WE DIDN’T LIE, WE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND THE QUESTION (2019)
The Volkswagen emissions scandal is the largest and most expensive industrial automotive accident in recent history. To circumvent environmental regulations, Volkswagen built millions of vehicles that excreted higher levels of nitrogen oxides in their exhausts than were legally permissible. Despite the scale of the event, there is nothing really to see of the catastrophe directly: no fires or black clouds of smoke, only invisible fumes and, at the heart of the breakage, chunks of software embedded into the Engine Control Unit, a small piece of hardware that control what the vehicle engine does.
Instead, there are performances which work to build a case for faith in technocratic institutions: marketing spiel which describes how a vehicle combines engine power with elegant handling; men in plain suits apologising in front of journalists and government committees, owning a small pebble of the blame but denying much of the rest; corporate videos of sleek industrial plants; digital renders of engines and motors.
We Didn’t Lie, We Didn’t Understand the Question is a six-channel sound and video installation which explores performance in complex systems. Across a totem of vertical screens, scraps of the Volkswagen emission scandal play out as fragments of performance – hunky engineers, digital renders of data, courtroom grovelling, men sweating. The totem is big enough to walk around – no single view gives the complete picture.
We Didn’t Lie, We Didn’t Understand the Question was commissioned and exhibited at London Design Festival 2019. It was developed as a collaboration between Georgina Voss and Oliver Smith