Autograph Quarterly Magazine Volume Two Issue One: Volume 2

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Basketballer/civil rights activist Bill Russell won’t sign. Ever. Supposedly a retiring player wanted the team to sign as a memento. He still refused. The teammate was hurt.

One fan: Kevin Spacey was “condescending . . . I’m going to believe it was just a bad hemorrhoid flare-up.” Boy is that a broad question! Find some autographs you like and post them here for opinions. That's the best way to learn who to trust. On the 28th October, as I attended the Arts, Rights and Resistance event at Autograph and spoke alongside other artists and humanitarian workers, I became more aware of the necessity of art to exist as the facilitation of many things for migrants and their kin. Artists discussed the role of their practice in supporting them to document their journeys, give visibility to their plight, capture their cultures, and find a common ground between all our human stories. So if migration is a universal story, how do we ensure, as creatives, it is depicted as such through culture?Something you mentioned that we commonly hear is that it looked like Radcliffe's autograph. That's not too hard for a decent forger to do and inexperienced potential buyers may not be able to tell. I did however incorrectly assume that from time to time these people (particular musicians) may sign their name a little differently every now and then (sloppy, rushed, perhaps under the influence of something or even just not on a hard surface etc). I would have also thought the people producing these fakes would all try and copy the most obvious and standard autograph. Anything a bit different would be a gamble for them, but if a celebrity/musician wrote/signed their name a bit different they wouldn’t think twice about it.

Cameron Diaz hit the top of the Worst for years. Bitched fans out when they asked. Told them to f - - k off. Another time I wrote my name. The man examined it, said, “Oh, Jeez,” crumpled it up and threw it away. I don’t know who he thought I was — maybe Gilbert Gottfried?Clint Eastwood never uses the excuse, “Sign one, you have to sign all.” He’ll stay until everyone’s satisfied. As you mentioned Cobain. A perfect example….he never hesitated to sign autographs for fans and his signature (or just writing is name) varied greatly. All you have to do is look through his journals and see that he has many different styles of writing. Experienced collectors, dealers and authenticators learn how to recognize characteristics and habits of a signer they study, like pen pressure, how they form a particular letter, and how they signed during an event or time period: The Beatles Abbey Road album came out in 1969. If the autographs on it have the characteristics of how The Beatles signed in 1963-64, that doesn't make sense. It either means they're forged, reproduced mechanically, or transferred from another item from 1963-64. After their show, Penn and Teller shake everyone’s hand, chat, write their names. Without changing clothes, they come right out front p.d.q., both still in costume. Once, they wore togas covered in fake blood.

At The Road to Nowhere we’ve now worked with institutions like The Photographer’s Gallery, The National Maritime Museum, The Barbican and others in an attempt to bring these silenced voices to the mainstream, exemplifying in the work of our contributors how migration plays a key role in every aspect of our cultures. We are independent and grassroots but nevertheless committed to showing how mainstream culture has always consumed the works and imaginations of migrants and diaspora. And we most importantly hope to shift attitudes by humanising the language we use to describe people who move, relying less on othering or objectifying language. Other nice ones: Damon, Clooney, Nicholson, Travolta, Leno, Rosario Dawson, Katherine Heigl, Dakota Fanning, Stephen King. Richard Thomas signed at a busy flea market. Joan Rivers carries trinkets and distributes them along the way. I’ll just put this one down as a loss and lesson learned the hard way. Thank you all kindly again for your advice. variation - Seems to be almost an exact combination of #11 and #13 with a different vertical line in his "D"Sports, TV, Film, Historical, Music, Space, James Bond, Political, Royalty, F1 and Motor Sport etc.

Art has the potential to shift attitudes through the sharing of cultural narratives and this is a fact that I was keen to scrutinise more with our audience at Autograph, hence I left them with a provocation asking: how can major sports like football - with its mass following akin to religious devotion - go some way to facilitating attitudinal change? These arenas filled with fence-sitters are perhaps the very place we need to be facilitating conversations around migration. If we can create art that speaks to these kinds of mass audiences, the potential for attitude change could be unprecedented.

Bob Dylan's Manager