Open City Dialogue  (OCD) is a bi-monthly lecture series unraveling on alternating Mondays in the backroom of Pete’s.  Short (35-40 minute) lectures are woven together from the common thread of people’s obsessions, with guests coming from all over Greater New York.  Whether academic or crackpot; celebrated or unsung, our lecturers all have something to tell you…
Lectures are on Mondays at 7:30pm

Jan 9
NOTES FROM JUPITER:
Decoding the Toynbee Tiles
w/Justin Duerr

"TOYNBEE IDEA in Kubrick's 2001. RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPITER." With these words unfurled an urban mystery whose clues have confounded the most stalwart seekers of its arcane meaning. They are the Toynbee Tiles, strange messages embedded in city streets throughout the United States and South America that have been puzzling passersby since the 1980s. Are they art? The ramblings of a crackpot? An alchemical codex? Join Justin Duerr, who has been investigating these tiles for over two decades, tying together such disparate threads as David Mamet, short-wave radio programming, and the work of historian Arnold Toynbee to try and crack the door ajar on this elusive urban mystery.

Justin Duerr is a painter, musician, and resident of Philadelphia, where the Toynbee Tiles were first discovered. He was also the subject of the recent documentary, Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles.




Jan 23
RUSSIAN TONGUE:
The Photographs of Sasha Rudensky

Can one ever go home again? The unanswered question is the subject of Sasha Rudensky's photographs, which trace the broken lines of family, culture, and identity to portray her former Russian homeland. Since immigrating to the US as a child, Sasha has returned frequently to Russia to document the eroding idols of communism and national identity as they have been displaced by a swelling tide of capitalist individualism. Statues of Lenin, abandoned parks, and intimate portraits of family and friends create a narrative that shows a society in the awkward gestures of shrugging off its past, yet unable to fully relinquish its history. Sasha will be presenting her work and describing its progression from documentary street scenes to staged tableaux that reveal the theatre of the everyday.

Sasha Rudensky is an assistant professor of art at Wesleyan University and graduate of the Yale MFA program. You can see more of her work at www.sasharudensky.com/

 

ABOUT THE CURATOR:

Jamie Hook is a socially omnivorous urban dandy who makes his home in Greenpoint. A filmmaker, theatre director, and sometimes journalist, Mr. Hook lives by his wits and his keen eye for the odd and interesting. After a dozen years in Seattle, where, among other things, he was the founding director of the Northwest Film Forum, he has settled in New York, where he makes films, writes stories, and struggles to pay the rent. The OCD Lecture Series offers him a venue to display all of his marvelous urban finds. You should also know that he likes pickles, hot sauce, and red wine in that order.