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AB. I’ve never opened these boxes. They were packed twenty-six years ago. The only thing that makes me sad is that my good friend and colleague, the great architect Ilya Utkin is not here today. All these pieces were made in collaboration with him. He’s in Moscow and couldn’t come. It’s half his work and half my work. TT. Can you tell us about the line? AB. Yes. Well, it’s a short story. We made these etchings in Moscow in the 1980s. At the end of the 1980s we were invited to take part in an exhibition in New York. So we sent them to New York. At that time it was really difficult to send anything to the West. And in that exhibition, they were noticed by a gallerist. He suggested that we bring all the plates from Moscow to his gallery and print a limited edition. These boxes were made at that moment. We brought these two boxes to New York City. In 1989 they were printed in a very nice print shop. After they were printed, the gallery said that according to some rules the plates must be destroyed so that no one else could print them again. Of course it’s a kind of commercial thing but we were young and didn’t know anything about commercial galleries, so we said okay, no problem, how should we destroy them? They said, usually, if it’s not a big plate, we cut it into pieces. I said, I won’t cut it because it’s too hard. So they said, what would you suggest to mark that the plate is cancelled? I said, I will do something and show it to you. I immediately decided that the least painful thing for the plates would be to make a straight line from one corner to another, a diagonal. I did it all myself. I showed it to the gallerists and they said okay. Then they packed them back into these boxes and I brought them to Moscow. Since that time they have been in a far corner of a shed in my country house. So when you wrote me a letter asking what was going on with the plates, I wasn’t even sure if I could find them because they had moved from Moscow to the countryside. I found them and that was the beginning of this story. So the line means that the plate is cancelled. No other prints have been made from these plates. TT. We heard this story three and a half years ago. We’ve been imagining this line of cancellation and it’s incredible to see it. It changes the work in a way that makes you look at it completely differently. In a way it’s how the world has touched the work. There is such precision to the line. It’s very painful but it’s also very beautiful. It becomes something else. The day after tomorrow we will print the line together. AB. After printing this edition you will have to make another cancellation. So it will be two lines. A cross. TT. How do the plates look to you now? What was going through your mind when you opened the boxes? AB. Well, quite banal things. Of course each plate is a little piece of my life. I remember how we made every one of them and how we worked on them, how we discussed each idea, composition, and everything. I cannot recall what we were drinking while we were making each plate but I remember that it was a lot. It’s amazing. It’s like opening a bottle that was closed a hundred years ago. I’m quite happy to see them again. TT. The plates travelled from the dacha to Moscow to Venice. This is the opportunity to take a look at them. ML. This is not a funeral — let’s look at them! AB. I completely forgot that some of them were not on copper but on zinc. I thought they were all on copper. TT. Was it difficult to get copper? AB. Well, it’s like with everything in Russia — in some ways it’s very difficult but in other ways it’s very easy. This was copper that builders stole from the roof works somewhere and were selling. Therefore it was very cheap. We found a way through these workers. TT. And the zinc is also roofing material? AB. The state sold zinc to artists. But copper, especially this big, could be found only on some construction sites — in government projects where the budgets were big and they made copper roofs. But it was very rough so we had to polish every plate ourselves. Hours with this green polishing paste. BR. And you wrote “cancelled” and the date when you drew the line on each plate? When this is going to be printed “cancelled” is going to be inverted. AB. I wrote “cancelled” normally; so it will be inverted. I forgot about that. BR. “Cancelled 21st of June 1990”. AB. 1990. Almost exactly twenty-six years ago. Someone. What is the name of the dog? AB. The sign says “the little white dog” in Russian.