Daphne de Sonneville is an artist and writer, and a practice-based PhD candidate at the Edinburgh College of Art (supported by the ECA Research Award 2016–19). In her research project The Descend of Significance: Slapstick and Abstraction, she employs slapstick as a method to investigate the relationship between materiality and abstraction in language. While slapstick originates from physical theatre, she researches how it can be used to structure a text. Working with repetition and language modifications, her writing focuses on ‘how’ rather than ‘what’. She questions whether language can be a character in itself, and makes it ‘act’ in a visual art context. She performs her writings using sculptural and audiovisual props, asking if the materiality of language is tragic.
In March 2017 Daphne will be the first SGSAH Researcher in Residence at Cove Park, Scotland.