Seminar
on Street Art 9: Autograph. All the very best! [Signed] Indecipherable
Hieroglyphic. Such are the squiggles inside childhood autograph books. Autographs
were the proof you were in the presence of greatness. They were your brush with
immortality. They were the sign that such greatness existed. Only time and
maturity changed the meaning of the ballpoint loops and dashes of
Indecipherable Hieroglyphic. What a guy! That highflying footballer eventually
retired to run the pub in his home town. That TV celebrity survives in their
funny stock phrase, all in the moment, all in the timing. She was a trick! That
opinionated politician visiting your school was voted out: autographs come to commemorate
landslides. Autographs of your schoolfriends take on other, more personal
meanings. The earnest copperplate denotes a focussed mind. The autograph with
final fantastic flourishes wishes to entertain. The business-like lettering of
honest endeavour vies with the jagged stuttering of could do better. Where are
they now? Now you have only their names. Autographs clearer than their
schoolyard faces in your memory. Time to turn the page. These signs of
connection, fleeting as may be, are the beginning of a lifetime’s notice. Forms,
you sign them with Date, Name, and then quizzically, Signature. As if your
autograph were expected to be a different design, by nature and norm, to your
Name filled out in full. That the two would be identically written is unlikely,
in a society like yours. Your name must be clear and rigid as Times New Roman;
your signature may be all over the place. You’ve always signed it that way. Only
connect. This expectation of uniqueness motivates behaviour, from approval of
deals to last wills and testaments, and signed first editions. And translates
with ease to street autographs, seven-feet high embellishments emphatically
self-assertive, and utterly unique in their own terms. They gleam in the sun,
even after the paint’s dried. X, but then some. Your average street artist has,
first and last, their name, an autograph practised over and over, in-your-face
or inscrutable, being for the benefit of Mr Site, a landmark that must be
theirs, if only for one day. Autographing the city, they lay claim to its
identity, set out their pathways through the maze, strike a deal. Not that this
autograph matches their real-life Name. It is a signature ‘innominato’, unnamed
ones who inscribe their glorious autograph upon the walls for reasons known
best to themselves. Reasons, innumerable as the ways of fortune that they must
respond to. ‘Innominata’, perchance? Almost
certainly. All the very best! [Signed] Indecipherable Hieroglyphic.
