Found it at a demolition site in Žižkov back when they were tearing out the old telephone exchange. Bakelite, the handset still on the cord. Two men and a handcart to get it up the stairs, I remember my back hurt for a week and I told everyone it was worth it, which it was not, physically.

It has never worked. There is no line to it. It stands in the corner next to the radiator and it has been in four shows now, twice as itself and twice half-buried in rubble where you could only see the receiver.

What I like is the weight of the handset. You pick it up and your arm remembers something you didn't know it remembered. I have watched people walk past everything else in the room and stop at this dead phone and just stand there holding it to their ear with nothing on the other end. One woman talked into it for maybe two minutes. I did not ask what she said.

I paid 400 crowns for a thing that does nothing and it has done more work than most of my ideas that cost money. Make of that what you like. I have stopped trying to.