The summer lull is nearly over and we are back to cool. The cultural landscape lay fallow in recent weeks; out of office replies were switched on, phones were switched off and the city was in a state of semi shutdown.

That's all changed now. Like our cover this week, things are moving, the city is more animated and the cultural landscape has become a trippy dreamscape.

Darklight returns to screen Irish and international independent digital films from the Factory. The Kings of Concrete have conquered Grand Canal Dock (with an arranged marriage into to the Tall Ships family) and the city's shakers, makers and doers have peppered this week's issue with an array of diverse events.

We can't wait to get back among the city, hearing stories of holidays well spent and comparing crap tans with other Dubliners. We are looking forward to bleeding new writers, finding new artists to grace our autumn issues and picking up some new readers along the way too.

Who is filling his pencil case with new supplies this week? Ciaran, Michael, Kate Frances or Jerath?

Darklight is a survivor since 1999. Hewn with an independent and DIY ethic, it seems justly apt they are basing and showcasing from their home in The Factory again. Back with a HiFi Vs LoFi >> Game On! theme, intent on mixing and mashing more intriguing fringe strands with core players. Take their opening film Grandma Lo-fi, the story of Sigrídur Níelsdóttir who, at the age of 70, converted her living room into a recording studio and began to produce and release her own music. Indelibly Icelandic. Toss in a masterclass with Seamus McGarvey who just happened to be cinematographer on Avengers Assemble to name but a latest. Then there's Terence Davies (IFI), the vastly underrated screenwriter, film director actor and occasional novelist. Darklight remains as askance as it is relevant. A survivor if you will. / Zach Joyce

The Bambir are not of this world. They are from another dimension, where 13/8 time signatures are the norm, where music isn’t an industry but a religious institution, where beer and cigarettes make up a healthy diet. They are actually from Armenia and sound like The Horslips. They have come not to conquer, but to explore the limits of music and humanity. “An artist’s job is to search,” says guitarist/vocalist Narek. The Bambir’s search pushes the boundaries of musical norms, combining progressive rock with traditional Armenian folk, and steeping the result in the spiritual, the poetic, and the love of a good time. Since adopting Ireland as their home the quartet have played on every available surface, from footpath to festival stage, and will even be invading EP with their undeniable charisma and propensity for mischief. / Jerath Head

I can't swim. It's mostly for the want of not trying. I just can't tread water. I attempted a decade ago in the shallow end of Rathmines pool with some darling 'aul wans. I gave up. Too shallow by far. Fergal McCarthy can swim. In fact water has been the source of much of his artistic inspiration. He's the man responsible for the talk of the globe, Monopoly houses on the Liffey and the living on an island installation as part of the Absolut Fringe over the last two years. This is a short documentary of him traversing the city through our pools, rivers and sea over 18 hours. A poetic Phelps, he jogs between destinations, dives and glides. A gentrified dear watches Fergal scale her wall and stroke her waters. He teaches a kid the backstroke in an empty pool and possibly promises to plunge me into the deep end tonight. / Michael McDermott

What if Ilsa had made away with Rick in the closing moments of Casablanca? What if they could have had more than just Paris? What if Audrey Hepburn's Sabrina hadn't boarded that boat to France, or Holly Golightly had married the Brazilianaire? If Doris Day had never shared a phone line with Rock Hudson, or if Hitchcock had decided to mow Cary Grant down with that low flying aircraft in North by Northwest? Hollywood has always been about the ending and the final smooch, whether it's Grace Kelly and Cary Grant on crutches, or Maryln Monroe proving that gentlemen really do prefer blondes. Feast your eyes on some alternative endings here, where movie edits re-imagine characters and situations we think we know inside out, while also confronting intellectual property issues. / Kate Frances

Blind Tiger ain't lying about being 'more than a shop'. Hell, they're more like magicians, with an eclectic timetable of events that'll ensure you spend more time inside the Little Green Street Gallery than you had ever envisaged. If a few loose cannons decide to camp, it'll definitely turn into a queue to rival the hoards outside D.I.D electrical on Boxing Day, ready to do battle over half-price plasma TVs. Events that'll have you arty-types drooling include a Stop-Motion workshop with filmmaker Albert Hooi, a stencil art workshop with street artist ADW, and a Ladies Day so ballsy it'll render Paddy Power speechless, a girly get-together of cocktails and adult cupcakes. Stylin, but not stupid. If you can't make the workshops, at least hit up the launch. They'll definitely start as they mean to go on. / Kate Frances

DCC usually conducts these open air performances on the sloping grass behind the Civic Offices, however, Grand Canal Dock is employed tonight to help launch the Tall Ships festival. The Opera's controversy doesn't stem from the fact that the title loosely translates mockingly as 'All Women are Like That', rather it's due to the snobbish misunderstanding of why Mozart would ever have written such sweet melodies to go with the base language within the lyrics written by Lorenzo da Ponte. The story is of two husbands who fake being called to war, leaving their wives and returning disguised (as Albanians) to saucily test their fidelity. Leeeewwd. But the Viennese of the time were not offended, nor should we be. / Georgia

