Milan tries its chic hand at a tradeshow this weekend. Cosmit’s Salone Internazionale del Mobile, together with the International Furnishing Accessories Exhibition, will host an international showcase of contemporary Italian furniture design. Running from April 16th to 20th, the event will open to the public at the Milan Fairgrounds in Rho on Sunday. Think of Saloni 2008 as a commercial/consumer treasure hunt for the next Cassina.

In addition to showcasing domestic constructions of “every conceivable style” at the fairgrounds, Cosmit will also host the opening of the Peter Greenway’s performance piece Leonardo’s Last Supper. A superb contrast to the aesthetic eye-candy exhibiting at the fairgrounds, Greenway’s Last Supper turns the infamous fresco into a multi-media digital spectacle.

Ubiquity has turned on the world, yet again, as another of the label’s producers brings the heat, changing the frequency of music. Last month, the anticipated debut of New Territories was released by London-based Eric Lau, arousing the press, the music junkies and the DJs ready to take it to the dance floor.

From beginning to end, the fourteen-song experience combines soulful beats and heart clutching vocals, taking you on a journey through the love of music. While some songs offer a completely new sound and approach, others could be compared to the late J Dilla, Platinum Pied Pipers and other tastemakers.

Gracing our ears while coming correct with Tawiah, Rahel and other lovies on vocals and production credits by Dudley Perkins, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Lupe Fiasco and more, this is just the beginning of the movement for Eric Lau.

Listen up here!

The intercontinental lovescapades that Lupe Fiasco narrates on Paris, Tokyo are the stuff dreams are made of. Okay, maybe not everybody’s dreams, but speaking for myself, globe-trotting with a special someone or two would definitely be the perfect way to spend the next few weeks.

With spring now in full swing and bulky winter jackets chillin’ in the back of the closet, daydreams of beautiful summer days are livelier as the senses and imagination are slowly waking up to the season’s bright colors. Paris, Tokyo is a smooth-like-the-perfect-pina-colada track you can dream to year-round, but any spring or summer playlist would be incomplete without it. Peep the visuals above.

It’s halfway through the month and I forgot to mention it’s National Poetry Month - sorry! Go to poets.org for more information, and/or check out FSG’s excellent blog, The Best Words in their Best Order. There are a lot more poetry readings going on this month than usual in the NYC.

Monday, April 14, 7:30pm
Greenwich Village Barnes & Noble (396 Ave of the Americas @ 8^th Street)
Marcus Reeves: Somebody Scream! Rap’s Rise to Prominence in the Aftershock of Black Power

If Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop or Nelson George’s Hip Hop America didn’t do it for you, pick up Reeves’s new history of hip hop, Somebody Scream!, which tracks hip hop from its roots in NY to now with a special focus on it’s politics and what it has meant to a post-black power generation. Reeves will be talking or reading tonight, and likely be doing a Q+A. Also, check out the TRACE insider we did with Reeves last month before his book dropped.

Tuesday, April 15, 7:00pm
Housing Works Used Bookstore & Café (126 Crosby just south of Houston)
Mark Yakich and Aaron Baker

In celebration of National Poetry Month, the Academy of American Poets hosts a night of poetry at Housing Works. Poets Mark Yakich (Unrelated Individuals Forming a Group Waiting to Cross) and Aaron Baker (Mission Work) will read from their work, followed by a Q+A and signing.

Wednesday, April 16, 6:30pm
Mercantile Library Center for Fiction (17 East 47th Street)
Beatrice.com + the Merc present Ed Park and Jane Kotapish

Among other things, Ed Park is the founding editor of The Believer, former editor of The Voice Literary Supplement and publisher of The New York Ghost. He will be reading from Personal Days, his debut novel which focuses on a New York office. Jane F. Kotapish is a native of Virginia, a current resident of Brooklyn and has danced professionally for ten years. She’ll be reading from her debut novel, Salvage.

For one week starting tomorrow, Brazil is bringing a slice of its beauty and color to London. Bárbara Wagner exhibits her work at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) from the 12th of April, carrying photographs that capture the urban beach of Brasília Teimosa. Screaming bold colours, stark shapes and oodles of light depict supposedly flawed standards of beauty, revealing a sense of joy in a world that requires an enormous amount of strength and character.

As Bárbara says, “a Sunday at the beach with music and dancing can bring to light subjects that are rarely dealt with by the media, which flattens and stigmatises the margins of society”.

Kicking off the week is the 10th celebration of Batmacumba — the longest running Brazilian club night in England that was started by DJ Cliffy at the (ICA). Aiming to corner the contemporary Brazilian culture market, never did DJ Cliffy imagine that it would become a benchmark for the Brazilian scene in London. On the 12th of April, Batmacumba kicks by also documenting the fantastic city of Recife showing short films and photography from one of Brazil’s most stimulating areas.

Mark your calendars: the No 1’s Done It Right collective presents their third charity event, Cherry Blossoms, on April 16th. Get sprung for the spring, as the event showcases the latest collections from designers Kathy Misick, Brian Wood, Pastry, BKc (The Brooklyn Circus), Miss Bruno, and Cranberry.

