150 for his signature on a work. Another glossy coffee table book on graffiti art appears, and one could be forgiven for thinking that its practitioners are closer to colluding with the mechanisms of marketing than to subverting the blanket of advertising that chokes our cities. What happened to street art as a platform for liberated expression and the last unfettered meeting place in the saturated streets? What is more, if graffiti is at odds with branding it also contests and contradicts the art establishment. Yet Simon Bedwell's work in Beck's Futures 2004 at the ICA (his work is also on show in The Sound of the Crowd at Ritter/Zamet) clearly references this wayward tradition; his second-hand posters are sprayed with stencils, self-conscious gestures way beyond instinctive marks of defacement.

To make sense of the current collage of provocation and counter-statement on the streets will be Tristan Manco, author of Thames & Hudson's Street Logos and Stencil Graffiti, graffiti artists Brad Downey and D*Face, and Patrick Burgoyne, editor of Creative Review, whose credits also include Board and Still Bored both on board graphics (surf, skate and snow). Street Logos sets out to "document today's graffiti gene pool", and while you could cynically see it as a rough guide for uninitiated readers looking to up their "youf" credibility, it does capture one moment in a graphic tradition that is inherently in flux. Artists come and go, their transparencies clutter archives for longer than they often deserve, but graffiti has only a brief moment until it becomes undercoat. To celebrate their ephemeral images, the talk is followed by three short films: the UK premiere of Public Discourse (Brad Downey and Quenell Jones, 2003), Acces(s) (Eko, 2003), and NEXT, a Primer on Urban Painting (Pablo Aravena, 2004).

Giveaway: We have two copies of Tristan Manco's Street Logos (Thames & Hudson) to give away. They'll go to two randomly picked Flashers who can name the now disbanded collective that Simon Bedwell used to be a part of.

Friday 16 April (Fri 16/04 to Sun 18/04 at various times)

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

"Trigger-happy superpower attacks benign populace based on evidence flimsier than a piece of rain-sodden tracing paper." Sound familiar? The pairing of Dr. Strangelove and this celebrity preamble is so apposite it could have been scripted by a busload of coked-up film execs. London Mayor Ken Livingstone, a man as famous for his warped sense of humour as for his opposition to random country invasion, introduces Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (Sun 18/04 at 12:30am), a light-hearted look at nuclear war. Peter Sellers stars in three roles -- a British group captain, the US president and a former Nazi weapons expert -- each attempting to diffuse global meltdown after a renegade US colonel decides to blow the USSR to smithereens. The Cold War classic is part of the Curzon's London Screening weekend -- a celebration of the capital and its denizens through politics, film and music. For a more life-affirming experience, check out Friday's late screening of Finisterre -- an atmospheric saunter through the smoke with a score by Saint Etienne, introduced by the band's Bob Stanley. And if gritty realism is more your bag, Saturday's three shorts featuring ordinary folks at work and at play should hit the spot. Profits from the event will fund Ken's re-election campaign. Never has munching popcorn been such a defiant political gesture.

NB: London Screening runs from Fri 16/04 to Sun 18/04 check website for the full programme.

Saturday 17 April (Daily 10am - 6pm)

@ Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens, W2 (020 7298 1515) Tube: Knightsbridge/Lancaster Gate

More so than Jackson Pollock, Cy Twombly has made gestural painting truly his own. Born in Virginia (1928), he has taken the gestural-expressionism of American abstraction back to Europe and imbued it with a classical consciousness. Taking classical tales (e.g. Leda and the Swan) as a point of departure, through biomorphic shapes, phallic gestures and that signature scrawl it is Twombly's hand working through every kind of gesture, from a child-like scrawl to caveman markings to mature graffiti, that allows his work to tell the tale of its own creation. No other artist could just scratch out a poet's name (e.g. Virgil) and make that reverberate poetically.

