Listen to the sounds from the deepest hole ever dug into the Earth crust

Justin Bennett, Vilgiskoddeoayvinyarvi: Wolf Lake on the Mountains, 2016. Photo by Rosa Menkman for Sonic Acts

Last year, while i sat down listening to the speakers of the Open Fields conference in Riga, i learnt about the existence of the Kola Superdeep Borehole, the deepest man-made hole ever dug into the Earth crust.

Lucas van der Velden, director of the fantastic Sonic Acts, was presenting Dark Ecology, a three-year art research and commissioning project which invited participants to re-evalute our definition and relationship to the environment. One of the works commissioned was Justin Bennett’s Vilgiskoddeoayvinyarvi: Wolf Lake on the Mountains, a sound walk that takes us inside the now abandoned and very decrepit research station in the company of the last worker still living there.

Justin Bennett – Vilgiskoddeoayvinyarvi: Wolf Lake on the Mountains. Video: Sonic Acts

The U.S.S.R. started the Kola Superdeep Borehole project in 1970 for geological research but also because when the work started, it was the height of the Cold War and the Soviets wanted to show how superior they were to the U.S.

The researchers were also hoping that the Borehole could become part of a transcontinental network of seismic listening stations that was to function as an early-warning system for imminent earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other natural disasters but also for picking up on enemy nuclear tests, missile launch, etc.

The team had planned to drill as deep as 15,000 m which would have meant working at a temperature of 300 °C, where the drill bit would no longer work. But the temperatures got too high much earlier than expected and the researchers had to stop in 1992, when they were over 12 km into the Earth’s crust (and when funding dropped due to the fall of the Soviet Union.) At this depth and location, it was 180 °C.

The Kola Superdeep is drilled at a spot called Vilgiskoddeoayvinyarvi, or ‘Wolf Lake on the Mountains’, near the town of Zapolyarny, Russia.
The borehole itself is all rusty and strangely unspectacular:

The borehole (shut.) Photo by Rosa Menkman

Photo from the official website documenting the KSB

The Kola Superdeep Borehole is still is the deepest artificial point on Earth. The site has been abandoned since 2008. Only Viktor lives there now….

Justin Bennett, Vilgiskoddeoayvinyarvi: Wolf Lake on the Mountains, 2016. Photo by Michael Miller

Justin Bennet spoke to Viktor, the last geologist living there. Viktor worked on the Kola Superdeep project until it closed and has stayed on-site long after the drilling tower fell apart. He lives there alone and unofficially. Bennet recorded their discussions. They are wonderful. Viktor is a charming narrator and his lively stories give a nuanced and intelligent perspective on the motivations and dreams behind the whole project. He recounts the history of the Kola Superdeep, talks about the equipment used to create this ‘acupuncture point in the body of the earth’, his everyday life with only radio and wildlife as company, Sami shamanism, Syrians on bikes and Dante’s circles of hell.
At some point, he also explained how while listening to vibrations deep within the Earth, he sensed that some terrible catastrophe was going to happen around the Coast of Japan back in 2011 (that was the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.)

Bennett’s Vilgiskoddeoayvinyarvi: Wolf Lake on the Mountains is an extraordinary work. It’s a documentary piece, a sound art work and probably the most interesting and easily accessible source of information about the Kola Superdeep project.

All the recordings are worth listening to but if you are in a hurry, do at least make some time for the last one which allows you to listen inside the borehole:

For more background and info, check out this Dark Ecology article as well as some of the photos i stole from Sonic Acts flickr album of the project:

Justin Bennett, Vilgiskoddeoayvinyarvi: Wolf Lake on the Mountains, 2016. Photo by BJ Nilsen for Sonic Acts

Justin Bennett, Vilgiskoddeoayvinyarvi: Wolf Lake on the Mountains, 2016. Photo by Rosa Menkman for Sonic Acts

Justin Bennett, Vilgiskoddeoayvinyarvi: Wolf Lake on the Mountains, 2016. Photo by Michael Miller

Justin Bennett, Vilgiskoddeoayvinyarvi: Wolf Lake on the Mountains, 2016. Photo by Lucas van der Velden

Justin Bennett, Vilgiskoddeoayvinyarvi: Wolf Lake on the Mountains, 2016. Photo by BJ Nilsen for Sonic Acts

Justin Bennett, Vilgiskoddeoayvinyarvi: Wolf Lake on the Mountains, 2016. Photo by Rosa Menkman for Sonic Acts

Vilgiskoddeoayvinyarvi: Wolf Lake on the Mountains is part of the exhibition The Noise of Being by Sonic Acts. It will be on view as a three-part audiovisual installation in which the sound piece is combined with footage taken at the abandoned Kola Superdeep Borehole.
The Noise of Being exhibition speculates on the strange and anxious state of being human. With works by Justin Bennett, Zach Blas, Kate Cooper, Joey Holder and Pinar Yoldas. The piece is on view until the 26th of February at Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

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