Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

We follow Viktor Koslovsky, a scientist still working at the otherwise abandoned Kola Super-Deep Borehole, a geological research station “at the border of everything” in north-west Russia. He tells of the history of this former cold-war project and of his current research which he describes as “listening to the past in order to hear the future.” The Kola Super-Deep Borehole (KSD) is the deepest man-made hole on earth – more than 12 km deep. It was a Soviet geology research project started during the Cold War. In addition to gathering data about the geology of the earth`s crust it formed part of Project Globus, a network of seismic listening stations which was to act as an early-warning system for natural disasters as well as for monitoring enemy nuclear tests. After the fall of the Soviet Union the project was slowly wound up and the site was abandoned in 2008. The rock strata that are visible in the core samples extracted from the borehole are seemingly inert to humans but on another time-scale they are very much alive. They tell the story of the formation of the earth and of ultra-slow processes that are still taking place within the earth`s crust. Thinking at this geological timescale puts human endeavour and progress into perspective, the Kola Super Deep becomes merely a pin-prick into the body of the earth. Still, the image of drilling so deep into the earth inflamed the imagination of evangelical Christians with an image of Hell. The sounds of screams emanating from the inferno circulated on the internet purporting to have been recorded by the Russian scientists – probably a montage of horror-film soundtracks. The layers of rock penetrated by the drill resound with Dante`s decent into the Inferno with Virgil as his guide – where each layer or circle of Hell is reserved for different kinds of sinners, each with their own story. In which circle of Hell can the conspiracy theorists be found? Which is reserved for the climate change deniers? At the KSD site, next to a lake called Vilgiskoddeoayvinyarvi (‘Wolf lake on the mountains’ in Sàmi language), we meet Viktor. Ever since the station shut down, Viktor has stayed on-site as much as possible, carrying on the work started by Dr. Huberman, the founder of the project. He recounts the history of the KSD, relating it to other cold-war science projects, about the geology and history of the area, and of his experiences living there alone. He guides us around the ruined site, introducing his living quarters, his small laboratory and of course the borehole itself. He explains his work, listening to vibrations deep within the earth, linking geology with Sami shamanism and divination.

Justin Bennett (UK, 1964, based in The Hague) works with sound and image. Trained in sculpture and electronic music, he uses drawing, video, sculpture, and a diverse array of sound forms in his research. One recurrent theme is our experience of archticture, urban development, and the (un)built space. He employs sound in order to render it audible as well as palpable: in his work, listening carefully provides a radically different way of seeing and experiencing. Bennett`s recording of sound is comparable with the shooting of video. He uses various microphones to change perspectives – like camera lenses. The microphones – the listener`s points-of-hearing – move through a city, a street, a windy Russian tundra, or the different-sounding spaces of a building. In many of Bennett`s works and installations sound is complemented by video images that affect the experience of the visitor differenty again. In some of his research projects the audiovisual material is juxtaposed with voice-overs and drawings, mapping space, movement, sound, magnetic fields, and so forth, through language and diagrams. Thus a reciprocity is created between various forms of expression: a drawing or a text can be a score; and sound and image become ways of drawing and writing. This way, Bennett`s work is also a research into sound and image as specific media, and an exploration of the ways in which they can be used and experienced. His way of working sparkles unexpected complementarities, synaesthetics, collisions and manipulations of the mind.