Are re-blogged links the blogger’s version of the sitcom flashback episode? Uh, maybe, but in any case, here’s a partial and purely subjective roundup of the past week in art, culture, etc. in Chicago and beyond, via a whole mess o’ handy links, of course….

*Artists selected for the 53rd Annual Venice Biennale have been announced; find the list here.

*New City art editor Jason Foumberg has a nice recap along with some thoughtful analysis of last week’s “The Invisible Artist: Creators from Chicago’s Southside” panel discussion at the School of the Art Institute. UPDATE 4/4: There is some very interesting, enlightening, and pretty damn sharp back-and-forth going on in the comments section of this article by panel participants and others who strongly disagree with (or have misunderstood) Foumberg’s assessment of the panel and the issues it addressed.

*The mass firings of adjunct fine art faculty at Parsons The New School for Design: blogger Hrag Vartanian’s coverage has been some of the most thorough thus far. Check out his posts here, here and here as a start.

*Time Out Chicago writer Lauren Weinberg has a piece this week on the ways in which Musuems in Chicago and elsewhere are using social media.

*Big yawn: on the Twitter front, an update on @platea’s Twitter happening I blogged about a few weeks ago. UPDATE 4/4: NewCity reported on what happened during the Twitter Island project discussed in that same blog post, here.

*A huge Pose slideshow available on The World’s Best Ever.

*Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes provides an excellent, two-part summary of a rare Robert Frank public talk this week with National Gallery of Art curator Sarah Greenough; part one and two.

*Via C-Monster: The Architecture of the Drug Trade. A fascinating look at  the landscape of weed and the architecture of the grow house. Especially loved the comparison of the latter to Max’s bedroom in Where the Wild Things Are.

*Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City writes for The L Magazine on why Jenny Holzer is not the patron saint of Twitter in her review of Holzer’s Protect Protect Project, which originated at the MCA and is now at The Whitney.

*Via ArchitectureChicago: iTunes offering free download of the first movement of John Cage’s 4’33″.

* Get your art on at Chicago Artist’s Resource (CAR)’s Creative Chicago Expo tomorrow (Saturday) from 10-4. Workshops and Consult-a-thons galore for individuals and arts organizations.

*And finally, the hermeneutics of “pin diplomacy”: via Artnet Magazine, Madeleine Albright’s pin collection to be shown at the Museum of Arts & Design in New York.  Pins weren’t mere jewelry for Albright, they added a subtle layer to her diplomatic efforts.  She wore a bee pin when talks were getting pointed, a balloon pin when she felt hopeful, and a snake pin after Sadaam Hussein’s people called her a serpent. I’m so there!

So here is how it’s going to go. I have a brand new copy of former BAS guest Trevor Paglen’s book Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon’s Secret World. Duncan has been M.I.A. since the start of the Southern Graphics Council Convention this past week. The best comment that answers where Duncan is hiding wins. You have until Sunday April 5th.

“Blank Spots on the Map is an expose of an empire that continues to grow every year—and which, officially, it isn’t even there. It is the adventurous, insightful, and often chilling story of a young geographer’s road trip through the underworld of U.S. military and C.I.A. ‘black ops’ sites. This is a shadow nation of state secrets: clandestine military bases, ultra-secret black sites, classified factories, hidden laboratories, and top-secret agencies making up what defense and intelligence insiders themselves call the ‘black world.’ Run by an amorphous group of government agencies and private companies, this empire’s ever expanding budget dwarfs that of many good sized countries, yet it denies its own existence.”

In other Paglen related news, earlier in the week Art Fag City posted a video of him speaking at the Google Mountain View HQ to discuss Blank Spots.

Check out the video here.

Check out Ben Street’s thoughtful and timely essay on curatorial practice of the institutional kind posted today on the Art 21 blog. Best line: “…(G)reat curatorship hides itself, or, put another way, the first rule of curating is you don’t talk about curating.” Here, here!

Via Art Fag City.

Jessica Slaven’s untitled exhibition via Art Fag City

Last night as I was readying myself to listen to this weeks podcast (I heart Paddy Johnson) I was trolling Art Fag City to see what I might have missed while being distracted by my day job. What I found was Jonson’s curated online show with Add-Art titled The Future of Online Advertising. Add-Art (developed by Eyebeam) replaces the advertisements found on websites with art from a database that is curated regularly. Unfortunately, I had a few problems. Instead of seeing art my advertisements were blacked out (which was still nice) and it made Firefox crash. Especially when i was visiting the BAS website. It seems though that these problems have been fixed so I will give it another shot.

A little bit about this show via Add Art

“The Future of Online Advertising, a group exhibition featuring the work of Ben Coonley, Jason Corace, Charles Gute, Brian Kennon, Elke Lehmann, Jessica Slaven, Maya Schindler, and Sheila Wilson appropriates a familiar turn of phrase in the same way the participating artists in this show draw upon pre-existing cultural material. Taken from the similarly named annual New York online advertising conference, the title means to broadly describe a utopic form of advertising; which is to say, in the future, all advertising is art. It is aesthetically challenging and engaging, it is inventive and it is smart.” Read the rest of the statement here.

If you are interested in trying it out for yourself download it here

This week the blogosphere unites! Duncan checks in with Paddy Johnson the author of the wildly popular New York art blog, Art Fag City.

Art Fag City is as relevant as Eric Fischl. New York art news, reviews and gossip.

Trivia of note. This week Duncan asks a question that shatters all prior records for length clocking in at a breathtaking 2:51!

Guinness will be sending people to confirm the record.
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