Wednesday 5 May (Masterclass Wed 05/05 at 7pm; see website for all other times)

@ Cine Lumiere, 17 Queensberry Place, SW7 (020.7073.1350) Tube: South Kensington

Alain Resnais' first two feature films, Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) and Last Year in Marienbad (1961), placed him at the forefront of European art cinema in the early '60s. The films, created in collaboration with the writers Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet, intrigued and baffled viewers in equal measure. Focusing, as with all his work, on the themes of time and memory, Resnais employed enigmatic narrative structures, lush cinematography, and carefully constructed compositions to create a cinematic vision all his own. This month Cine Lumiere at the French Institute is showing Alain Resnais' latest film Pas Sur La Bouche alongside some of his earlier classics, including the ground-breaking Holocaust documentary Night and Fog (1955), and the English language Providence (1977), starring John Gielgud in what many consider is his best-ever screen performance.

NB: Michel Ciment, editor of Positif, one of the leading French cinema magazines, will be at Cine Lumiere conducting a masterclass on Renais (Wed 05/05 from 7 - 8pm) before introducing Providence (8:30pm). This retrospective runs till 27/05.

Wednesday 5 May (7:30pm)

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

Once upon a time in TV land, a fully-grown man mouthing "ooh Betty" while mincing around in a mac and beret was the funniest thing known to man. Way back then, suburban types grappled with their eco-warrior neighbours and/or the black bloke upstairs with hilarious consequences. Then, all of a sudden, a fella by the name of Alexei Sayle appeared and gave comedy a much-needed kick up the backside. Goodbye smug monoculturalism and hello lefty ideology, racial awareness and quite a bit of swearing. Sayle now combines being the grandfather of "alternative comedy" with a successful career as a novelist, and will discuss the relative merits of such discipline hopping with young stand-up and author Mark Watson in this RFH event. To give you a flavour, check out vintage Sayle in the seminal The Comic Strip Presents... and The Young Ones series, and dip into Watson's debut novel, Bullet Points. The event is part of the RFH's Future Perfect series, which pairs new and established writers for a spot of navel-gazing. Expect hilarious consequences. And quite a bit of swearing.

Wednesday 5 May (8pm till late)

@ The Yacht Club, Temple Pier, Victoria Embankment, WC2 Tube: Temple

Sometimes the purest music is the naked word. That's when you might want to hear some great poetry -- not just read it silently to yourself, mind you, but hear it from the voice it was first made for, the poet's own. But just try finding some on CD. Rob Holloway has started Stem Recordings to remedy the dearth of contemporary poetry on CD, and the label is being launched with the voices of two of the heavy hitters of British experimentalism, Maggie O'Sullivan and Allen Fisher, both of whom will be reading at this launch party. (Solo harp music comes courtesy of Rhodri Davies.) "If at all possible get to hear Maggie O'Sullivan live," we've heard, while Fisher's readings have been described as "a mass of solid sound and jagged dislocation". Don't worry, we'll be there.

Thursday 6 May (Thu 06/05 and Fri 07/05 at 7pm)

@ Jazz Cafe, 5 Parkway, NW1 (020.7916.6060) Tube: Camden Town

The relationship between black music and politics is historically an inextricable pairing, a tool of defiance and liberation throughout the decades, from the Civil Rights Movement of the '60s where the empowering wails of Mahalia Jackson coupled the determined march of Martin Luther King Jr., to the politically charged soundtracks of Spike Lee, who calls upon a vast discography of black musical artists to provide a further layer of racial discourse in his films, such as Do The Right Thing and Mo' Better Blues. The '60s perhaps represents the most definitive and dramatic period of such musical activism, which filtered across the spectrum of music, from soul and blues, to gospel and jazz. At the avant-garde end of the contemporary jazz movement came the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Inc (AACM), striving for a new definition of jazz in the context of the wider political minefield afoot. One of its most colourful groups is the Art Ensemble of Chicago, whose unpredictable and unconventional performance ethics mean that they remain one of the most popular experimental jazz ensembles of the last 40 years. Recently losing two founder members to old age (including pre-eminent trumpeter Lester Bowie), the remaining original members are defiantly touring once again. Their unique blend of improvised and composed free jazz combines a clear homage to their African heritage with an unrelentingly modern, and ever-developing, innovative sound.

