Wednesday 23 June (Daily 10am - 6pm, Fri & Sat until 10pm)

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

Luc Tuymans (bn. 1958) is what you'd call an intellectual painter. Not a conceptual one, like say early David Salle where painting is at the service of an idea, Tuymans' works are "thoughtful" objects. The Belgium artist is renowned for creating shows that are targeted to the specific city-country in which the paintings are destined; for instance a show in the Belgium pavilion at Venice (2001) dealt with their colonial legacy in the Congo, while a White Cube exhibition produced tailor-made "English" themes. But let not "the subject matter" distract you from the laissez-faire ease with which he handles paint, nor the shimmering imagery constructed out of that deft painterly touch, all of which point to the fine instruction from Raoul De Keyser (one of his teachers). Originally intending to be a filmmaker, it is our luck that he fell for the poetry of paint and is becoming one of the finer "history painters" of our times. Finally, a warning: don't let the chocolate box seduction of the paint distract you from the underlying melancholia or bite of his themes...Tuymans offers a complicated package in terms of painting. (Runs till 26/09.)

NB: the artist will be speaking about his work on Mon 05/07 (7pm), and on Fri 02/07 (6:30pm) catch Emma Dexter's (Senior Curator at Tate Modern) tour of the exhibition.

Thursday 24 June (Thu 24/06, Sun 27/06 and Tue 29/06 at 6pm)

@ Prince Charles Cinema, 7 Leicester Place, WC2 (090.1272.7007) Tube: Leicester Sq.

Getting older? Find that you can only manage a few seconds hovering in front of an awkwardly placed TV monitor, hoping someone might turn up the volume, before guilty shuffling off round the gallery to look at the easy art? Now Artprojx has come to the rescue, offering more conventional Flashers comfy seating and a quiet viewing space (no shrieking receptionists on the phone here to interrupt you) to watch artists' films. OK, so it might not be subverting the way film is presented, etc., but at least there's popcorn. Artprojx's next three events (in conjuction with Art Fortnight London) are, however, particularly noteworthy, as they feature international artists more usually found on the biennale circuits than London. Groovy French foursome Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Pierre Huyghe, Charles de Meaux and Philippe Parreno have teamed up to found Anna Sanders Films and, following a couple of awards at Cannes and their recent book, you can catch a selection of "Anna's" productions on Thu 24/06 (curated by Mathieu Copeland). Rising star Christian Jankowski, who displays a cheekiness to rival Maurizio Cattelan, is the subject of Sun 27/06's screening. He was last seen in the Serpentine's State of Play exhibition, where he filmed a "live" panel discussion on puppets and entertainment (memorably featuring the Muppet Show's own Fozzie Bear)! Finally, on Tue 29/06, 11 specially commissioned (by New Museum in New York) DVDs by arbitrary representatives of the video art elite -- including Douglas Gordon, Gary Hill and Paul McCarthy -- will be shown prior to a chit-chat between Goldsmiths curatorial programme director Andrew Renton and original uber-curator Hans Ulrich Obrist.

NB: the Artprojx Cinema Series runs on Thu 24/06, Sun 27/06 and Tue 29/06. To purchase tickets call the Prince Charles Cinema box office (020.7494.3654) and quote KultureFlash.

Giveaway: we have three copies of The In-Between: Anna Sanders Films (Forma/les presses du reel) to give away. They'll go to three randomly picked Flashers who can tell us the name of the NYC venue where Pierre Huyghe recently had a show.

