A slew of recent exhibitions and projects reveal an interest in the artist as anthropologist

In Shahryar Nashat’s films and sculptures, dodecahedrons, dance and desire come together in delirious studies of impossible ideals

From Samuel Beckett’s plays to Nick Cave’s music, the artists and filmmakers discuss the evolution of their artistic imaginations

How Andra Ursuta’s sculptures play with national stereotypes

How Darren Bader has pushed the readymade to its extreme

Silicon wafer weapons and Mars missions

Films and installations from the depths of the unconscious

Botched temporalities and ceramic selves

Laure Prouvost talks about translation, tea, fictitious grandparents, erotic films and trying to make sense of the world

San Francisco's theatre of sound-sculptured space

Can’t relate? Don’t worry: you’re not alone

What a fashion designer can teach us about the display of contemporary art

Radical collage and cut-outs in India

Public art and the commemoration of World War I

The British screenwriter and director discusses the films that have influenced her practice

Who should the internet serve?

‘Pop today is a broad church, but no one would ever argue that it’s not fun’

How artists and photographers in Japan have responded to the disasters of 3 March 2011

20th-century illustrations of Fantômas

New technology and endangered objects

The consistently inconsistent career of Scottish artist Bruce McLean

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA

At Hauser & Wirth, London & Somerset, UK, the artist's sculptural forms work with and struggle against space

Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, UK

Raven Row, London, UK

MOT International, London, UK

Maureen Paley, London, UK

Pace Gallery, London, UK

John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, UK

The Mistake Room, Los Angeles, USA

New Orleans Museum of Art, USA

Bortolami, New York, USA

Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, USA

Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, USA

Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, USA

Various venues, Salvador da Bahia, Brazil

Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto, Canada

Today Art Museum, Beijing, China

Gallery 9.5, Hotel Anteroom, Kyoto, Japan

Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, Australia

Museum of Yugoslav History, Belgrade, Serbia

Galeria Stereo, Warsaw, Poland

Kunstverein Langenhagen, Germany

Société, Berlin, Germany

Galerie Buchholz and Arsenal Institut für Film und Videokunst, Berlin, Germany

Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, Ireland

Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden

GAM, Turin, MADRE, Naples, MAXXI, Rome, Italy

Jan Mot, Brussels, Belgium

Galerie Antoine Levi, Paris, France

Marcelle Alix, Paris, France