NB: AEC play the Jazz Cafe two nights, Thu 06/05 and Fri 07/05.

Friday 7 May

@ Various cinemas across Lonon

By 1970, after Altamont and Manson, while the body bags continued to pile up in Vietnam, the psychedelic '60s dream was giving way to a darker reality. It is this after-the-party mood that Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg captured so effectively in Performance, a film that, as its title suggests, deals with the artifice at the heart of the human show and exposes the fragility of its actors. Reviled by the mainstream at the time of its release, Performance has been a cult classic ever since. The sex and drugs have lost some of their power to shock now that Selfridges sells sex toys, kids keep Es in their school bags and every bog in London is dusted with enough coke to kill a rockstar. But the violence that erupts as James Fox's gangster is forced to confront himself in Mick Jagger's bohemian lair retains every bit of power. Anita Pallenberg is at her simmering best and Jagger himself is so beautiful that the sexual disorientation of the film becomes one of its strongest metaphors. Collapsing identities, fantasy and reality shift in and out of focus so quickly in this film that you may find yourself reaching for the acid just to feel normal. All the world's a stage after all then.

Friday 7 May (1pm)

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

There's something about oriental script that makes even a Chinese takeaway menu good to look at. If the Eastern Art of Calligraphy makes the perfect marriage between word and image, the diversity and complexity of Western art movements has made for a rather rockier relationship history. Since Mark Tobey's White Writing in the '30s, words have been employed, deployed and probed by image makers, and used for their sounds, shapes and associations. The written word has appeared in many forms: Paolozzi's pasted slogans, Indiana's bold visuals, Shrigley's witty lists... Cy Twombly claims that his giant scrawls have "transformed scribbling and graffiti into high art". Simon Morley's Writing on the Wall (Thames & Hudson) is a brilliant account of the tensions between word and image in Modern Art, from Impressionism through to the "new art form" of hypertext. The talk will mirror Morley's three part investigation, covering media, writing as gesture, and art and ideas. Come and hear him share his wisdom.

Giveaway: We have two copies of Writing on the Wall to give away. They'll go to two randomly picked Flashers who can tell us which famous American artist is next up for The Unilever Series at Tate Modern.

Friday 7 May (Check ICA site for dates and times)

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

Demonlover is the new work by Alice et Martin and L'Enfant de l'hiver director and writer Olivier Assayas. You can't complain when the cast includes Gina Gershon, Connie Nielsen, Chloe Sevigny and Charles Berling. Details out of the way, this is what it is: a total mindf*!k. Take note of how the characters eerily have mundane conversations about hidden, underlying topics intended not to bring the movie and storyline forward (and sometimes the film does seem to stand still, but at the strangest moments you will realise that an excessively long shot was not actually excessive after all), or to disclose the characters to each other or you, but instead the dialogue is directed straight at you. And they never actually say what it sounds like they're saying. At times you may be a little bored, other times you may be a little confused, or shocked, or stupefied -- but you will walk out of there and remember it, talk about it, wonder about it, and probably change your mind repeatedly as to what this thing was and how much you (dis)liked it. Intrigued?

NB: Demonlover is being screened at the ICA from Fri 07/05 till 27/05 (times and dates vary).

Friday 7 May (6 - 9pm)

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

Current darlings of NME, Art Brut play a first birthday celebratory gig at the Tate. The irony of being labelled art rock isn't lost on a band whose name is actually a dig at the art establishment (Art Brut refers to the creatives with no formal training) and pretty much sums up their DIY approach to rock. If you're bored of bands who just strum away and drone on about love you'll appreciate Art Brut's alternative worldview. Who else writes a song about their favourite terrorists? (Two inept Italians who used the bus as their getaway vehicle). The lead singer can't sing a note but what would be a serious handicap for most bands is a mere technicality in this chaotic five-piece music machine. The songs are pure anthem material so don't be surprised to find yourself chanting the chorus "Art Brut! Top of the Pops!" along with the regular fans. This one's a freebie with half price entry into some of the special exhibitions so it's worth a butcher's whichever way you look at it.