Thursday 24 June (8pm - 12am)

@ Arts Cafe, 28 Commercial St., E1 (020.7247.5681) Tube: Aldgate East

The Arts Cafe is (finally) hosting a night of electronica and sonic experimentation featuring London-based artists from the improv/experimental and independent electronic scene. Presented by Dead Or Alive and the active non-profit cultural organisation 8i8, the sound of Salt reflects the diverse musical backgrounds of the trio comprising Sussex-born Emma Stow on vocals and guitar, Australian Melissa Agate (aka sAnso-xtro) on drums, the Norwegian Dr. Ohm on bass and, on this occasion -- as in May's Resonance FM party -- they are joined by another "Aussie", keyboardist Emma Field. If the band states that such "combination of forces results in something restrained and abandoned", it surely emanates the subtle jazz-driven alterations brought forward by the beautiful "curvacious" voice of Stow and the uncategorisable drumming style of Melissa, while Dr. Ohm imbues his metal background onto the girls' jam. The evening also includes Paul Hood's experimental turntablism in which he will showcase his past sets (TwoThousandAnd showcase, the last Slow Sound System and the Resonance FM birthday party). Finally -- and in no running order -- Key (aka LMC-member Martyn Singleton) will be fusing his treated vocals with some melodic laptop textures, leading to a gothic atmosphere. Finishing the line-up is composer Coryate who will presents his new piece, The Reeds.

Thursday 24 June (7pm)

@ London Review Bookshop, 14 Bury Place, WC1 (020.7269.9030) Tube: Holborn

Don Paterson elicits kind words and coronets of praise with every pithy couplet. He's the bastard offspring of Eliot's emotive elan and the froth of McGough. His acolytes tend to get tied up in "worthy'isms" and redundant resumes when they try to justify why this deeply enjoyable poet is quite so, well, good. In truth, despite the trophies piling up on his Kirriemuir mantelpiece up in the Angus Glens, the best testament to his excellence is the words themselves. Indeed Paterson still holds down a day job as a journalist and plays guitar with the ensemble Lammas; his poetry seems, practically, a hobby. A late convert to poetry, Paterson has recently been lauded for Landing Light, his latest award-winning collection, and this LRB event is a great opportunity to hear the man getting to grips with his lyrics. Admittedly poets are often the worst narrators -- take Eliot for example, dead lilacs had more character -- but thanks to the British Council you can now listen before you go. What a weird world the web brings us to. It is still not a patch on the man himself though.

NB: to purchase tickets call 020.7269.9030 or email events@lrbshop.co.uk.

Friday 25 June (6:30 - 10pm)

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

The V&A is proving to be a top London venue, with its Victorian splendour, Pirelli Garden and strong curatorial base. Where better to celebrate Architecture Week with a round up of highlights. Lucy Orta, the artist who builds structures around fashion and seems to address homelessness with a twist, will install a gallery piece, while the digital artist Jason Bruges creates a work in which clouds drift across the museum interior in sync with party-goers' movements. If you're seeking a quiet moment amongst the buzz, the Portuguese modernist architect Alvaro Siza will be in conversation with Philip Jodidio, architecture editor at Taschen. So go along to celebrate the architectural fever that seems to have gripped London.

NB: Sense In The City III is part of Architecture Week 2004 (runs till 28/06).

Friday 25 June (10pm - 2am)

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

Dance music is dead. Forget what you heard: it's over, people. This town is becoming like a ghost town. All the clubs have been closed down. All that remains from the halcyon days of the summer of love is SchoolDisco.com and a thriving compilations market peddling nostalgia to serotonin-deficient early 30-year-olds -- Ministry of Sound annuals for the hairdressers, and Hed Kandi for everyone else. "Back in the day", the Glimmer Twins -- the artists formally known as Mo and Benoelie -- made a comfortable living DJing at the Culture Club in their native Ghent. After the Strokes ruined it for everyone with their all-conquering, revisionist racket, M and B turned their hand to compilations -- turning out mix CDs that were delightful and maddeningly obscure in equal measure. An exquisite blend of electro, funk-rock, house and techno, their comps on the Eskimo label confirmed their reputation internationally. This Friday, raise two fingers to the house music obituary writers and join them in partying like it's 1989.

NB: for those house Flashers out there, catch Ian Pooley at Neighbourhood on Sun 27/06.

