The first instalment of The Social Life of the Record, a series of original texts by musicians, fans, critics, collectors, dealers, label owners etc.—reflecting on recording, releasing, listening to, filing, flipping and DJing records today.

Addressing questions parallel to those asked by Paraguay Press’s established The Social Life of the Book, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere plays off its format and inaugurates the new series The Social Life of the Record. It is published as a component of the exhibition of the same name held at castillo/corrales December 2012–January 2013, and extends the project’s triangulation of the identity of New Zealand art and music. London-based artist Paul Elliman evokes relationships between sound and geography; Philadelphia label owner Tom Lax chronicles his involvement with New Zealand music as a fan from afar; New Zealand critic Jon Bywater reflects on vinyl records as a means to ‘physical thinking’; and french collectors Jedrzej Zagorski, François-Xavier Hubert, Sandra Reignoux, Jean-Louis Cayron and Fred Paquet contribute photographs of some of their New Zealand possessions; crossing Hans Christian Andersen with Wilkie Collins.

Superimposing different sources—background sounds, recordings of a charivari in the streets of Lyon, bird songs or rhythms and melodies of amateur or professional musicians—Paul Elliman’s vinyl record can be experienced as a form of sound loitering, each track composed by the transformation of different audio materials into unique musical collages. Born 1961. Paul Elliman lives and works in London.

Authors: Ronja Andersen, Danielle Aubert, Joel Colover, Valentina Desideri, Jason Dodge, Olya Domoradova, Paul Elliman, Rosie Eveleigh, Eloise Harris, Sarah Käsmayr, Maxine Kopsa, Raimundas Malasauskas, Robert Milne, Josse Pyl, Nerijus Rimkus, Charlotte Taillet, Maud Vervenne, Caroline Wolewinski.

As part of Speelplaats, a parallel program of Werkplaats Typografie, participants challenged what was being offered in the school’s curriculum by introducing improvements or suggesting alternatives. Reader, aantekeningen exemplaar brings together these contributions made to the Speelplaats program alongside other like-minded initiatives by participants, guests and tutors in the shape of examples as well as reference texts.

Edited and designed by Ronja Andersen and Nerijus Rimkus.

British artist Paul Elliman has consistently engaged with the production and performance of language as a material component of the socially constructed environment. In a world where objects and people are equally subject to the force fields of mass production, Elliman explores the range of human expression as kind of typography.

Published as a contribution to David Bennewith’s exhibition Latent Stare at CasCo, Utrecht, Netherlands, 2012.