NB: This special evening includes a performance by Mugstar and half price entry to In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. While there catch Muntean / Rosenblum, and the talk by Dean Colin Slee and philosopher Alexander Duttman Garcia.

Friday 7 May (9pm - 6am)

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

The Electrowerkz is a truly revolting venue, but its scuzziness can have an almost endearing quality when combined with equally messy and disturbed sounds. Which brings us to the second monthly Sleaze Magazine and Eat Your Own Ears all nighter: an event looking to infuse the true party spirit into all attending. Debauchery would seem to be compulsory amidst the enticing array of musicians, DJs and (so we are informed) live magicians pulling silk scarves out of their orifices, and male and female pole dancers in cages: you don't get this at Fabric... Representing on the live music front will be Welsh scally caners Goldie Lookin' Chain, blasting all corners with their ferocious, blistering and quite funny mixture of freaking hip-hop. Along with them, the sublimely named Godsausage and Sluts of Trust (you can just tell they are not winsome folk bands) will be spurting out some ball-busting punk. On the DJ front, underground legend Luke Vibert (for he is the Wagon Christ) will be veering away slightly from his usual Warp repertoire of truly clanking fu*!ed up beats and reverting to play an old school disco set, mixing up house and funk laced with that inimitable dose of Aphex accciid. For those up for an unpretentious dose of dirty pumping fun, you've found your night.

Saturday 8 May (3pm)

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

Today Nicolas Bourriaud calls it Postproduction: the practice of appropriation, referencing and recreation of art-works past -- Lali Chetwynd recreates Yves Klein's iconic anthropometries under a railway arch at London Bridge; Jonathan Monk makes a 16mm film by splicing together the pages of an artist's book by Gilbert & George. But back when Pop was making reproductions of reproductions (catch Lichtenstein at the Hayward), Sturtevant in turn was reproducing Pop's reproductions. Warhol handed over a silkscreen so that Sturtevant could repeat his Flowers direct from the source, both in the mid-'60s, almost contemporaneously with the "originals", and again in 1991. Sturtevant remade works by Duchamp, Serra, Johns and, in the case of Beuys, an entire show -- at the same time as his US debut in 1974. Aside from a few allies, there was a mistrust of her work -- Beuys' widow sued -- and Sturtevant stopped making art for over a decade. This will be a rare screening of her films and videos, and she will discuss her work with critic and author Bruce Hainley. Sturtevant's is an important career, which fits into many of our current discourses (appropriation, repetition, a feminist critique of male authorship), but which has been pretty much under-represented until now.

NB: On Fri 07/05 (7pm) catch the screening and discussion with film-makers Matthias Muller and Christoph Girardet. Muller's film Vacancy is the first in Tate Modern's changing display The Projected Image. Also on Fri 07/05 the duo will be exhibiting new work at the Timothy Taylor Gallery until 05/06 (PV: Thu 06/05 from 6 - 8pm).

Giveaway: We have ten tickets to give away (one per Flasher). They'll go to the first ten Flashers that call 020.7887.8888 and quote "Reader Offer - KultureFlash" (please call on Wed 05/05 9:45am onwards).

Saturday 8 May (08/05 to 25/05 7pm)

@ Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, WC2 (020.7304.4000) Tube: Covent Garden