Saturday 26 June (11am)

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

While making Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola and his all-Italian crew had to have canned tomatoes and pasta flown in to keep morale high, not mentioning the rumours of real corpses during the battle scenes... and it still took him an eternity to make. For most crews that would have been just going one film reel too far, but this is Coppola after all. Now Chris Cooke, who like Coppola is an on-set improviser (though probably not like the big F), is hosting a discussion with his production crew about just that kind of improvisation and making movies. For some of you, this will be just a tasty prelude to the preview of Cooke's new black comedy, and first feature, about drinking and business, One For The Road (Tartan Films). Opening in an alcohol management class, it should be downhill from there... expect lots of smoky Nottingham pub scenes from this very indie, very small, almost TV film, that received a lot of hype last year at Edinburgh.

Saturday 26 June (Sat 26/06 and Sun 27/06 from 12pm to late)

@ Electric Avenue Studios and Ritzy Cinema

The reality of being an (especially London) urban product creates all sorts of needs. When geared with technology and a social sensibility, public space becomes an arena where the desire to intervene, hack and participate can produce artistic initiatives of a unique character. Such will be the output of Electric Weekend, curated by Lina Dzuverovic-Russell and guests, which celebrates the launch of b3 media's Electric Avenue Studios in Brixton through various events and a film programme at the Ritzy Cinema. On Sat 26/06 and Sun 27/06, groups and individuals will join in conversations, workshops, DIY interventions, tactical media initiatives, participatory artworks, social hacking and noise videos. The common aim is to map, connect and support the inventiveness of diverse media arts across London and outside. Participatory events will include Emma Hedditch's Video Home, Come On, Harrell Fletcher + Miranda July's Learning To Love You More and Sarai's Media Lab's Cybermohalla. Other highlights will be talks and presentations by the net-art collective low-fi, the artist and Media Arts Officer at Arts Council England Rachel Baker, and The People Speak duo, Saul Albert and Mikey Weinkove. Screenings include Everyone's Party, an eclectic film programme bringing together street actions, music clips, animation and collaborative video initiatives (featuring, among others, Chicks on Speed, The Space Hijackers and Kevin Blechdom); Cuba Libre, a new programme of Havana-based video artists; and Strange Frut, featuring psychedelic rock aesthetics from MC5 to Lightning Bolt, introduced by Edwin Pouncey (aka Savage Pencil). Make sure you check out the website first as some of the participatory events require you to be prepared...

NB: Electric Weekend runs for two days, Sat 26/06 and Sun 27/06 at Electric Avenue Studios and the Ritzy Cinema.

Saturday 26 June (7:30 - 9pm)

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

Paul Klee was an innovative and prolific 20th-century artist. This Swiss painter created highly coloured graphic works through a process of lyrical improvisation: he imagined the artist as the trunk of a tree, who acted as a channel that transforms nature's ideas and forms into flowering creations. The work of art follows its own evolution, subconsciously guided by the artist: "The creative impulse suddenly springs to life, like a flame, passes through the hand onto the canvas (until) it returns to the source: the eye and the mind," said Klee. He described his hieroglyphic drawing style as "an active line on a walk, moving freely without a goal". The artist was closely involved with the Expressionist group, Der Blaue Reiter, along with Vasily Kandinsky, and taught at the revolutionary Bauhaus school, which encouraged close artistic integration. In this lecture, the celebrated composer Sir Harrison Birtwistle explores how Klee's theoretical writings have inspired his own music. Accompanied by musicians from the London Sinfonietta, Birtwistle will focus on how the basic elements of musical composition mirror Klee's concepts of line, counterpoint and polyphony. The composer will explore the correlation between visual art and music that underpinned Klee's philosophy. This lecture offers a rare window through which to glimpse artistic genius.

Saturday 26 June (Sat 26/06 at 7:30pm; Sun 27/06 at 3:30pm and 7:30pm)

@ Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gore, SW7 (020.7589.8212) Tube: South Kensington

Those of you familiar with each summer's Proms or 1996's Brassed Off will know the Royal Albert Hall well. Built in memory of Queen Victoria's husband by Henry Cole with designs from Captain Francis Fowke, it has for the last eight years been under restoration. Now brought back to its former glory, the gem in its heart, a Father Willis pipe organ, was the second largest in the country, but with additional pipes installed to bring the total to 9,999, it has become the biggest pipe organ. Not quite the three tenors, Albert Hall is welcoming three renowned organists, David Briggs, John Scott and Thomas Trotter, to kick off the summer and give this rather large and expressive instrument its sense of purpose.