Swimming in clothing is sew two thousand and late, like. D'posh folk of Dawkey know what I'm talking about. A peek down Hawk Cliff along Vico Road rewards with the giddy treat of seeing bare bahooks (snicker) and wrinkly willies (teehee). But why should they get all the fun just because they're Bono and Enya? Far less mainstream than that sell-out Forty Foot, but entirely void of glistening nubile bronzed Mediterranean slutnymphs, despite being on hotels.com top ten best nudist beach. One would think the perky tittay count should have been an important factor on anyone's version of that list, BUT at least this will ensure the freckly ginger cailín you bring there on a first date is the centre of fleshy attention. And all for the price of a €2.50 Dart journey + a Mr. Whippy 99 from the van for afters. Barg. / Karl Watson

A giant, mounted, slightly unnerving bison head surveys all who enter this whiskey bar. It’s the first piece you’ll notice in a venue that is packed with remarkable décor. Approaching the bar you encounter saddle-stools. Saloon doors separate the front room from the back, and the smoking area features an epic bison mural by le cool cover artist James Early. For the uninitiated faced with 150 varieties of fermented grain, try to ignore the initial urge to purchase a pint and trust in the sound advice of the charming bar staff. Spending around €9 on a peat-filtered Irish whiskey will shatter your perception of what Jack Daniels ruined slightly. Otherwise, €5 whiskey sours on a Friday night will see you charging upstairs to The Workman’s with a barely deserved sense of refinement. / Oscar Knight

It’s Co. Leitrim, New Year’s Day, 1934. Jazz is running rampant in the Irish Free State. People feel liberated in their ability to boogie unimpeded in unlicensed dance halls. Fr. Peter Conifrey, determined to remove the taint of this abominable music, sparks an anti-jazz campaign with the rally cry “down with jazz!” Nearly 80 years later, opinion amongst the artistic community on the historic movement is clear: fuck that. The Down With Jazz music festival is a satirical commemoration of an ultra-conservative past that is gradually giving way to a contemporary Ireland. It will occupy Meeting House Square from Friday to Sunday, and with the likes of OKO, Freefall, and Umbra on the bill, the Virgin Mary may indeed blush. To paraphrase Fr. Conifrey, jazz is an engine of hell deployed to do the devil’s work. Now, let us all oblige. Win Tickets / Oscar Knight

When I listen to Orquesta, I can’t help but smile. There is a sublime lightness of touch to his arrangements that transports you to your special place while tickling your ears with sprightly beats. In characteristic innovative style, the Dublin-based producer plans to completely alter the instrumentation and arrangement of each of his live performances, meaning they will be totally unique and infrequent experiences. Tonight is primed to be a more rhythmically fuelled version, infusing past tracks with a new vigour and filling your special place with scantily clad dancers. Word also has it that Katie Kim and Kathie Burke will be lending vocal assistance to Orquesta and his band on this voyage into unexplored territory. Win Tickets / Jerath Head

In my mind, Prohibition conjures up images of little gangster children shooting each other with custard guns, while Jodie Foster croons 'My name is Tallulah' and Fat Sam gets really, really angry. This night, at Dublin's newest drinking spot, is a bit more grown up than that. Think Scott Baio circa Diagnosis Murder, rather than Scott Baio circa Bugsy Malone on this one. The night promises tantalising entertainment, with Azaria Starfire dancing like the cops are about to shut the place down, and perhaps playing with fire (in a literal sense) and Truly DiVine busting out the Great American songbook and bringing you with her, to a time when you really did drink Champagne from a shoe. Get in your peddled-powered car, knock on the door and ask for Fat Sam. / Kate Frances

Kilmainham is its own little hub of awesomeness, far away from the commercial highs of Grafton and Henry Street, and the ode to new things that is the Jervis Centre. Kilmainham boasts some of the greatest architecture in the city, with the breath-taking IMMA building, or the Panopticon Kilmainham Gaol. They're filling this inspiring space with things to do for all the family. Father Ted old-timer Joe Rooney and Colm O'Regan will be presenting some Inn Jokes, while Azaria Starfire (her, again) will be teaching saucy ladies some swanky burlesque moves. If you're looking for something calming there will be Tai Chi in the lush green surroundings of IMMA and, if you're feeling ninja-fabulous, a sword fighting workshop. / Cora Burke

