Eric Vernhes Meeting Philip

Eric Vernhes’ practice is based on the creation of “temporal objects”, moving devices that harmonize with the viewer’s consciousness, creating a relationship of sympathy and synchronicity. His work aims to expand our awareness of ourselves, our bodies, the world and time, questioning our relationship to reality, fiction and otherness.

Meeting Philip is a musical, video and sculptural work built around the recording of the conference given by Philip K. Dick in 1977 in Metz. During this intervention, Philip K. Dick revealed that one of his favorite themes, the existence of a plurality of parallel universes, was indeed a reality and not a fiction. For him, there was no doubt that our world was the result of a computer program whose designer (God, programmer reprogrammer), episodically changed variables in the past, which disrupted the unfolding of our present time and gave birth to other uchronic and divergent universes. The feelings of “déjà vu” would result directly from this “reprogramming”.

In Meeting Philip the artist does not answer the question of the credibility of K. Dick’s story, but rather considers that this question is irrelevant. Confronted with the many facets of K. Dick’s personality, his wanderings and his flashes of brilliance, he takes the side of the writer against the self-proclaimed prophet. The latter (who has never convinced anyone) is ultimately only the tool of the former (who is recognized as brilliant).