Since the 1980s several hundred hand-made tiles have been found set into the asphalt of roughly two dozen American cities and three places in South America, all carrying versions of the same message: TOYNBEE IDEA, IN MOVIE 2001, RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPITER. They are about 30 by 15 centimetres, made of layers of linoleum and asphalt crack filler, and the installation method is the clever part: the maker laid a tile on a busy street wrapped in tar paper, and let weeks of traffic press it down into the road and grind the paper off, so it emerges looking like it was always there. The first confirmed one was in Philadelphia in 1983 and the Baltimore Sun broke the story in 1994. The 2011 documentary Resurrect Dead follows Justin Duerr to a reclusive Philadelphian, Severino Verna, as the likeliest maker, working under the name James Morasco. Nobody has ever confirmed it.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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