NB: to celebrate the restoration of its organ the Royal Albert Hall have planned three concerts: the Inaugural Organ Concert on Sat 26/06 (7:30pm), Pipe Up! on Sun 27/07 (3:30pm) and a special Gala Recital on Sun 27/07 (7:30pm).

Sunday 27 June (2pm)

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

One positive aspect to film remakes are that they provide an excuse to revel in the original version. The Coen brothers' remake of Alexander Mackendrick's 1955 classic Ealing comedy The Ladykillers is no exception. The Curzon Soho is using the remake as a catalyst to celebrate the often forgotten great British director. Despite Mackendrick's many acclaimed films, his career seems to have a hint of the tragic about it. His next film, 1957's brilliant The Sweet Smell of Success, was, at the time, an unfairly critical and commercial flop. His career never quite recovered, culminating in Mackendrick's plans for a biopic of Mary, Queen of Scots never getting beyond the storyboard due to his American studio losing faith in him. Mackendrick went on to accept a position at CalArts. Hilary Mackendrick (his wife) and Paul Cronin will be on hand to discuss the director's teaching on film craft and cinematic techniques. A day devoted to a perhaps neglected master of filmmaking.

NB: the screening is being held in conjunction with the release of Paul Cronin's On Film-making (Faber & Faber). The Curzon Soho also hosts a special exhibition of rare storyboards and illustrations, including some from the unmade film Mary, Queen of Scots (27/06).

Sunday 27 June (7pm)

@ LSO St. Luke's, 161 Old St., EC1 (020.7638.8891) Tube: Old St.

The familiar high-pitched squeal of your gran's hearing aid is for many the ugliest demonstration of feedback, but for the last 40 years artists have worked with visual and audio feedback to create some extraordinary work. Nam June Paik played with video feedback in the early '60s, as Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles tore through speaker systems, overloading the circuits in their own deliberately creative anarchic manner. Still a provocative medium and the source of the decimating noise scene currently in the US, with Wolf Eyes, Lightning Bolt and Orthrelm here in London we have the chance to explore another approach to feedback in Feedback: order from noise with some of the world's foremost electronic music innovators. In his first ever UK tour, legendary figure Alvin Lucier (cover star of The Wire magazine) shares the stage with inventive Japanese turntablist Otomo Yoshihide and the mischievous wit of Nicholas Collins, among many others. The roll call of instrumentation alone is worth the price of entry -- how often can one have said to have been to a performance utilising a feedback matrixer, hearing aids, binaural microphones, birdcall and no-input mixing board. Leave your earplugs at home and bring along your passport for an intriguing journey into the outer reaches of sound.

Monday 28 June (6:45 - 8pm)

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

Grand French architect Dominique Perrault will be making a rare London appearance to cast light on his decade of work since the Bibliotheque nationale de France. Perrault's buildings fit no definable style; he's one of a small group of global architects who have charted a course through the last two decades leaving behind the potential dead end of high-tech, and neatly sidestepping the abyss of post-modernism, to create a series of entirely original buildings. The Bibliotheque is the grand projet that really made his name -- a library which enigmatically solves a problem it creates: stacking the books in four huge glass towers, then using automated shutters to keep out the sun. In a sense this has become a theme for much of his work since: the tension between internal function and external skin (hence, we guess, the lecture's title: Would You Like it Wrapped). A series of remarkable projects, including the Berlin Olympic Velodrome and Swimming pool, the APLIX Factory (appearing to be wrapped in foil), and two vertiginous hotel towers in Barcelona, has culminated in the spectacular Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, where a geometric envelope stands independently from the layered internal form.

NB: for the first time, the RA will display work by the Annual Architecture Lecture, and an exhibition of Dominique Perrault's recent projects will be view until 30/06. This event is part of Architecture Week 2004 (runs till 28/06). To book tickets call 020.7300.5839.