The Ration Book Revival invites you to celebrate our Eurocrisis austerity in retro style. Dust off your dancing shoes and be transported back to the 30s and 40s amidst the gramophone greats of the age. Enjoy delectable home-made treats on vintage cake stands washed down with tea and a twist from the bar! Swoon and spoon to the delicious songstress and retro sweetheart, Ms Truly Divine (her, again) accompanied by the IndulGENT Mr. Tom Harte. Be sure to wear you vintage best as there’s a prize for the Best Dressed Gent courtesy of the Waldorf Barbershop and Best Dressed Dame will get Golly Gosh Boutique vouchers. Plus Ration Book goodie bags to the first ten people through the door! This piece should be read in a British Pathé newsreel accent. Tally-ho! / Elish Bul-Godly

How do you do? Are you a make and do or a things to do person? If you have no idea what that’s all about then the names Mary Fitzgerald or Valerie Singleton probably mean very little to you also. These crafty folk were the stars of RTE and BBC's early 'maker' programming in How Do You Do? and Blue Peter. How else would we have learned how to make Christmas decorations out of loo rolls or space stations out of cereal boxes? Maker subculture has come a long way since then and the good people at the Science Gallery have taken their current Hack The City exhibition and series of events a step further with a pop-up shop dedicated to the craft of the maker. An incredible series of all-ages DNA-related, robotics, soldering and clockifying events are planned over the weekend so make haste and pop along. / Simon Judge

If war broke out tomorrow, what would you do? Would you hide under your bed, or grab the rifle from the shed and march out to meet your destiny? Shadow Dancer avoids many of the clichés of the usual Troubles movie by virtue of being set in the early nineties... Oh look! There's John Major on the cinema screen, providing context for this movie. Andrea Riseborough nails her role, being vulnerable, yet powerful. She knows her priorities, but she can't prioritise. She is convincing as a walking paradox, doing bad things, yet not coming across as a bad person. What really stands out about the film though is the exploration of hierarchy in the IRA. The most influential characters never get their hands too dirty. They use weaker people to carry out high risk tasks, then feign to celebrate their deaths as heroes. / Kate Frances

Possibly no movement form can compare to Butoh in strangeness. Its definition is evasive, the word itself coming from another Japanese term Ankoku-Buyou (dance of darkness). It is most known for performers in white body makeup moving in a slow hyper-controlled way. It appeared in Japan after World War II, exploring taboo topics and is described as a state of mind or feeling rather than a style of dance. Confused yet? Once, while doing a workshop, I performed one of its exercises, the transmutation of human body into animal form, and it is an experience I won’t forget. Butoh Festival Dublin brings some great artists including Japanese choreographer Ken Mai, who will teach workshops (for the brave). It also has a variety of performances, talks and films for the appreciators and the curious. Come with open eyes and mind…/ Nadia Gativa

Originally founded to release guitar sensations Rodrigo y Gabriela’s debut album, Rubyworks now boasts an impressive roster of artists including the four who feature at this gig – Deep Valley, Fight Like Apes, The Minutes and Funeral Suits. Deep Valley may be headlining but I'm looking forward to Fight Like Apes who I have never seen give anything other than an amazing performance (they’re also all really nice guys which always helps). The Minutes also have an outstanding live reputation and are sure to bring the house down. This gig is a great reminder of how much talent there is in this little country of ours and a great way to support Irish talent. It will also be great fun. Do you really need a better excuse to go! / Frances Winston

Seventy years dead, the great James Joyce has been the subject of more celebrations this year than most people are in seventy years of life. The reason, you see, is that EU copyright on the author's entire catalogue of work was lifted as of January 1st, meaning that all and sundry can now quote from his texts without fear of reprisals from the notoriously prohibitive Joyce estate. Among the more intriguing recent adaptations of his work is Dubliners: A Multimedia Exhibtion, which has a three day residency at The National Library this week. Drawing inspiration from the short story collection Dubliners, generally regarded as one of the author's most accessible works, the exhibition combines stop-motion animation, digital maps, documentary and audio-visual installation to evoke Joyce's Dublin. / Joey Kavanagh

We eat, breath and booze new cinema at le cool. The fume of that first edit powering up on the DVD player gets us all dizzy and excited like a kid queuing up for a go on a bouncy castle. This new season of sizzling shorts at the Light House kicks off with Paul Mahon's award-winning Eric. We've always championed this fella on the upward trajectory, despite the fact that the higher his star rises, the more he ignores us. Also set to thrill on the bill is The Hood and the Collar by Paddy Hayes, a winner at the Galway Film Fleadh. Prize for shortie with the most alliterative name probably goes to Rickshaw Rick. The Rickshaw community have probably been under- represented in Irish cinema up till now, so catch it. / Kate Frances

