![]() More importantly, Foy and his subjects (including Duerr) claim to have uncovered the identity of the original artist. The film, Resurrec t Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles, won a Directing Award for Foy at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. In 2011, filmmaker Jon Foy released a documentary that brought the Toynbee Tiles and their followers into mainstream recognition. People found and reported hundreds of the pieces scattered all over the United States (as well as at least three in South America.) They didn’t have meetings, and they didn’t collect dues, but they posted online to various forums. Researchers into the Toynbee Tiles formed an unofficial underground club over the years. By the time the tar paper wears away completely, the tile has become part of the road itself. As hundreds and thousands of cars run over the piece, they drive it deeply into the asphalt. The tar paper renders the tile invisible to passing drivers. Duerr theorizes that the artist makes the tiles, covers the surface in tar paper, and drops them into the street-perhaps through a hole in a vehicle’s floor. This discovery allowed Duerr to formulate a compelling theory of the original artist’s technique. He began researching the phenomenon in 2005, and he claims to have made the most valuable discovery in the field: a freshly laid tile, covered in tar paper. Philadelphia punk rocker Justin Duerr is one of the foremost chroniclers of the Toynbee Tile phenomenon. Plenty of copycats took the original artist up on that advice. One notable tile told readers, “You must make and glue tiles…You as media is”. The Message Spreads: Everywhere, the 2000sīy 2011, amateur Toynbee Tile enthusiasts had found tiles in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and St. Soon, the Toynbee Tiles would be everywhere, jealously sought out by self-ordained experts and journalists alike. Some of Hiaasen’s sources reported seeing the tiles in other cities, including Washington, D.C., and New York City. Hiaasen’s report is the first to count the tiles, of which there were at least seven in Baltimore at that time ( later reporting uncovered more than a dozen). 19, 1994, piece headlined “ The word on the street turns cryptic.“ The first news account of the phenomenon comes from The Baltimore Sun, whose reporter Rob Hiaasen covered the story, beginning with an Oct. The Toynbee Tiles quietly spread throughout Philadelphia and beyond. ![]() The question remains: Who was spreading them through DIY street work? And how? The Media Catches On: Baltimore, the 1990s So the ideas behind the Tiles were out there. The psychedelic final scenes of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey depict this arcane process, Morasco said. Morasco went on to say that he had this revelation while reading Toynbee. Morasco told DeLeon, as the latter reports, that “the planet Jupiter would be colonized by bringing all the people on Earth who had ever died back to life and then changing Jupiter’s atmosphere to allow them to live.” His entry for March 13, 1983, bore the headline, “ Theories: Wanna Run That by Me Again?“ĭeLeon described a phone call from a man who called himself James Morasco, a social worker. In those days, Clark DeLeon wrote a column for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Mamet later said that he invented the caller’s particular brand of fantasy, but the story has a lot in common with an actual phone call delivered to an actual Philadelphia journalist earlier that year. The caller believes he’s found a connection between British historian Arnold Toynbee, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a developing plan to populate planet Jupiter with Earth’s dead. The show tells the story of a nighttime talk radio host who fields a bizarre phone call. In 1983, playwright David Mamet published a one-act play titled 4 A.M. It looks like gibberish-until you consider that related concepts were surfacing in the art and media worlds around the same time. The tiles contained a message, usually the same message, with minor variations: The plaques were roughly the size of a license plate and made of layered linoleum and asphalt crack filler. Sometime in the 1980s, Philadelphia pedestrians started to notice strange colored squares embedded in their streets. Origins and First Sightings: Philadelphia, the 1980s If you’re looking for answers, sorry: you’ll only find more questions here. What was so valuable that someone would risk such a public act of thievery? For that matter, what kind of artist chooses the city street for a canvas? Finally, after some work, the criminal disappeared into the crowds of night with the prize in hand (or into the crowds of day-no one knows, and the culprit is still on the loose). The thief gouged at the asphalt with a putty knife. ![]() At an unknown hour of an unknown day in the summer of 2009, an art thief knelt at the intersection of Sixth and Olive streets in downtown St.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |