GLOSSARY by Sabel Gavaldon

ASCENSEUR SOCIAL. [French, literally: social lift.] There’s not even a word for it in English. The French are always concerned about the way it functions. As in any other type of lift, small talk becomes a matter of survival. (See MOVING UP IN SOCIETY.)

ASPIRATION, ASPIRATIONAL. Its proper use is to describe unreasonably huge artworks erected in public spaces: “I was immediately drawn by the iconic presence and sublime scale of this aspirational sculpture commissioned by Anita Zabludowicz.” (See AUSTERITY.)

AUSTERITY. It’s rare to find, particularly among its most fervent advocates.

CLASS DIVIDE. Evidence suggests it existed long before Margaret Thatcher said otherwise, just like society itself. (See UNSEEING.)

ENTREPRENEURSHIP. Generally overrated. Again it’s borrowed from a French word: enterprise. It’s tempting to trace its genealogy back to the Vulcan Time of Awakening, 1800 years before the launch of the Federation starship commanded by captain James T. Kirk. (See TALENT.)

HIGH AND LOW CULTURE. Are always there to define one another. Once every five years, someone has the audacity to signal the equivalence between Shakespeare and Mickey Mouse. And a minute later the world keeps on spinning on its axis. (See MICKEY MOUSE.)

IMMANUEL KANT. He’s said to have had nothing for breakfast but a single cup of tea, making no exception to this rule throughout his entire life. It’s no wonder that Heinrich Heine called him the Robespierre of philosophers. (See AUSTERITY.)

KITSCH. Pejorative for “mass culture”. Its original use among the elites was to ridicule anyone who tried to move up in society. Naturally, it ended up defining modernism by opposition. (See HIGH AND LOW CULTURE.)

MICKEY MOUSE. Quote this fragment of Walter Benjamin’s notebook, dated 1931: “From a conversation with Gustav Glück and Kurt Weill. Property relations in Mickey Mouse cartoons: here we see for the first time that it is possible to have one’s own arm, even one’s own body, stolen.” (See CLASS DIVIDE.)

MOVING UP IN SOCIETY. Statistically unlikely. There’s usually an uncle involved.

ROBESPIERRE. The Kant of politics.

SATIRE. Apply generously as needed. I believe it was the writer Eloy Fernández Porta who said that punk is not a juvenile attitude, but Juvenal’s attitude.

TALENT. Praise it, make money out of it, but don’t venture to define it. (See TALENT SHOWS.)

TALENT SHOWS. One friend tells me that it’s in rather poor taste to say that they are of bad taste. (See TASTE.)

TASTE. A typically bourgeois form of aesthetic judgement we’ve inherited from Immanuel Kant. The house in Königsberg went to his three nieces, Amalia, Minna and Henriette. (See IMMANUEL KANT.)

UNSEEING. In The Golden Bowl by Henry James, Charlotte makes a fascinating remark about the dealer in a little shop in Bloomsbury where she and Prince Amerigo had been lingering: “The Prince was to reply to this that he himself hadn’t looked at him; as precisely, in the general connection, Charlotte had more than once, from other days, noted, for his advantage, her consciousness of how, below a certain social plane, he never saw… He took throughout, always, the meaner sort for granted — the night of their meanness or whatever name one might give it for him made all his cats grey.” (See CLASS DIVIDE.)

ZAPPING. Like receiving the sacraments for Christians, using the remote control is less of an action than it is a process of becoming. Be sure to mention the Catholic philosopher Blaise Pascal and his thought-provoking writings on this matter (i.e. sacraments not TV).

Rachel Maclean (b. 1987 in Edinburgh. Lives and works in Glasgow.) Maclean graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2009 and has exhibited across the UK and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions: Please, Sir..., Rowing, London, 2014; Happy & Glorious, CCA, Glasgow, 2014; I Heart Scotland, The Edinburgh Printmakers, 2014; Invites, Zabludowicz Collection, London, 2014; Quick Child, Run, Trade Gallery, Nottingham, 2014); Over The Rainbow, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, 2013; Space Time: Convention T, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, 2013; Lolcats, Generator Projects, Dundee, 2012. Group exhibitions: Focus on Film, The Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 2014; Tonight, you can call me Trish, LAB Gallery, Dublin, 2014; Film London Jarman Award as part of screening programme touring Whitechapel Gallery, London, FACT, Liverpool, CCA, Glasgow, Nottingham Contemporary, Cornerhouse, Manchester, 2014; Costume: Written Clothing, Tramway, Glasgow, 2013; As real as walking down the street and going to the grocery store, Rowing, London, 2013.

Sabel Gavaldon (b. 1985 in Barcelona) is a curator and researcher based in London.