Permit me a brief personal anecdote if you will: Some 20 years ago, a cold December night in Toronto found me inspired to chip, using my house keys, a few raisin-sized shards of concrete from the base of that city's newly-constructed CN Tower. Friends I mailed the little gray jewels to would later remark that they felt a little thrill sitting in their Montreal flat or Budapest apartment and holding in their hands an actual piece of the "the world's tallest free-standing structure."
One girl, who brought the fragment to her art class to show the teacher and other students, remarked that its displacement was "a wonderful bit of cheating."
That might be the best way to describe what Valera and Natasha Cherkashin are doing. The husband and wife conceptual art team have lugged a bunch of Russian rocks over to Japan for a couple of Dadaesque art actions intended to both expand Japan's territory and cheat the country's coastline a little closer over toward Russia.