The evening also features live performances by new-wave/jazzmatic band HEAVy and hip-hop new schooler Mickey Factz. Get there on time for gift bags and giveaways, and stick around for sets by Kev Sakoda, Brina Payne, and DJ Treats on the wheels.

Everything kicks off at The Delancey in Manhattan next Wednesday for a measly 5 bucks. You don’t want to miss this one…

As a few lucky TRACE staffers were graced to see at last issue’s transcultural casting call, true beauty dresses — and undresses — itself in as many ways as there are folks on this earth. Check out the footage from behind the scenes at this True Beauty issue photo shoot.

Just imagine, 30 years ago going to an art gallery and bumping into a urinal! At that time, French artist Marcel Duchamp definitely shocked Parisians. Cheeky, hilarious — sometimes rude — one of the Dada movement representatives gets another time around in Paris with mates Man Ray and Picabia.

The Sex, Humour and Flamenco exhibit brings together puzzling representations of life. At a time where formal is on its way back, a fresh reminder of impudence comes to check us up. From the female sensuality embodied by Catherine Deneuve, to toilets or a dancing bicycle girl: definetely a funky vision of life!

Go deeper here.

If you were asked the question, ‘What do Ghana and Hungary have in common?’, you probably wouldn’t think to answer ‘music’ immediately. Born to a Hungarian mother and a Ghanaian father, Sena provides the missing link between the capital cities of Accra and Budapest, embodying the TRACE transcultural.

One of the most talented female emcees out there, Sena is at home in a variety of different genres of music ranging from hip-hop to spoken word, jazz, reggae and broken beat, and has worked with international heavy-hitters like DJ Vadim (US/UK/Russia), Dzihan and Kamien (Austria), Gimmeshot Crew (Hungary), Dizko Stu (Hungary), Marcel (Hungary), Colorblind Allstars (Spain), Papastomp (France), Refractory (France) and Ras Mac Bean (France), among others.

Sena grew up in Accra singing Hungarian folk songs with her mother and grandmother, learning traditional Ghanaian drumming and dancing, and raiding her father’s eclectic music collection of blues and funk, her mother’s classical and world music, her brother’s reggae and her sister’s hip hop and dancehall records.

Her musical journey as an MC began in 2001, after moving to Budapest, Hungary and grabbing the mic at the weekly hip-hop/dancehall freestyle sessions of local hip-hop crew, Gimmeshot. Sena’s soulful, Lauryn Hill-esque rhyming style has a seamless flow, almost as if she was streaming a pre-recorded set from her mind. Naturally, it didn’t take long for her to become recognized as the foremost female hip-hop/reggae singer of the country and to begin to spread her wings around the globe, collaborating with the hottest acts from three continents.

Sena keeps herself busy these days. You’ll find her powerful, feminine vocals shine on Fel A Kezekkel, the new album of Hungarian reggae band, Irie Maffia, and she has a new record out with Barabas Lorinc Ecclectrik, a Hungarian experimental jazz band that fuses hip-hop, funk, reggae and electronica. She recently collaborated with Parisian Band, whose new record, Hot Potatoes dropped at the end of March. Sena has also teamed up with French reggae distribution and production company, Irie Ites in Le Mans, to work on several new tracks.

When she’s not on tour repping her new albums, you’ll find her mc-ing to the sets of Djs in Hungary, such as Ozone, Cadik, Mango. She has also got plans to rock Ghana with the likes of Reggie Rockstone, Chorkor Heights and Evil Twin and many more.

Learn more and give her some love here.

Peep her new video with Barabas Lorinc Ecclectrik band.

If Jellyfish whet your appetite for more filmic Israeli revelations, check out New York’s Storefront for Art and Architecture this week and next for a seductive film series probing the private areas of Israeli culture. With costumes and role-playing, these Tel Aviv filmmakers show how deeply linked sexual and personal identity is to the militarized, media-saturated landscape of the state of Israel.

In their video trilogy, Beyond Guilt (2004-2006), Ruti Sela and Maayan Amir get in front of the camera while picking up men in bars, bathrooms, through internet dating sites and call services to ask them about their attitudes towards sex. They even invite a prostitute to a hotel room and have her shoot a video of them. In Nothing Happened (2007), they follow a group of kids during a typical Tel Aviv night of chilling with prostitutes and impersonal hookups.

Another collection of shorts, Yossi Atia and Itamar Rose’s collection of satirical shorts, “Come to Israel: It’s hot and wet and we have the Humus,” satires race, gender, and sexuality. Taking on the roles of fictional characters, they interview random Israelis going about their business on the street, in the mall and picnicking in the park.

The films are playing nonstop today through April 18th. If you want more, catch Ari Libsker on Thursday, when he will be showing his shorts from London, Accra and Tel Aviv. And if you’re still fiending hot, wet humus, Libsker’s documentary, Stalags - Holocaust and pornography in Israel is opening at The Film Forum tomorrow.

Catch clips of Beyond Guilt here, Storefront intel here and Stalags showtimes here.