BRODSKY, Alexander
Cancelled 6/21/90 (One-Page Supplement)

This ‘one page book’ is the transcript of a conversation with Alexander Brodsky, where he's discussing Paper Architecture’s work reception in the United States and also gives some illuminating information about the publication Cancelled 6/21/90.

Published by L’Esprit de l’Escalier from crossed out plates, this extraordinary book is available in 2 formats: a pretty large one, corresponding to the size of the original etchings; and a ‘manga’ paperback, with texts in English or in French. 

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Cancelled 6/21/90 by Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin, is the new publication of their defaced iconic works. Produced in between 1979 and 1989, the 29 etchings, a series of visionary architectural proposals submitted to national and international competitions in opposition to the Soviet architecture of the time, are the founding artworks of the Russian architectural movement “Paper Architecture”. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet system, the engraved copper plates travelled to USA for the production of a limited commercial edition of the works, which requested for the original printing plates to be destroyed. From Autumn 1989 to Spring 1990, from Communism to Capitalism, the mutilated etchings bare the mark of that transition. In Cancelled 6/21/90, published by l’Esprit de l’Escalier, the deep diagonal trench is the cancellation of the artwork as much as the creation of a new one. [publisher’s note]

Published by l’Esprit de l’Escalier
Architecture / Conversations / Book Culture