Throw on some pearls and head West for a change to relive the sumptuous decadence of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes at its London stamping ground and one-time epicentre of glamour, The Royal Opera House. During the Belle Epoque the impresario extraordinaire revamped Western ballet into high art, commissioned Montmarte's avant-garde for sets and music, and had all of Bloomsbury a-quiver at the spectacle. Now the Royal Ballet is recreating the legends in overdue recognition of its debt to his genius. Nijinsky's exquisite L'Apres Midi d'un Faun had them gagging with its autoeroticism and voyeurism. His sister, Bronislava Nijinska, created Les Noces, one of the most starkly brilliant and enduringly modern ballets of the last century; and the young Frederick Ashton, who succumbed to the Ballets Russes fever, pioneered British ballet thereafter and later recreated Diaghilev's pastoral ballet Daphnis and Chloe in tribute. Fokine's impossibly romantic Le Spectre de la Rose completes the bill. With collaborations from Stravinsky, Gontcharova and Ravel, and world class talent of the Royal Ballet, like Alina Cojocaru dancing the role of Chloe, you'll shiver and sigh like the best of them. Silk turban optional.

NB: This Diaghilev programme runs for eight nights (08/05, 10/05, 13/05, 15/05, 17/05, 18/05, 20/05 and 25/05).

Monday 10 May (Mon 10/05, Tue 11/05, Thu 13/05 and 26/05 at 7:30pm/8:30pm)

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

The 7th les femmes s'en melent festival (a French equivalent to Ladyfest) comes to the ICA this week, as part of a bunch of events running throughout April and May all across Europe. The events present a luscious suite of independent female songwriting talent that swims through various incarnations of contemporary folk, jazz and blues; manifesting the diversity of cutting-edge female composition. Amongst the mele (excusez le pun) of a dozen or so acts circulating the festivities is Holly Golightly (Tue 11/05). The former Headcotee, who has worked closely with anti-ism Billy Childish over the years, now presents us with her own sassy swing, complemented by a seductive feline vocal lilt. Thu (13/05) brings us Willis, whose nutshell-like description as a heavyweight (in the musical sense) Joni Mitchell is accurate, but the addition of a smoky south London tinge to the affair may help complete the picture. This recent signing to 679 Recordings is certainly worth attending by any fans of Joni, Carole King and Badly Drawn Boy. Mon (10/05) sees Feist, whose music is indicative of modern, introspective folk -- a minimal but essential blend of razor-wire guitar with Peej-esque bass riffs and trippy time signatures. In all, this forms a deeply cool arrangement of subtle instruments and is probably another one of the highlights of the season worth catching.

NB: The festival runs from 10/05 till 26/05. Wed (26/05) sees Scoutt Niblett perform.

Tuesday 11 May (6:45pm)

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

How can you forget that classic moment in Neil Jordan's The Crying Game, when Stephen Rea discovers he's been snogging a transsexual. Both funny and yucky while coming over all emotional on top of a hot political potato, but maybe that's what the Jordan's all about. Now put the Sligo-born writer-director together with author and Dubliner Patrick McCabe, and there's bound to be an interesting frisson. Having collaborated on the film version of McCabe's The Butcher Boy, described as A Clockwork Orange meets Heavenly Creatures, it's a macabre tale of the unfolding of a childhood crime. With that in mind, and the fact that Jordan has described McCabe's genius as one which highlights the forgotten small things of childhood, the conversation should pass between writers talking craft, waxing lyrical over Ireland (past and present; especially Sligo where McCabe now resides), filmmaking and the like... As both possess a touch of the sweetly-sinister, expect the discourse to be engaging.

Tuesday 11 May (Tue 11/05, Wed 12/05 and Thu 13/05 at 7:30pm)

@ Sadler's Wells, Rosebery Avenue, EC1 (020.7863.8000) Tube: Angel

Take this second chance to be thrilled by the Michael Clark Company when it brings Oh My Goddess back to Sadler's Wells (it last enjoyed success there as part of 2003 Dance Umbrella). British ballet's original bad boy continues to prove just how good he is at pleasurably using and wickedly abusing all the establishment's rules. So much so that even its stalwarts, who might once have recoiled in horror, are feeling compelled to give the ex-rebel more and more of the credit he's due. A characteristically edgy medley of work (including Oh My Goddess, Dreams, Satie Studs and Submishmash) is guaranteed to be fantastically performed. Clark knows instinctively to pick dancers as naturally cool, elegant and alternatively virtuosic as he is himself. Lighting from Charles Atlas and costumes from fashion designers Stevie Stewart and Shelley Fox, not to mention the pleasingly unpredictable audio line-up -- an incongruous mix of T-Rex, Human League, Erik Satie (performed live by Piano Circus on four grand pianos), PJ Harvey and Sex Pistols -- together push the work further into the dimension of strange and exciting.