Monday 28 June (7pm)

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

Say what you like about Chicago's instrumental futurists Tortoise, they don't know when to quit. Briefly (around the time of 1996's benchmark Millions Now Living Will Never Die opus) the most readily droppable name in electronic/leftfield circles, they seemed subsequently to have been painted into a post rock corner just as the zeitgeist was being defined by more frivolous musical genres. Happily, this spring's return-to-form album It's All Around You (Thrill Jockey), finds the sometimes ascetic quintet in relatively playful mood, dispensing lavish grooves interspersed with trademark Steve Reich-like vibraphones cascades, Morricone guitar twangs and soaring, hymnal keyboards. Tonight's show has been moved from the Astoria to the more convivial -- but smaller -- Mean Fiddler, presumably due to waning ticket demand; so perhaps the full Tortoise renaissance is still some way off. Good time to catch them up close and personal. Insert your own joke about "shelling out" for tickets here.

Monday 28 June (8:15pm)

@ NFT, South Bank, SE1 (020.7928.3232) Tube: Embankment/Waterloo

As a source of inspiration for writers and musicians, the American Deep South has proved to be as richly fertile as the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta. The land of Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Harper Lee, Leadbelly, Hank Williams and Elvis is familiar to all of us because these artists and others have created such a vivid impression of the place in our imaginations. As a result, even if we've never been there, we feel as if we have. The mythic Deep South is a recurrent theme in alt-country musician Jim White's songs, and in the new documentary Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, he takes us on a journey through the region as it is today, visiting churches, prisons, diners, coal mines and biker bars, encountering a host of colourful characters, including novelist Harry Crews and musicians such as The Handsome Family, Johnny Dowd and David Johansen.

NB: this screening will be introduced by Jim White himself, who'll also be performing a number of songs for the audience.

Wednesday 30 June (6:30 - 8:30pm)

@ Camden Arts Centre, Arkwright Rd., NW3 (020.7472.5500) Tube: Finchley Rd.

Few artists can really say that the US Mail service acted as their dealer. Those of you who've thumbed through American Pop Art books may well be familiar with Ray Johnson's early collages (which used images of pop stars and celebs) of the '80s. Having been a student with Rauschenberg and Twombly, his anarchic-Taoist streak led him to "invent" mail art as a way to edge out the market. Founder of the cult "New York Correspondence School", Johnson (1927-95) slowly withdrew from the commercial artworld and continued to create his own audience via his correspondents. Work was sent to a recipient who was then asked to add to the work before sending it back. A fecund "draw-er" and collagist, Johnson's art continued to proliferate via the mail service before his suicide. This prize-winning documentary, How to Draw a Bunny, is a film about the strange but generous life (and death) of Ray Johnson told through his many friends. No doubt it will also provide insight into the New York artworld as well.

NB: the screening will be followed by a discussion between art historian Clive Phillpot and dealer Angela Flowers, who both knew Johnson. An exhibition by the same name of late collages is also on view at the Gimpel Fils gallery (runs till 10/07). This event is free but you need to call 020.7472.5500 to reserve a place.

Thursday 1 July (7pm)

@ Goethe Institut, 50 Princes Gate Exhibition Rd., SW7 (020.7596.4000) Tube: South Kensington

The deft art of Gabriel Orozco (bn. 1962) is fluid, effortlessly moving between artistic media and boundaries, including drawing, photography, sculpture and spatial interventions. In his work, Orozco characteristically seizes upon everyday materials and situations, playfully and yet rigorously transforming them into works of enduring poetic form. Orozco is a descendant of the '60s and '70s Arte Povera and conceptual practices, with their emphasis upon process and ideas. However, Orozco has fused the insights and methods of earlier generations with his own unique vision to become one of the more important artists of the '90s generation, influencing a rising group of artists in his own country, Mexico (Damian Ortega, Gabriel Kuri...) and beyond. Forever moving between cities and cultures, Orozco's work is preoccupied with movement, as reflected in his obsessive drawing and photographing of circles and early vehicle sculptures such as the seminal La DS (1993), a bifurcation of the Citroen DS car. Yet Orozco's artistic practice opens onto a much wider range of investigations, including the relationship between the body and space, culture and nature, micro and macro.

