Lately, I’ve been known to boast that “while others go to work, I go to vvork.”  After having read The Artist’s Joke, from the excellent Documents of Contemporary Art series, I decided to try that one out at a comedy club last night, Cory Arcangel style … you could hear my friend in the audience apply his palm firmly to his forehead.

vvork.com, an essentially wordless picture blog of contemporary art pieces, succeeds for one reason: its contributors have great taste.  Neither analysis nor criticism is needed.  Themes drift in and out in a few scrolls of the mouse.  The quality of the choices is justification enough.  In this way, vvork reminds me of what Flaubert said regarding his plan to write Madame Bovary, a book “about nothing … held together by the internal strength of its style.”

I’m not saying there isn’t substance in the vvork blog.  Not at all.  vvork, as a collective, are what you’d call ‘serious curators’.  The experimental, challenging, bookish, but slightly unhinged kind.  Preferably Dutch, or Belgian.  On Friday, October 30th, they team up with a curator so smokin’ you want to call her an impresario, Lauren Cornell, to present a contemporary variety show.  Here is the release:

Friday, Oct 30

7:00 PM

New Museum Theater

Berlin-based collective VVORK present a contemporary variety show, composed of daring and experimental translations of original artworks. Variety is inspired by how culture of all kinds—sound, moving image, graphics—cycles easily between states and forms. For this one-night event, local performers will stage works by artists Wojceich Kosma, Vladimir Nikolic, Tao Lin, Kristin Lucas, Adrian Piper, Pierre Bismuth, and Claire Fontaine. Containing readings, video, performance, dance, and music, Variety will present the acts together in a dramaturgy that can be understood as a single performance, allowing for new interpretations of each piece. When finished, the evening will be carried on as a single score, with instructions for how it can be repeated at different venues in the future. VVORK is a website (vvork.com) and curatorial project by artists Aleksandra Domanovic, Oliver Laric, Georg Schnitzer, and Christoph Priglinger.

Organized by Lauren Cornell, Executive Director of Rhizome, the New Silent Series receives major support from The Rockefeller Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional support is provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts.

This New Silent Series program is made possible by the Austrian Cultural Forum NYC, and the Experimental Television Center, New York.

Buy tickets ($12) here: http://www.museumtix.com/venue/program.asp?pvt=new&vid=726&pid=2053087&code=