A peer of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, he at first seemed idiosyncratic with his highly phallic and gooey marks. Moving from this rough poetry to a more graphic scribble, it's as if Sam Beckett were trying to scrawl out his last word. In a generation of Pop Artists and Minimalists, perhaps being based in Rome has allowed his independent mystique to grow, and in the last few decades Twombly's inclusion of classical content has allowed his work to turn from an erotic poetry into an art concerned with time and its unfolding. Having described himself as "primarily a draughtsman", it's appropriate then that the Serpentine is receiving this "works on paper" retrospective from the Hermitage. Drawn from private collections and primarily the artist's own archives, this show -- which ranges over a 50-year period -- should demonstrate the importance of the artist's oeuvre. (Runs till 13/06.)

NB: Gallery talks will include curator Achim Borchardt-Hume (17/04), artist Basil Beattie (23/04) and critic John Slyce (12/06). There will also be a conference (speakers incluce Tacita Dean, Katharina Grosse, Alexander Garcia Duttman and Stephen Bann) and sweatshop, check site for details. Lastly for those Flashionistas out there be sure to pop by the V&A for the Vivienne Westwood retrospective.

Saturday 17 April (3pm)

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

The Minimalists were named as such because of their seeming interest in reducing the amount of "matter" and "composition" that made up artworks. Now if they'd been sound sculptors they'd have really taken all that reduction a whole lot further. With the Donald Judd retrospective in mind, the Tate has arranged an afternoon to contemplate just these thoughts. Sound plays an important part in our world; we often forget about it because we live so visually. Just let your TV's sound go off or watch a badly dubbed programme and you'll see how important it is. Yet sound sculpture belongs to altogether another universe, or actually another "soundscape".

Now the Tate has invited New Yorker Stephen Vitiello and our own Scanner (aka Robin Rimbaud) for a series of highly aural delights, taunts and interpretations in response to or to complement Judd. Vitiello has made tracks of the manipulated sound of a paper cutter, amplified sounds from outside the 91st floor of the WTC, as well as created a piece which picked up sounds from Judd sculptures. On the other hand, Scanner works in the more nebulous zone of the artist-DJ whose "vision" includes mixing from mobile phone communications, sound samples from walks and bus routes. Yet both do what Art has always -- in part -- done, and that's to make us more aware of the world around us, thus helping us to be more in the world. Sound critic Philip Sherburne will kick off the afternoon with an introduction on the matter of audio explorations, the relation between the tactile and the audible, which will be followed by Vitiello's and Scanner's solo sets, and finally a joint session ends the day. Give the earplugs a rest.

NB: This event will be webcast live. Check site for details. For those Scanner fans and KF music-heads, check out Githead's live debut. This band, made up of Colin Newman (Wire and Swim label owner), Malka Spigel (Swim) and Robin Rimbaud (Scanner), will be a part of the Swim label's evening showcase. Other acts include Lobe, Symptoms, Rhodes and Silo.

Special Offer: Print and present this web page to the Tate Modern ticket office and receive a "two for one" admission to the Donald Judd exhibition (ends 25/04).

Giveaway: We have two Judd catalogues to give away. They'll go to two randomly picked Flashers who can give us the address of the Donald Judd Foundation and also tell us the name of Judd's son.

Saturday 17 April (7:30pm - 1am)

@ Pentonville Prison Officers Social Club, Roman Way, N7 Tube: Caledonian Rd.

Hanging in a Prison Officers Social Club may not be first choice on everybody's top ten venues -- bad memories and all that -- but for the clean cut of you how jolly exciting to get a peek into the world of the damned! Seed Records are putting on a party of electronic, machine-driven beats just to make the inmates jealous, so it should be a riot. Clever electro noise makers and DJs include Ardisson, Cursor Miner, [synch], Kansas City Prophets and Seed regulars, all making for you live effects-laden blips, brulls and beeps with funky, dance-inducing rhythms and samples. Seed's parties are legendary and if you've been part of the KF family for a while now you would have seen them bigged up before -- believe the hype. The people in charge are masters at raising your pulses with a tested blend of the visual, the sonic and evocative venues. We could highlight the "twisted digipop" of Cursor Miner or the "future funk" from Kansas City Prophets, but let us look at the bigger picture here -- you will be in the middle of a prison, dancing to the future of electronic dance music surrounded by gorgeous, forward-thinking people. Make the damned green with envy, go looking beautiful.

NB: This event is strictly limited to 150. Get your tickets in advance through Koobla, Smallfish, Roughtrade and Stargreen.