NB: Oh My Goddess runs for three nights (Tue 11/05, Wed 12/05 and Thu 13/05).

Tuesday 11 May (7:30pm)

@ Electric Ballroom, 184 Camden High St., NW1 (020.7485.9006) Tube: Camden Town

Not everything that comes from Texas is stupid: Townes Van Zandt, Buddy Holly, NASA's Mission Control, to name but three -- and now we can add Austin quartet Explosions in the Sky to this unlikely roll call. Indeed, the band's wordless, post-rocking fusion of Sigur Ros-like melodrama and Mogwai-esque quiet/loud/quiet "guitarchitecture" has lately been attracting blanket critical approbation like the so-called "new rock revolution" never happened. While their debut long-player The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place (Bella Union) has moistened critics' foundation garments from Abilene to Aberdeen, it's in the live arena that the Explosions' six-string dynamism finds its truest, erm, incendiary outlet. Such is the interest in the Lone Star State foursome that this Electric Ballroom date will most likely sell out -- so don't dither if stratospheric, symphonic rock is your bag.

Ends Saturday 15 May (Tue to Fri 10am - 6pm, Sat 10am - 1pm)

@ aspreyjacques, 4 Clifford St., W1S (020.7287.7675) Tube: Piccadilly Circus

For this, his first UK solo show, American artist Dean Sameshima continues his exploration of the changing face of gay culture with a group of works based on John Rechy's book The Sexual Outlaw, which documents three days of cruising for sex in Los Angeles in 1977. The resulting photographs mourn somewhat the loss of the gay scene's more radical, dangerous days, especially in Gauntlet II, a series of images of hardcore LA clubs photographed during the day. One photo contains a sign proclaiming "This is an alternative lifestyle business. If you might be offended, do not enter", a warning that seems almost quaint these days. Alongside the club shots are a series of 17 photographs of a handsome, bare-chested man doing sign language. The works are in fact re-photographed images from an '80s porn mag, and the language is sexually explicit, with the signs for "well hung", "mutual blowjob" and "ejaculation" all on show. For Sameshima The Deaf Dude represents not only the artist's interest in a specifically gay sexual language but also a silencing of the gay community's radical voice as it becomes appropriated by the mainstream.

NB: Runs till 15/05.

Ends Sunday 16 May (Wed to Sun 12pm - 6pm)

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

Most of us are familiar with LA cool (a la Ruscha, Pettibon, even Laura Owens) and New York attitude (a la Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth) but many forget the older American cultural centres. At one time there was "Bay Area Funk" and the "Hairy Who" in Chicago. The latter is still fondly thought of as the base for artists like Jim Nutt and Gladys Nilsson, but it is San Francisco that is now the producer of new imagists like Christian Schumann (who later returned to the Big Apple). Lo-gressive Living provides an opportunity for you Flashers to catch the latest Northern California funkiness. Unlike their more reserved cousins down South, there is a mad intensity to this drawing show that owes as much to art as to the indie comic scene. Nick Ackerman combines comic book imagery, architecture and nature with intense texts, grouped together in blocks. The cumulative effect unsettles, while Chris Johanson's more slack, South Park style allows us to exert our smile reflex. Meanwhile, Jo Jackson, Keegan McHargue and Christopher Garrett operate between the two. It is the visual wit of Jackson's panthers with laser beams that charms while Garrett's bearded men work in a more unsettling vein.

NB: Runs till 16/05.