The title of this exhibition derives from a fellowship of artists founded in 1981 who combined avant-garde cultural practice with modern day magick. Though the decision to bring the work together was intuitive, the works are unified in a synchrony of concerns and characteristics. Evident is the reference to religious or spiritual rites and preoccupations with superphysical phenomenon. One aim of this project was to incite consideration of the idea that the potential of human sense perception has not been fully realised. This exhibition evinces the fact that visual art’s vitality rests on its capacity to create and communicate knowledge and ideas via methods of communication which are often unwritten and unspoken. In this way it speaks to a sphere of the psyche that quietly and unconsciously exerts an enormous influence upon our lives. / Pádraic E. Moore

A retrospective look at the work of cinematic trashmeister John Waters is a veritable parade of the great and the grotesque. In their double feature celebration, Slum Cinema have chosen two Waters’ films that nicely bookend his kitsch contribution to cinema thus far. Female Trouble is a 1974 bad taste classic from his post Pink Flamingos imperial phase featuring Waters stalwart Divine as an out of control schoolgirl turned criminal. The second film is Pecker, a slightly more subdued 1998 offering profiling a young Baltimore photographer's brush with fame - a film with the peculiar honour of introducing the term “teabagging” to a mainstream audience. Offsetting the gross outrageousness of Female Trouble with the unusual warmth of Pecker is an effective and enjoyable crash course in the evolution of Waters' work. / Colin McMahon

The oppressive government machine never stops in this documentary about Chinese artist and political activist Ai Weiwei. It's heartening then that Ai's resolve to uncover corruption and opression never seems to stop either. The film takes a hard look at life in China from the perspective of one trying to bring about change by making bold statements in the international art community. Particularly difficult to watch is the footage taken after thousands of schoolchildren were among those who died in the Sichuan earthquake of 2008 – a tragedy which government officials did not want investigated by people like Ai and his colleauges. Before I saw this film I was really not aware how much of a thorn an artist with an incredible talent for creating bold visual messages can be in the side of an opressive regime. / Jessica Hayden

A black sheep and a golden child; every family’s got one, right? In Sam Shepard’s classic, the animosity between estranged brothers Lee and Austin comes to a head in the tranquil setting of their mother’s Californian home. Menacing pauses and nervous laughter set the tone as Lee and Austin circle each other in an unpredictable power struggle, giving way to debate over careers, life choices and the shifting landscape of modern America. This debut production by Ramblinman Theatre Company was first staged at the Smock Alley and has returned with Cillian Ó Gairbhí and Jamie O’Neill resuming the lead roles. Having co-directed the first run, Genevieve Hulme Beaman takes the reins as director and hurls us from one side of Americana to the next. Bravely directed and vigorously performed, this is sibling rivalry at its very best. / Aoife Herrity

Top Trumps may well be a gateway to poker, but we can forgive anything that made school in Ireland more entertaining. There was a time in the late 80s that Top Trumps pretty much consumed my life. But then again, there wasnt much else to do in Hartstown. We started off with Top Trumps Superheroes and Villians, and I remember trying to read the poker faces on the other kids, discounting the running noses and the gammy eyes. Soon we graduated to Top Trumps Football Legends, then Top Trumps Cars...I drew the line at Top Trump Yachts, we were from Hartstown for fuck's sake. Tonight, the Thomas House is going to bring the memories flooding back with this tournament and I havent been this excited since Joe Maxi first aired. I wonder what could be next? Elastics night in a cafe or a swift game of footsie in a playground? / Vernon Steel

The Imposter is the tallest of tall tales. The story of Frédéric Bourdin, christened The Chameleon for his serial manipulative streak of assuming identities. Director Bart Layton hones in on one specific tale. A blonde-eyed, blue eyed, kid goes missing in Texas. A few years later the sallow skinned, brown-eyed Bourdin tells police in Spain he's said kid. The family fall for or pretend that he is their son. The Imposter is utterly Jerry Springeresque but a deftly coiled narrative which makes us all question the implausibility, and motivations, of this swirl of half truths. Throw in a gormless FBI agent, who looks like Joan Burton, and a straight from central casting P.I. and there's a real humdinger of a story. What are the agendas at play? Are people so stupid, easily duped or  clutching to the sliver of hope that the hopeless hold out? The recreations add a sense of befuddlement leading everyone off their own intriguing theory paths. / Michael McDermott

Accept the premise that a three worded dialogue can inspire true love and you're ready for Rob Reiner's (director of mockumentary This is Spinal Tap) fairytale parody narrated by the soothing tones of Columbo. It is 25 years since that dreamboat Cary Elwes (plus creepy 'tache) first captivated a generation of girls with his heroic escapades as Westley on his journey through the hazards of The Cliffs of Insanity, The Fire Swamp and The Pit of Despair to rescue his fair maiden, along which his vocabulary greatly improves. Among a cast of eclectic characters, ambidextrous duels, papier-mâché rock fights and a rat's dental exam are all accomplished accompanied by hilarious tongue and cheek repartee in a quest to defeat a "warthog faced buffoon". 'Inconceivable'! And of course it does have kissing in it too. / Sarah Maguire