Sunday 18 April (7pm)

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

The surviving queen of flash-dans-le-pan "electroclash" returns to the Astoria. Joan Jett meets L'il Kim with the costumes of a serious sexual superhero who makes it plain where we can stick our Jolen. Merrill -- aka Peaches -- Nisker left Toronto for Berlin, released her 2000 debut The Teaches of Peaches and became instant essential Euro cool with the radio unfriendly club pleaser "Fu#! the Pain Away". Last year her latest album Fatherfu#!er bought a little bit of Annie Sprinkle to her punk-hip-hop-electro-pop, causing riotous sexual fever on her international tour with Iggy Pop duet "Kick It" and the best action song since the "Birdie Song" -- "Shake Yer Dix" (ladies Shake Yer Tits). She's just toured with Marilyn Manson and guest's on Pink's album, and before you start umming and ahhring that that's too US commercial for you this lady dealt with a sea of goth teenagers flicking her the finger and shouting to see her tits as easily as how you or us would deal with hair stuck in the plug hole -- Respect! Her website gives you the chance to put up a pic of your crotch and the Fatherfu#!er site lets you put naughty words in her mouth while mixing your own beat (if in office, keep the volume down -- it's very dirty). OK, so this kinda thing just ain't so shocking anymore, and a girl wearing a beard isn't the most sophisticated sort of subversion -- but for all our highbrow gender politic theory we still don't see that many of you girls throwing away the Immac, or the boys openly getting in touch with rampant rabbit toys. Cure your repressions, choose the Peaches lifestyle and go get ya rocks off!

NB: Supporting Peaches underneath are Pink Grease, Kissogram and DJ Erol Alkan -- all in all the night will have a higher success rate than Viagra.

Giveaway: We have five Peaches t-shirts to give away. They'll go to five randomly picked Flashers who can name the band for which Peaches appears in their "We Don't Play Guitars" video.

Ends Friday 7 May (Tue to Sat 10am - 6pm)

@ Anne Faggionato, 20 Dering St., W1 (020.7493.6732) Tube: Bond St./Oxford Circus

Researching family trees are always a popular pastime for kids trying to unearth some hidden scandal or celebrity lineage to overcome their disappointment at having such boring relatives. Historically, such diagrams have also proven useful in illustrating complicated relationships between members of royal families, particularly concerning the more incestuous eras in which having eight spouses and an exponential number of children was the norm. Alfred Barr's famous, quasi-scientific family tree, The Development of Abstract Art, published by MoMA in 1936, had a similar aim -- to make abstract art look like the natural offspring of reputable ancestors Surrealism and Cubism, with wild uncle Dadaism and exotic grandparents Negro Sculpture and Japanese Prints adding spice and glamour to the genetic mix. Needless to say, the reductiveness of Barr's classification system has been problematised and deconstructed ever since; recently, and very effectively, by Brit artist Peter Davies.

Now two more artists, Sarah Staton and Jane Simpson, have taken a stab at the family tree model. Their exhibition Daddy Pop (The Search For Art Parents), outlines the search for a sculptural family, going back some 80 years in art history. Based on a highly idiosyncratic selection, their family tree does away with the conventional rules of objectivity, linearity and gender division. From the more obscure artists like Liliane Lijn (her spinning sculptures are a real discovery) to the household names of Peter Blake and Barbara Hepworth, from the long dead (Henry Moore) to young artists (Roger Hiorns), the artworks -- including Staton's and Simpson's own contributions -- are displayed unhierarchically as a living sculptural forest. Some ancestral lines are easier to trace than others; Staton's Endless Column, Fast Food, for instance, proudly bears its genetic likeness to Blake's Endless Column and Colin Self's Hot Dog S.6. But the real joy of the show is in discovering resonances between disparate artists whose classification into art movements has more usually kept them apart. An exuberant exhibition which excels in demonstrating the artist-curators' passion for their medium; the "glorious thingness, the isness, the gloopiness, the sheer ravishing corporeality of sculpture". (Runs till 07/05.)