NB: this talk with Benjamin H. D. Buchloh (Professor of 20th Century and Contemporary Art at Barnard College, Columbia University) is being held in conjunction with Gabriel Orozco's solo show at the Serpentine from 01/07 till 30/08. Orozco is also currently exhibiting at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC till 06/09. The event will sell out so book your tickets ASAP via Ticketweb (08700.600.100) or the Serpentine (020. 7402.6075).

Ends Thursday 15 July

@ Various cinemas across London

Think of a guy, the unluckiest guy in Vegas. He works in a casino as a cooler, cooling off winners with his contagious bad luck. But he falls in love and is loved in return and, suddenly, his luck changes in a world where gritty reality is played against dark Vegas mythology... This is the basic premise of the film. It is not a great film -- this is smale-scale moviemaking about small-scale lives -- but it certainly manages to strike the right emotional chords. The Cooler is something of a film noir, delivering a very effective mix of humour, melodrama and pathos that will certainly keep you engaged. This is very much a character piece in which the three star actors, William H. Macy, Maria Bello and Alec Baldlwin, all give excellent performances. A directorial debut for Wayne Kramer, who will definitely be one to watch in the future...

Ends Sunday 18 July (Fri to Sun 12pm - 6pm)

@ One in the Other, 4 Dingley Place, EC1 (020.7253.7882) Tube: Old St.

Kirsten Glass is "kool". Actually she makes work that touches on the cool. With bitumen-like grounds and long-haired models standing slinky, painted in an illustrational style, the one large painting, Take Me Out, stands like a giant magazine advert or cinema hoarding. All this is viewed to the accompaniment of Dusty Springfield's "The Windmills of Your Mind", which plays from a bricolage sitting on the floor. Parts of a mannequin are entwined on two turned-over plynths while a disco-ball rotates near the ground. Meanwhile on another wall hangs a collage-relief, full of dangly plastic ribbons and more girly collage. Formally Glass could be the lovechild of Robert Rauschenberg and a fashion magazine, but her work speaks more of the current culture of sampling and fleeting cinematic events, than Rauchenberg's '60s journalistic takes. Could it be that she's the newest artist of chic or in dialogue with our notions of fashion magazine femininity? To return to that poet of modernism, Baudelaire, one part of modern life is just fleeting after all... And, if you're really lucky, the gallery cat, Mittens, will make a purrrr-y appearance. (Runs till 18/07.)

NB: while east, catch Alice Neel at Victoria Miro (till 31/07), Sarah Morris at White Cube (till 10/07) and Claire Harvey at Store Gallery (till 03/07).

Ends Saturday 31 July (Tue to Sat 10am - 6pm)

@ Gagosian, 8 Heddon St., W1 (020.7292.8222) Tube: Piccadilly Circus

The invention of photography changed our world view and our sense of "reality". Before that, oil, graphite and prints were how we documented the world. Now that paper, light and chemicals have become the more precise instrument for "capturing" reality, photography seems more "truthful". And it is this notion of "truth" that is posed by Taryn Simon's photographs. Simon's assignment at The New York Times Magazine to photograph wrongly convicted, Death Row prisoners inspired her to explore the relation between photography, eye-witness accounts and how some have been wrongly convicted within the American justice system. Here, the "victims" or The Innocents -- as both show and book are titled -- are photographed at either the scene of the crime, place of arrest or alibi. It is, in her terms, the point at which their lives were changed forever. Most poignant is the image of a house without an "innocent", for he had died after his release. What startles is the hard stare of these maligned men, and how Simon is able to turn journalistic portraiture into a powerful political statement.

NB: runs till 31/07. The Innocents runs concurrently at Gagosian in LA (till 24/09).

Giveaway: we have two copies of The Innocents (the book) to give away. They'll go to two randomly picked Flashers who can tell us how many states in America do not have the death penalty.