The Worlds of Nam June Paik

Korean-born Nam June Paik was working with video and inviting his audiences to consider the fate of the image in the world of real-time long before it was fashionable, and the Guggenheim’s retrospective reflects an artist ahead of his time. Back in 1963, the former music student who’d collaborated with John Cage blipped into the international art scene in Germany with his first solo show ‘Exposition of Music – Electronic Television’. It featured TV sets scattered about a room, broadcasting altered programming and, many argue, it opened the way for the video art so ubiquitous today. But this is no simple retrospective: Paik has created dramatic laser installations – and a complete waterfall – that engage Frank Lloyd Wright’s landmark building in a lively conversation.

Yiddish? Yiddish!

This series of five exhibitions is scattered rather haphazardly throughout the Jewish Museum’s permanent collection – annoying at first, until you realise that the two elements complement each other perfectly, encouraging a freestyle visit that is intense, highly reflective, lighthearted and solemn. The displays of posters, postcards, Klezmer music, a marionnette theatre and a young Kracow artist’s beautiful hand-painted film resurrected from the 1930s celebrate a culture and language which, for many centuries, were those of the majority of Europe’s Jews. The concurrent programme of lectures, concerts, films and debates highlights the Yiddish revival which has taken off since the 1970s.

Fashion of the Century

A look back at European fashion in the 20th-century by one of Lisbon’s less well-known but most stunningly sited institutions, the National Costume Museum. This exhibition takes us from turn-of-the-century collections inspired by the Napoleonic era to the kind of costumes worn by Portuguese fado diva Amália Rodrigues and Madonna. It concludes with a review of fashion in 2000, with creations from designers of various nationalities living in Lisbon today, including the successful avant-garde Croat designer Lidia Kolvrat.

Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival

It’s now the biggest annual event in Sydney apart from the New Year’s Eve fireworks and includes so many performances, music events and parties that it’s impossible to see them all. A good place to start is the free Festival launch (Feb 11, 8.15pm) on the Sydney Opera House forecourt, which offers a grab bag of teasers of things to come, plus music, refreshments and a dance party to finish. The Parade (Mar 4, 8pm) is the highlight, of course – a time when gay politics and sheer fun collide.

Festa Major de Gràcia

The annual summer ‘festa major’ in Gràcia’s is one of the biggest street parties in Barcelona, with numerous live bands playing on different squares and streets and masses of people making merry. Held every August since the 1820s, the festival seems to get bigger and better each year. Different streets compete with each other to design the most outrageous decoration and the results can range from tropical islands to satirical takes on popular events. Food and drink, as well as music, are abundantly available on each street and on the last night of the festival fireworks are set off.

Corneille

As a founder of COBRA, the late-1940s movement involving artists based in Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam, Liège-born Corneille (real name: Guillaume van Beverloo) became identified with bold experimentalism. Featuring 35 of his works in several media, this exhibition shows him using garish colours to engage in a bizarre exploration of the links between sex and nature. Most of the paintings here date from the 1990s, proving that the 77-year-old has a creative vigour that many younger artists would envy.

Bartenders

Love ‘em, hate ‘em, bartenders have played a variety of roles in our lives. They’ve been friend, confidant and psychotherapist. Your local bartender has helped you impress a date and has seen you at your drunken worst. As long as you’re buying, he/she is always there to listen. In his one-man show, Louis Mustillo examines the bar life and the people who work in them.

Opera: The Pearl Fishers

Bizet’s exotic romance is as much a visual experience as an aural one, full of striking images of a ruined eastern temple at sunset, an unknown veiled woman approaching in a canoe and a mysterious assignation on a steep cliff. This new production is conducted by Richard Bonynge – internationally recognised as a master of 19th-century French repertoire – and stars Lisa Russell as the young temple maiden and David Miller and Michael Lewis as the two men in conflict for her love.

Puff Daddy

He’s been arrested on weapons charges, (allegedly) punched Boyzone upstart Shane Lynch and lost friends through gangsta killings. Is there anything tame about Seán ‘Puffy’ Combs? Yes, his music. Puff Daddy is the Val Doonican of hip hop, serving the antithesis of Public Enemy’s urgent and angry beats. This is the man, after all, who made Sting’s ‘Every Breath You Take’ sound more mawkish than the original. There is, however, one good reason to attend this concert: the remote possibility that his drop-dead-gorgeous girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, might be in the audience.

Holy of holies that reportedly houses the arc of the covenant, Axum, Ethiopia