Sunday 6 June (7pm)

@ Scala, 275-277 Pentonville Rd., N1 (020.7833.2022) Tube: King's Cross

Stereotypically, electronic musicians are either bedroom-bound boffins with microprocessors instead of lives, clandestine, steely-eyed technocrats like Kraftwerk or serially unhinged eccentrics like Aphex Twin. Refreshingly, Matmos, mainstays M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel, remain artists for whom any kind of cliche is anathema -- and while they probably do qualify as eccentrics (they haven't toured the globe as part of Bjork's band for nothing), they're way too creative and, frankly, camp, to fall foul of bit-crunched typecasting. From their base the duo forge meticulous, preconception-shattering music that draws on such diverse sound sources as amplified surgery, sampled rabbit pelts and oscillating cat litter. This rare-as-sampled-hen's-teeth UK performance promises to showcase last year's genuinely sublime album The Civil War (Matador) and, like that album, will fuse all manner of state-of-the-art laptopery with medieval instruments and traditional American and British folk music. Rare footage from the American Civil War is also mooted, though whether the boys will be sporting the fetching doublet and hose outfits they favoured for last year's publicity shots remains to be seen. All manner of similarly off-kilter sonic explorers are lined up in support (including Daniel's unexpectedly melodic Matmos offshoot Soft Pink Truth) and, all-in-all, this promises to be an evening pitched equidistantly between crazed '60s "happening", beardy folkloric symposium and a science department's end-of-term hoedown: unmissable, in other words.

NB: Additional support from Leafcutter John, Yaxu Paxo and The Wire (magazine) Sound System.

Giveaway: We have two copies of The Civil War and a pair of tickets to give away. They'll go to three randomly picked Flashers who can tell us where Matmos performed their world premiere of Civil War (hint: it was last october).

Ends Saturday 31 July (7pm)

@ The Old Vic, The Cut, Waterloo, SE1 (020.7928.7616) Tube: Waterloo

Trevor Nunn's Hamlet, recently opened at the Old Vic (itself under the new directorship of Kevin Spacey), is an arresting, compelling piece of theatre. The reigns of the production are handed to two recent drama graduates -- willowy naif Ben Whishaw as the troubled prince and doe-eyed Samantha Whittaker as a girly, and then later hysterical, Ophelia -- and the production benefits greatly from accentuating the generation gap between the morally bankrupt elders and their pure-of-heart offspring. A punked-up Whishaw wrestles admirably with Hamlet's antic disposition, railing against the "rank corruption which grows to seed" and rousing himself to avenge his father's murder in an Elsinore characterised by impenetrable stone walls and pandering courtiers. While Nunn is relatively true to Shakespeare's text, his direction of the characters is imaginative and frequently entertaining: a glamorous Gertrude (Imogen Stubbs in Jennifer Aniston mode) revels in the discovery of middle-aged sex, a hot-headed Laertes sports fatigues and an AK47, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are back-pack-toting Oxbridge types recalled from a gap year to sort out the prince.

NB: Runs till 31/07.

Ends Saturday 7 August (Daily 7:45pm (except Sun); Mat Wed 3pm; Sat 5pm and 8pm)

@ Apollo Theatre, 29 Shaftesbury Avenue, W1V (020.7494.5399) Tube: Piccadilly Circus

Ever felt ostracised by your love for someone? Misunderstood and disapproved of by your family, friends -- even society at large? Been so blinded by desire that you'd be prepared to give up everything to give in to your obsession? Well, maybe some crazy, romantic Flashers have, but even if you haven't you'll have read Romeo and Juliet at school, or at least watched some episodes of Eastenders. Edward Albee -- still most famous for 1962's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf -- takes this classic literary theme to new extremes in his Tony Award-winning play, The Goat or Who is Sylvia?, transferred from Broadway via London's Almeida. Tragic hero Martin's object of desire -- for which he would abandon his up-till-now perfect marriage, son, best friend and illustrious architectural career -- is the Sylvia of the play's title, the goat. An absurd situation this might at first appear, but in a Western society in which -- to paraphrase Martin -- people can get off on anything, it's also deadly serious. Here, Albee uses Sylvia as a scapegoat for the dark underbelly of liberal America, while uncomfortably pointing to the inescapable, irresolvable selfishness, self-destruction and violence at the heart of human relationships. Prepare to squirm.

NB: Runs till 07/08.