NB: While in the neighbourhood check out the group show at Hauser & Wirth (ends 08/04), Dean Sameshima at aspreyjacques (ends 01/05) and Thomas Nozkowski at Haunch of Venison (ends 08/05).

Giveaway: We have three catalogues to give away. They'll go to three randomly picked Flashers who can name the artist in this show who recently featured in the Art Now programme at Tate Britain.

Ends Saturday 8 May (Mon to Fri 10am - 6pm; Thu till 7pm; Sat 10am - 5pm )

@ Haunch of Venison, 6 Haunch of Venison Yard, W1 (020.7495.5050) Tube: Bond St.

One can draw a line within a certain American tradition of painting from Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847-1917) to Thomas Nozkowski (bn. 1944). These are artists who work from nature (i.e. life) and interpret "living" -- after all you know what they say about the unexamined life -- though their results defer wildly from the point of departure. Lou Reed once noted that his life could be read if you stacked all his albums together from beginning to end; likewise a sum of Nozkowski's life experiences can be found in these paintings. He works from a moment, painting and re-painting his interpretation, sometimes over a number of years, until he renders experience real. Not quite readable like Reed's albums or the great American novel, what results is neither representation nor trapped memory, rather an experience for the viewer to regain.

Like Juan Usle or Raoul de Keyser, who both labour from a certain "point" of inspiration in the world, Nozkowski's abstractions obstinately and eccentrically elude simple classifications and readings: floating blobs, strings of coloured "pearls" or molecules, perhaps even American Indian symbols or floating patterns. Are they structures, markings or simple commentary? Are we left here with mere phenomenological experience? This selection spans 12 years, allowing Nozkowski to make his first statement in London. Each painting is a description, a memory rendered, an elusive statement in which, finally, gnarly poetic beauty is a mere by-product. Don't let the slight scale fool you, after all both Morandi and Chardin made much with small paintings and a few bottles. (Runs till 08/05)

NB: While in the neighbourhood check out the group show at Hauser & Wirth (ends 08/04), Dean Sameshima at aspreyjacques (ends 01/05) and Daddy Pop at Anne Faggionato (ends 07/05).

Giveaway: We have three catalogues to give away. They'll go to three randomly picked Flashers who can tell us where Thomas Nozkowski is based.

Ends Sunday 4 July (Daily 10am - 5:45pm; Fri until 9pm)

@ Design Museum, Butlers Wharf, Shad Thames, SE1 (0870.833.9955) Tube: Tower Hill

'60s Pop Art pranksters, or architectural iconoclasts who changed the way we think about buildings forever? Depends on who you ask of course, but it says something about Archigram -- the so-called "Beatles of architecture" -- that the question is still the subject of debate some 30 years after they disbanded. It's doubly surprising considering that not a single Archigram design was ever actually built. Of course many never could have been, most famously Ron Herron's design for a Walking City, whereby vast hi-tech blobs would stride about the globe on unfeasible-looking telescopic legs. Looking back on some of the images in the exhibition you're reminded that few of their ideas were at all practical, but they always had a certain charm. Their Spray Plastic House was more Monty Python than the Beatles and would have involved the occupants helping out with the construction using electric hedge-cutters and blowlamps. Yet despite the lack of actual Archigram buildings, their influence was huge. Will Alsop's blue-stilted creations will be forever in their debt, while Renzo Piano and Richard Roger's Pompidou Centre was the most obviously Archigram-inspired creation. (Ironically, the British hi-tech group, whose buildings owed so much of their look to Archigram's "Plug-In" and "Instant" city designs, were in reality quite the opposite: the Lloyds Building for instance was an expensive and obsessively crafted edifice.) It's interesting as well that there's actual work by individual members spliced in -- Peter Cook's "friendly alien" Kunsthaus Graz, in Austria, is the spirit of Archigram made flesh.

Don't expect a slick exhibition -- there's a slightly crammed-in homemade feel to the whole thing. But this is exactly what Archigram were: chaotic, makeshift and fun. The show is more about the excitement of the times than dry analysis. Amazingly, despite having travelled the world, it's the first time this retrospective has been presented in the UK. So if you only see one '60s Pop-Art-never-built-architectural supergroup show this year, we suggest you see this one.

NB: Runs till 04/07.